Toddler bed, signs, etc

Ella did something a little different last night. After we put her in bed and left the room, she stood up in bed and started screaming her head off. Since this was very out of the ordinary and she was completely hysterical, we went in and calmed her down.

After some crackers, water, and more book reading, we put her down again and left the room. Almost immediately she stood up and started screaming again. This time however, she got back down, went to the side of her bed and got out. From there she walked over to her door, touched it, walked back and got back in bed. Then she stopped crying.

Yesterday at her naptime was the first time Ella had gotten out of bed with nobody watching. Apparently she just wanted to prove to herself she could do it again.

In other news, she's up to 27 signs now, and one of her newer signs is "potty", and she's starting to occasionally use the sign to request to use the potty.

She's also starting to be more responsive to our attempts to shape her vocalizations, and I managed to get her to say "duck" last night. This brings her up to 4 spoken words: bubuh (bubble), ella, dada, and duck. However we haven't heard her say bubble in a couple weeks, so she's really only using 3 at the moment.

Regardess, she communicates her needs to us fairly well using the signs, and she's actually very receptive to our requests. Of course, she's two so she might just do what we ask for 2 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing before, but she nearly always follows simple directions when you ask.