Snow Angels and Power Tools

8+ inches of snow... enough that even this family of adventurers (lead by the XY among us) didn't venture out yesterday! Elle played with her new tool bench, and quickly learned how to wield a hammer (see below), screwdriver, and drill. Notice she does this (and everything else this weekend) sporting her lime green shoes... which she has suddenly fallen in love with and demands that they be on constantly. Clearly, without regard to how well they may go with the rest of her attire. "Mama Shoes!", followed closely by "Mama Shoes ON!"... if heaven forbid I haven't accomplished the task in the 12 seconds she deems reasonable, "Mama Shoes Foot!" standing on one leg holding the other foot up to me as high as she can. Hilarious. Not opinionated, this one. Not one bit.

Check out her kitchen tower in the pics as well-- sort of like a toddler lifeguard stand that lets her be at counter height-- she loves it-- thanks Granny Margaret! This morning when I opened the fridge to get her milk she said "App-ple", so I let her cut her plastic apple with her plastic knife on the island while I cut the real one beside her. She found it hilarious.

Also a few pictures of our (brief) frolick in the snow. I think E was intrigued by the concept, but not exactly thrilled by the immobility that 8+ inches of snow imposed upon her. We did make snow angels (see below) and trudge up and down the scraped driveway. When we got back inside she kept saying "Mama Coat"... "Mama Hat"... "Mama Mitt-ttens"...."Mama Outside (Ow-Sigh)", but when I asked her if she REALLY wanted to go back out, she'd shake her head Noooooooo. Too cute.

See the Mama angel on the left (radiologist's right), and Baby Angel on the right (radiologist's left)?

Whew.

Any Resemblance?

I heart this kid.

I am most certainly not posting my Not Me Monday post on Sunday because I always have time on Mondays to contribute fully to the blogging world. My life is perfectly organized such that tasks with the word "Monday" in them always get accomplished on said day of the week. Important activities like blogging, laundry, and ummm... showering never go undone.

I did not witness the unbridled joy in my husband's eyes when he spotted the Construction Corner at the Children's Museum. I would never giggle as he outfitted himself and Elle in hard hats and protective eyewear while giddily mumbling words like "circular saw", "sandblast", and "nail gun". Elle did NOT not share his enthusiasm, and clearly did not give me the look of desperation that could only be translated as Please get me a baby brother, Mom. Please.

I most certainly did NOT indulge my daughter's requests of "Hat?" "Hat?" Hat!" as we made a "quick" stop at Macy's. I clearly did not whip out my iPhone camera for a mini fashion shoot while she donned Kentucky Derby-esque garb. My child is always perfectly content to sit (ha) quietly (HA!) in the cart while I accomplish various errands. I would never think of abandoning an entire cart of groceries somewhere in the frozen foods section (so sorry Harris Teeter employees) because I had returned E to a sitting position 6,428 times and simply couldn't do it again. I do not proudly call the following montage "Elle Meets Macy's"

And finally, I did NOT justify an impressive lack of portion control (even for me) at Moe's for lunch today with the fact that they now have whole grain tortillas. I would never consume several times my body weight in Moe's delicacies under such auspices. Nope, not me!

Elle's Christmas Morning Jam Session

This will be my only retrospective posting, but a priceless moment captured on video. Christmas morning between checking out Santa's gifts E disappeared for a few minutes. Jay went to get her and told me to bring the video camera-- here she was showing off her moves to Handel's Messiah. Hilarious. Clearly she got the dance genes from the Golding side!

The Inagural Blog

I have avoided the blog peer pressure for the majority of our daughter's 17 months of life, with the exception of one Not-Me-Monday post seen below. My excuses for this are many, mostly related to the past year of excessive night/weekend call... but I have concluded that the heart of the matter lies in my inability to relinquish my obsession with Perfectionism. If I am going to do something, I am going to do it right, and the thought of maintaining the highest level of wit, cleverness, and narrative genius on a regular basis as I chronicle the events that transpire in the Golding househould is a bit daunting. Perhaps the biggest challenge I've faced as a doctor mommy, and even more so as a resident doctor mommy, is accepting that Perfectionism may not always be an attainable goal. Everything is about balance, and at some point sacrifices are necessary that preclude perfection in each of the roles I now find myself holding. A painful process indeed for someone who has spent 29 (precariously close to 30!) years meticulously pursuing Perfectionism in an often control-freakishly way. Soooo... as part of this character building process, I have decided to resurrect the Blog, accepting the fact that at times it may not be as witty, clever, or narratively genius-y as I might hope.

Now, to catch up on the past 17 months of Elledom...
Mom-bias notwithstanding, our daughter is the smartest, most inquisitive, wiggliest, funniest, sweetest, and most delightful toddler ever to grace this planet. She is constantly on the move (which makes for frustrating attempts to confine her to restaurant highchairs, shopping carts, etc)-- the last time she was still for 5 consecutive seconds I asked Jay if he thought she was having an absence seizure. Ha! She narrates life with an incessant stream of increasingly more coherent words and phrases. We are continuously amazed at her vocabularly that really seems to grow every day. When did you learn "purple"?! I asked when she jubilantly announced the shade of blueberry I had presented her with for breakfast. Some of her favorite words currently are:
Baby
Diaper
Potty
Bath
Burp (yep, burp)
Cook-in (referring to her play kitchen, I surmise a combination between kitchen and cooking)
Cheese
Nana
Apple
Dewwwww! (referring to Dad's dew, of course. When we offer the Dew to one of her Babies and ask if Baby can have Dew, she shakes her head adamantly and says Nooooooo! as if we are just being too silly)
Sausage (a personal favorite)
Milk
Water
Waffle (Va-val)
Cracker (with emphasis on the last syllable: Cra-KER
Yellow
Purple (not sure why she chooses the more difficult 2 syllable colors!)
More
Bubbles
Cup
Turtle
Giraffe (Raff)
Bear (Burr)
Dragon (Ga-gon)
Elmo
Up
Down (used much less often than Up, which generally means whichever position she is currently not in)
Out
Off (like up, typically means on or off, whichever is not currently the state of affairs)
Light
Hat
Shoes
Socks (another personal favorite, said with such convinction: Sssssssocks!)
Shirt (sometimes she will look down at her shirt and proclaim "Shirt!" as if she just discovered it)
Sit (unfortunately can sound a bit like a less socially appropriate word)
Hey (laced with southern drawl)
Hello (He-wo?, whenever she encounters a phone)
Bye/Bye-bye
Elbow
Animal (when she sees my iPhone which has an app of animal games)
Mama, Dada, Elle, Pawpaw, Nanny, Nana, Baba (attempted Grampa), Rah-rah (sarah at daycare), Nick (a friend at daycare)
Nap (universally accompanied by a passionate shaking of the head in protest)
Cheerios (Teeoos)
Brush (of the hair or tooth variety)
This (generic term for what she wants)
Ball
Book
Frog
Bottle
Mine
Bow

Do animal sounds count as words? If so, add Moo, Quack-quack (Cack-cack), Neigh, Baaaa, Oooh oooh (monkey-esque), Woof, and an un-spellable (albeit quite authentic) elephant sound

She can point to a host of body parts including: hair/head, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, hands, tummy, heart, toes

Enough extolling of milestones. And kudos to anyone who made it through this interminable post. Future posts will be much more concise, entertaining, and picture/video-containing. Promise.