Dew! And One...Two...

When E and I are ready to lure Jay out of bed, we can always do so with his favorite first-thing-in-the-morning carbonated confection... Diet Dew! Elle can spot the logo a mile away (as the incredulous Sheetz employees found out), and loves nothing more than pursing her lips in somewhat of a howling wolf fashion to say "Dewwwwww!". Don't worry, if you ask her if the Dew is for Elle, she says "Nooooo, milk for Elle!"
She then proceeds to count the stairs-- I've always done this counting to 5, but recently when I got to 5 she said Six! So I guess now she's graduated to 10. For reasons unbeknownst to me, she is not a big fan of 9. Ready to get on to 10, I suppose. Sorry for the poor filming-- lovely footage of the stairs! It's hard to hold a toddler's hand, count, and make sure the Dew doesn't become an explosive device upon opening!

Hippety Hoppety!

A slightly belated Easter post, but my goal was to get this done within a week (can you tell how low my standards have become?!)-- so enjoy the prolonged Easter celebration!

On Easter Eve we visited Nana and the doggies in Reidsville, and had a visit from Grampa and Mimi later in the day.

Elle awoke to find that the Easter Bunny had visited and laughed herself silly watching the pastel slinky descend the stairs. Apparently Slinky doesn't have to hold a hand for such things. She displayed rockstar egg hunting skills for the roughly 43 seconds the activity held her attention, then we were off to church. Afterwards we headed to High Point for lunch with Jay's family. E delighted in having bubbles blown at her feet (at her request, no idea why), visiting the turtle, and being loved on by family. Thanks, Bolicks for teaching her to announce "Butt!" at an extremely socially unacceptable volume when you ask her what "this" is and point to your rear.

After blessing meals or bedtime prayers, Elle sweetly says "Amen", and we were just waiting for her to do this when Bill finished the blessing for Easter lunch. Of course she was perfectly silent. But about an hour later as we were finishing up lunch, she ran up to Bill and said "AMEN!" I think I'll give her more credit for remembering that he had said the prayer than be disappointed in her delayed timing :-)

What a fantastic weekend spending time with family celebrating that He is risen! Happy Easter!

The neighbor's pickup truck makes for a festive background, don't you think?

Why oh why is it physiologically impossible for us to take a decent family picture? Sigh. I also noticed recently that there are very few pictures of Elle with her Mommy-- as Mommy is always the photographer. So E, when you grow up please don't be too psychiatrically traumatized because there is no photographic documentation that we spent time together... I promise I was always right there, clicking madly away on my fancy Nikon Mom-Cam. One of these days I may have to sell it to pay for the therapy sessions...

Buh-bye Ocean...

We spent a wonderful week at the beach, with perfect weather, plenty of relaxation, good food, and of course the obligatory (several) trip(s) to Costco. Elle loved the concept of the ocean, but was quite vehement that her bare feet not touch the sand. She did find great joy in my running from the waves while carrying her. "O-shun coming! O-shun coming!"

Grampa came to visit for the last few days of the beach trip, and E absolutely loved having him entertain her in the car, saying "Again? Again?" as soon as he would finish reading a book. Once he pointed at a picture of a rabbit, and in a remarkably accurate Elmer Fudd voice said something about a Wascally Wabbit. E gave him a somewhat stern look and enunciated perfectly "Rabbit, Grampa". You could almost see her rolling her eyes. Hilarious.

There is a little door to a cubby hole under our stairs at the beach that Elle loves to hide random things in, including her borderline-doesn't-fit self. She puts the hippo in, says "Bye-bye Hippo", closes the door... dramatic pause... flings open the door and says "Peek-a-boo! (sounds like Bugaboo)" and dissolves into rampant giggles. Over. And. Over.

3 years of radiology residency have given me the eagle eye necessary to spot the baby in this picture. Now if only the pulmonary nodules were as cute...

We had a blast-- I could fill pages of cyberspace with stories, but will keep in mind that there is likely a daily recommended allowance of Other People's Kid/Family Stories and I'd hate to overload any unsuspecting readers. Stay tuned for the Easter post, for which I lack the energy to tackle at the moment. I suppose I should focus that energy into driving to the hospital where I will spend the (hopefully uneventful) night on call.

Buh-bye ocean, buh-bye.