Elle-isms

E on weather patterns:

Me: Look how foggy it is this morning!
Elle: We better go find Rudolph so he can save the kids!

Me: You mean help Santa?

Elle: No, not Santa. The kids.

Driving to school in the rain on Tumblebus day:

Elle: I'm going to ask the TumbleGuys if the bus has windshield wipers!

Me upon picking her up: Did you ask if the bus has wipers?
E: Yes! He said they have TWO!

Chilly fall morning, after refusing to wear her jacket:
Elle: We forgot my coat!
Me: No, we didn't forget. You refused to put it on.
Elle: I know, but it sounds better that I forgot.

Jay whistles. Elle asks him to stop. He does it again. And again.

E: Don't make me call your mommy!

Early one morning at the beach, in the parking lot at the grocery store:
Me: Elle, what should we get for breakfast?
Elle (with all the unbridled enthusiasm you can muster at age 3): FIBER ONE!!
 A group of middle-aged ladies nearby couldn't stop laughing. That's my girl.

Playing putt-putt at the beach inside a big Volcano, which starts making rumbling noises:
Elle throws down her putter and runs into my arms whimpering
Me: What's wrong?

Elle: It's going to get me!

Me: What is going to get you?
E: MAGMA!

Perusing books at the library:

E (loudly): Mommy, we can't get this one. It's not on sale.
Clearly she's heard that before :)

I asked her some question amidst baby carrot eating:
E (exasperated tone): Mo-om! It's hard to talk with carrots in your mouth.

Jay and I ever so mildly teasing her one morning:
Elle: THIS (insert overdramatic hand gestures here) is what I deal with.

And my personal favorite:
E chose as her souvenir from Disneyworld a set with Ariel figurine and innumerable tiny accessories. As an aside, whoever invented these infinitesimally small articles of clothing and accoutrements clearly doesn't have a child making incessant demands for them to dress and undress the character using what can only be described as microsurgery technique. They also do not understand the distress that results when a minuscule mermaid tail, fork, or heaven forbid Ariel's extra head (?!) gets lost. And they obviously did not witness my child, upon misplacing the 0.5mm in diameter Purple Sparkly Mermaid Bikini Top, running up and down the halls of the hotel announcing to housekeepers, other guests, and inanimate objects:

"I lost my BOOBS! Have you seen my BOOBS? My purple sparkly BOOBS?!"

Don't worry, Guadalupe the Disney housekeeper, we found them.

Baby Dos

The 2nd Child Neglect Syndrome is already in full force. I am officially 26 weeks and 5 days pregnant, which I actually had to take a few moments to calculate. The first time around, I could tell you how many weeks, days, hours, and dog years that my uterus had been occupied. I'd tell complete strangers what fruit/vegetable was the most accurate representation of the length of Fetal Golding in any given week. This often was preceded by a quick google search for "rutabega" or "fig" so I'd be optimally informed. I scoured pregnancy books, websites, magazines, and yes, my old Ob-Gyn textbooks from medical school. Elle's name was chosen before she graduated from embryo status. I had my own personal parking space at Babies-R-Us, and my days off were spent lovingly planning nurseries, assembling Pack-N-Plays, and drooling over high-end strollers. There were weekly blog posts with expanding belly photos, meticulous attention to caloric and nutrient intake, and incessant anxiety over minutia (I haven't felt the baby move in 90 seconds! What IS wrong?!... WHY can't I hear the heartbeat with my stethoscope?! Why can I hear my heartbeat so loudly in my right ear? Is that a sign of fetal distress!?).

The second time around, things have been a bit different. As mentioned above, sometimes I am off by weeks when someone asks me how far along I am. I haven't made the first trip to Babies-R-Us, not even the website. Life with a 3-year old hasn't slowed down enough for me to even THINK about resurrecting the nursery, reorganizing baby clothes, or dusting off the breast pump. There hasn't been the first burgeoning belly photo, although it is definitely documentable. I sleep on my back. I might occasionally consume tiny amounts of caffeine (EGAD!) and have at least once or twice snarfed deli meat which may or may not have been properly heated to steaming (DOUBLE Egad!). So the 2nd child syndrome begins, even in utero. Please don't hold it against me forever, Elise. You do, finally, have a name. A name, which thanks to your loving Mommy and no thanks at all to your crazy yet insufferably peristent Daddy, does not contain the word "Danger". I think that makes up for a host of the previously described offenses, wouldn't you agree?

So to even the score, if ever so slightly, here are some photos of our sweet baby girl. If her in utero activity is any predictor, she will make a fine RiverDance member or kickboxer. I will try to maintain some degree of sibling equity, although I don't know if my iPhoto memory is large enough for another 2000 baby pictures.

We love you, E^2, and can't wait for your arrival.

Game of Thrones

*Warning: This post contains multiple references to Poop. While the narrative may be a bit fecal-centered, there are no graphic or blackmail potential photos. You can thank me later, E. 

 Elle has been potty trained for over a year. But that doesn't stop her from using all resources at her disposal to manipulate me. She is perfectly capable of going on her own, albeit with somewhat questionable wiping thoroughness and gross excursions on the appropriate-number-of-flushes bell curve. Never one. Either zero or 5, which seems to be the point at which our plumbing infrastructure sighs at her and refuses to cooperate with yet another pull of the shiny handle.

Despite her potential for potty independence, she typically insists on my presence if I am in a 40 mile radius. This is especially true for Number Two. Sometimes just for moral support. Or companionship ("Can you go get a book in case it waits a long time, Mommy?"). Or Affirmation ("Is it a doozy, mommy?"). For some reason for the "big ones" in which some effort is required, she insists on wrapping her arms around my neck while I kneel in front of her in perhaps the most uncomfortable position one can be asked to hold for the duration of the colon emptying.


The manipulation factor is most annoying evident precisely 15 minutes after I leave E's room at bedtime. Like clockwork after I finally coerce her to stay in bed I hear the infamous words over the monitor, "Mommy! I need to go potty!" I am simultaneously frustrated and amazed by this kid's sphincter control.

She knows this is the only phrase that will have me twisting ankles, leaping out of the shower mid-shampoo, or dropping my end of the heavy piece of furniture I may be helping Jay move (hypothetically speaking of course) to arrive at her bedside in nanoseconds. And believe me, you don't want to hear about the time I called her bluff. She can always produce just enough to convince me she really has to go. But the problem arises when she insists she isn't done no matter how much time has elapsed, and will sit there until I lose sensation and proprioception in my lower extremities (see above required positioning for Potty Assistant).

Poop is now a power struggle. I am fully aware that she is using this as yet another bedtime delay tactic, but something just seems wrong about enforcing a time limit on defecation. Obviously I can't let her us sit there until morning, but what is an appropriate time limit? 10 seconds? 5 minutes? This has potential to be one of those things that comes out in therapy sessions 20 years from now. Or the court of law. "Mommy said I had 3 minutes to poop, OR ELSE!"

I must win back The Throne.