Elle-isms

At some point I'm going to have to suspend this segment of the blog, because pretty much everything that comes out of this kid's mouth cracks me up. Or is a dagger through my heart (see below), but I'm hoping that the teenage-esque backtalk will pass. Quickly. She continues to have an amazing vocabulary and is quite the little wordsmith. Unbelievably perceptive for her age, she asks intriguing questions and can pick up on extremely complex emotions and abstract concepts. She also is manipulative far beyond her years, and long ago I've learned to disagree with her only after cautious consideration... more often than not, she's right.

Me: Elle, what would you like for breakfast?
E (poker-faced): Green beans.
Me: Really? You want green beans for breakfast?
E: Yes.
Me: Ok....
Green beans prepared, served, and consumed.
E: Mommy, I ate something healthy. Now can I have Easter candy for breakfast?

While playing with Elle's class at pickup time, Boomer the class bunny escaped from his cage and hid under the stack of cots. In dramatic fashion, Elle starts running around the room flailing her arms as if to herald a national emergency screaming, "It's a bunny travesty! It's a bunny travesty!"

After listening to me struggle to answer one of her frequent unanswerable life questions, "Mommy, I'm puzzled."

Walking by the recycling bin in the office at daycare, Elle stops me abruptly. "Mommy! Let's put my old coloring books in that box so they'll turn into new ones!"

Eating dinner, Elle picks up her cornbread muffin and asks, "Is this a carbohydrate?"

Frolicking with the wildlife in our yard: "Are there man-bugs?"

Upon seeing a picture of a fireman in a book we were reading, "Look Mommy, it's an infinity helper!"
Me: A what?
E: An infinity helper! We talked about those at school.
Me: Oh, you mean community helper?
E: No, infinity helper.

Me: after a particularly arduous morning trying to get Elle ready for school including innumerable meltdowns, fits pitched, and culminating in E swatting at me: "That is enough. Do that again and see how much trouble you'll be in"
E: You do that again and see how unloved you'll be.
sidenote: please please let my 4 year old teenager grow out of her backtalking phase soon.

After being forced invited to attend Jay's race, "Daddy, you need a boy."

Playing a board game in which she was instructed to change the word to make the sentence make sense:
Me (with emphasis on the word she needs to change): The man likes to roll in the mud.
E: The man likes to roll on the carpet.
Nice, Elle, nice. I think they were going for pig, though. She acted offended that I thought her answer was hilarious.

I was pushing Elle and a friend on the swingset at my Dad's house when the other girl's mom asks her to come inside because she might get sick in the cool air (it was 75 degrees). After a short argument ensued between the girl and her mom, Elle shouts out: "Don't worry! It's ok... it's ok. My Mom's a doctor!"

Mommy, I need you to cut out three families. Ours, Nick's, and Gracie's. And lots of Christmas trees. And don't forget Gracie's dog. This is for my play, "The Tale of the Leaning Tree". She proceeds to tell me the plot of this sordid tale which involves the aforementioned families visiting a Christmas tree farm and laboriously going through the tree selection process. Nick and Gracie's family are mesmerized by the huge giant lush trees and each choose one of these beauties to take home. Elle on the other hand, sees a leaning "scraggly" tree and with great compassion, decides she want that one, much to Mom and Dad's surprise. Their conversations are sprinkled with comic relief thanks to the antics of paper Elise, who likes to climb/fall off the trees and hide in various location throughout the Tree Farm. Elle convinces her family to take home the leaning scraggly tree and they decorate it and sing O Christmas Tree and deem it the best tree ever. Santa comes that night and is so impressed with Elle's goodwill toward her coniferous friend, that he leaves her an enormous amount of toys. The other families, by comparison, receive sparse gifts. Particularly Nick's family who did not get to sleep on time on Christmas Eve. The script ends with Paper Dad gushing over his new Christmas tools and... well... Elle can't think of what Paper Moms might get for Christmas.