Rainy days

Rainy days...

Transform us into princesses...

(Not that it takes precipitation to precipitate dressing up in this household)

...Fairy/chef/butterfly girl...

...Torso bearing bakers...

...Chapstick modelling divas...

...and master sidewalk-chalk artists.

Guess it takes a 3-year-old to convince you how much fun it can be to draw in the rain...

Three.

The aliquot sum of 4. The number of semicircular canals in the human ear. The atomic number of lithium. The number of points awarded to J.J. Reddick 457 times during his NCAA career for shots behind the line.





The average number of tantrums we endure on a most-day basis. The number of princess costume changes she can accomplish in 60 seconds. The number of boys in E's class that she has, by report, propositioned for marriage. The number of meals a day she'd make out of blueberries, edamame, and gummy bears if given unlimited access to the latter.

Ceremonial smelling of the cake

Don't be fooled. She isn't offering this de-iced cupcake to you.

Yes, Elle is 3. It hardly seems possible, yet I honestly can hardly remember life without her. I dare not attempt to describe milestones, as I've long lost track of what a "normal" 3 year old should be doing. You can absolutely have a completely adult conversation with her, and she has mastered the very adult concept of contradicting most things you say. Usually with sound or at least pretty convincing logic to back it up. Strong-willed is a nice euphemism, but doesn't fully encapsulate the highly opinionated yet somehow intrinsically endearing personality of this little girl. Oh, right, I'm a big girl Mom.

A big girl who asked only for a pink car for her birthday.

But a big girl who insists her big (quite literally at 4.5 months pregnant) Mommy ride shotgun.

I'm admittedly a little biased, but I've never met a more clever, brilliant, or hilarious 3 year old. She loves to read, and will absolutely call you out if you try to skip a page (or even a word) to expedite the process. She has recently developed a love for Strawberry Shortcake and continues to adore all things princess. Each morning upon wakening she proclaims which princess she will be for the day, although it invariably changes by breakfast. She is amazingly creative, spinning elaborate tales that could be described as pathologic confabulation in an older (and more intoxicated) demographic. She will reenact scenes from books, stories, and her imagination over and over, with very strict regulations about the scripts of her co-actors. I refuse to mention how many times I've been persuaded to act (and dress) the parts of prince, fairy godmother, wicked stepsister, Tinkerbell, and Fancy Nancy's dog. Don't ask.





More than ever, she is profuse with "I-love-you-so-much"es, hugs, kisses, pleases, thank-yous, and May I?s. Interestingly, she seems to have already developed the skill of whipping these affections out when she is toeing the behavior line elsewhere.





Our brief introduction to Three-dom has not been without its challenging moments. There's the utter defiance. The ever-worsening bedtime protests. The outrageously ludicrious emotional instability. Epic meltdowns predicated on the fact that I wasn't wearing my "dirty pajamas" when I woke her up this morning. Don't get excited, Jay... I have no idea what she was referring to but I don't think it involved recent purchases from Priscilla's.

Who says you can't have a pool party in the rain?

But mostly, she is the most delightful little person I have ever met, and brings a kind of joy to our lives that I never knew existed... in the pre-E era.




Here's to my baby who is joyful and clever. Happy day, happy year, happy always and ever.

Five hundred twenty six thousand six hundred minutes

Elle's 0th birthday

...

1st Birthday

...

2nd Birthday

Note the recurring theme: Serious Focus On Cake. That's my girl.

And in some crazy time warp, Birthday #3 is right around the corner...

Departure from the lighthearted...

Last week, one of my residents had to say goodbye to his 4 month old baby, after the unfathomably horrific experience of finding him unresponsive in his crib during a nap. My heart has broken for this family a thousand times over, and every time I come to the edge of asking myself what I would do in that situation, my entire being backs away from the thought as if even coming close to it is more painful than I can bear. I don' t think you recover from that kind of loss. Ever.

But it does, even if heartwrenchingly so, remind me to hug a little longer, be a little more patient, cherish every i-love-you, stop looking toward the next big thing and just take a second to treasure the moment. Even if that moment holds the exasperation incumbent to a nap-protesting, public tantrum-throwing, make-me-late-for-work-every-morning almost 3 year old. How insignificant and trivial are the exasperations of my day, when so abruptly put into perspective.

I used to throw around the term I love you. But I'm not sure that I had ever loved anyone yet, because I was years away from having a child of my own, and until you’ve done that you’re just guessing about love, gesturing toward it, assuming that it’s the right name for a feeling you’ve had. And I'm convinced that you can't love something that much without accepting the risk of equally magnanimous hurt. So my heart hurts for this family, and all I can offer is my prayers and a vow not to take my little one(s) for granted...

There is a reason why I chose not to have flower girls/ring bearers in our wedding. We didn't have any close family or friend tots we felt obligated to involve, and even in my pre-Mommy state I was not crazy enough to rustle up a pair of 2-3 year olds whose unpredictable and often socially unacceptable behaviors I am now all too familiar with. My (Jay's) niece, on the other hand, is far more brave. Elle was asked to be the flower girl in her outdoor wedding, and I must admit her performance at the rehearsal struck fear in my heart. There was aimless wandering... ok, blatant recurrent distraction... as she attempted to walk down the aisle.

Oh look, a caterpillar! Oh look, grass! Oh look, the ring bearer mom's stash of gummy bears!

Painful. 10 minutes and several dismembered gummy bears later, she finally arrived at the altar, only to immediately fall and hit her head. Which of course led to ear-shattering screams, and insistence that FlowerGirlMommy come hold her for the duration of the event. Don't say my trepidation for the actual wedding wasn't justified.

But the kid knows when to turn it on. And perform she did. Wedding night transformed her into the most perfect little angel, who nailed her role as Flower Girl better than Daniel Craig pulled off James Bond (and clearly, that's saying something).

She authoritatively (ok, bossily) grabbed Turner the ring bearer by the hand and said "Come on Turner, let's go to our Mandy", practically drug him down the aisle, and stood there angelically during the whole ceremony.

I beamed. I teared up. I noshed on gummy bears.

Post wedding got just a touch more sketchy, as we had long surpassed bedtime. Elle's too.

Apparently overtired Elle copes by making the "impending defecation" face.

But we both managed to stave off the over-tired grumpiness for the first few minutes of the reception. This photo was taken moments before the Flower Girl decided to plunge head first into the fountain. And nanoseconds before she leaned into the candle and we came a little too close to finding out just how flammable tulle can be...

Unfortunately, angel wings apparently disintegrate at 9:30pm, taking the flower girl's behavior with them. So she and I darted back to the hotel where I mistakenly thought she might actually go to sleep. Several drinks of water, potty attempts, rearrangements of bedding, and q30 second implorings of "Mommy?", "Mom?", "Mama?"....."Lauren!!" later, she was still awake. Guess the day's excitement was just too much... that or the gummy bears.

Elle-isms

Capturing the hilariously entertaining things that erupt from my not-yet-3-year-old's mouth is nearly impossible with the rate at which they emerge. And doing so over a 3 month period just adds to the challenge. So here is a smattering of the more recent Elle-isms.

While trying to get Jack to catch a frisbee: "Jack, you're incorrigible"

At least she listens to me, even if she does project the quasi-discipline she hears onto the dog...

E: God lives in my heart.

Me: That's right, he does!

E: But not in my eyes, cause they blink.

Me: (Pause)

E: And not in my hair.

E: And not in my mouth. Because I probably might bite him.

How does one respond to that, anyway?

Upon coming downstairs in the morning-

E: Where are my shoes?

Me: Oh, we left them upstairs!

E: We forgot! We for-really-got!

Driving by a man in a Subway sandwich costume with just his legs sticking out of the bottom:

Me: Elle, do you see that dancing sandwich?

E: Yes, we can eat him! But we'll have to take the legs off first.

At Costco, wanting to play with the swingset on display way up on a super high platform

E: Can you get me up there to play?

Me: It's too high-- I'm not tall enough!

E: Maybe you could turn into a giraffe, then you'd be tall enough!

Out of the blue riding in the car-

E: Inside a volcano is magma.

Pretending to plant a garden in the yard

Me: That's a very nice garden Elle.

Elle: I am extremely very clever, Mom.

Indeed, Elle. Indeed.