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.

Growing up, my family never was never big on travelling; we had the occasional trip to the beach but certainly no crazy adventerous vacations much beyond our state. Jay still doesn't believe that we spent a weekend in the Howard Johnson in Greensboro (20 minutes from our house) as "vacation" one year. Hey, they had a pool.

But one year, one glorious moment of out-of-the-box exploration, we made the trip to Disneyworld. Hence, even into adulthood my entire concept of the world has been based on my cultural exposure to Disney. I have been fortunate enough to travel somewhat extensively as a (quasi-) grownup, and have gotten more than a few odd looks at such historical icons as Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, etc when I proclaim in awe, "It's JUST like Disneyworld!" The "countries" of Epcot are my reality. The originals are mere replications in my Mickey-stained view of the world.

Needless to say, DW has always held a special place in my heart. And for my offspring, who ranks Any Disney Princess just under God, Mommy, and Daddy (and the latter two are negotiable), who insisted on naming her baby brother Cinderella (thank goodness for a girl), and who will occasionally sing "M-I-C-K-E-Y... M-O-U-S-E" in place of the alphabet, there really couldn't be a more ideal vacation. 

So although I had sworn for years that I wouldn't be so brave (read: insane) as to take a young child to the magical destination, I recanted and we decided to take Elle as her swan song of only child-i-tude. When we pointed this out to her, however, she immediately pointed out that her baby sister was coming along with us in Mommy's tummy. She will argue with a fence post, that one.







In retrospect, barely-3 is probably a bit too young for optimal Disney enjoyment. There were tantrums. There were meltdowns. There were times when I totally expected SuperNanny to swoop in and take over out of pity for this poor mom who clearly had no idea how to parent her child. The irrationality of a 3 year old was amplified to utterly incomprehensible levels. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT ask my daughter to sit on the inside of the Triceratops Spin ride, Disney Cast Members. There will be trouble. Loud, angry, flailing trouble.


The combination of extended bedtimes, disrupted routines, heat, and nothing short of absolute sensory overload created a monster. And not a "nice, funny"  monster like the "nice, funny" ghosts on the Haunted Mansion ride that we took Elle on in a moment of complete and simultaneous brain death. Bring it on, SuperNanny.

But those were the exceptions. Rather memorable exceptions I must say, but definitely overshadowed by the sheer joy of watching Elle's eyes light up thousands of times each day. I still have great memories of my trips as a child, but I must say it is nothing like seeing it through your kid. Especially when that kid is an overdramatic, super-passionate-about-everything, mini-romantic/idealist.

 I'm not sure at what age it becomes less "real", but 3 definitely makes it under the cut. Meeting Cinderella and the other princesses may have been life-changing for Elle. She talked about it nonstop, recounting over and over to me what each of them said to her. "Cinderella said we were twins!", "Ariel likes my dress! Blue is her favorite color... just like the sea!". Magical, indeed.


She wore her Cinderella dress for the breakfast in the Castle, and was absolutely convinced that she was royalty. In fact, when Cinderella welcomed her to the Castle, E quickly (but tactfully) informed her, "It's MY castle". Every character or cast member we encountered the rest of the day was immediately greeted with E pointing toward the castle and saying "Look, there's my castle!"
Our last vacation as a family of 3 (ex utero, that is), and I wouldn't change a thing. Except maybe bribe SuperNanny with a parkhopper pass...

Career Development

The latest solution to our nation's sluggish workforce was launched at the end of the summer, under the guise of a birthday party at the Children's Museum. The innovative program introduces barely-three and not-yet-three-year-olds to various career opportunities, then blurs their decision making capacity by intoxicating them with large portions of cake and juice. Not one to shirk her patriotic obligation (i.e. to turn down cake), E dutifully attended the job fair, sampling future career options and pondering how she could best serve her fellow dark blue icing stained American.

She first considered the field of emergency medicine, but was far too protective of "her" rescue vehicle that she never actually made it out into the field. I overheard government officials whispering something about "getaway driver potential".

Next, a foray into the world of contruction.

Not thwarted by the obviously male-dominated career, Elle held her own bulldozing, steamrolling, bobcatting, and whistling at cute 2-year-olds as they passed her job site. But ultimately she succumbed to the gender stereotype, and was seen using the dump truck as a stroller for nearby baby dolls.

Childcare seemed to be the front runner by all accounts as she skillfully dressed and bathed the infants...

And stamped out childhood obesity.

But alas, I saw the authorities whipping out a black sharpie and making broad sweeping "X"-like strokes when she threw the baby under the rocking chair, rocked over it, and proceeded to berate it for being in her way.

Morale improved when she brandished her skills as a pizzeria employee, which was shameful evidence of the ridiculous amount of pizza that traverses our household. A+ for recognizing the entire Domino's delivery fleet by name!

Meal Planner was a bit equivocal. While the officials were intrigued by the creativity of any dish containing cauliflower, a rotisserie chicken, bacon, and challah, she lost points for the ideological incongruence of the latter two ingredients.

Maybe it's turkey bacon?

In the end, E was assured that she could do and be anything she wanted to be, with the Mommy caveat that careers involving tattoos, ATVs, halter tops, and any business whose number starts with 1-900... would be strictly prohibited.

She always has her TV gameshow career... clearly she's still a natural.

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.