Pico DiPaolo

Elise was playing a word game and was asked to come up with a word that rhymes with “dice”. She immediately said “pice”. Nana said, “Well, that’s not a real word”.

Elise said “yes it is, it means a pie that’s exploding!”

Elise (to Petie): Why don’t I have one of those thingys? (visor with mirror)
Petie: Because the people in the front seat need to be able to block the sun.
Elise (squinting out the sunny window): Well, it’s sunny back here, too.
Petie: Well, when you grow up you can design a car that has those in the back seat.
Elise: But when I’m older, I’ll be sitting in the front seat.

Elise’s creativity is bursting at the seams. Recently, I have played the part of Cruella da Ville, Maximus (from Rapunzel), and little bunny foo foo. It does remind me of the “acting” we did during Joelle’s dreaded bath time. She hated bath time so much that Chris and I created a crew of characters that would come visit her during bath time. I think I could only really manage one, the French beautician, but Chris was really good at it! With Elise, I’ve actually been a little more creative, but this type of play is so exhausting. Usually, when I hear the words, “let’s pretend,” I cringe, but I’m really trying to be a better sport this go round. She’s my last baby!

I smiled when she ran into my room this morning during tv time to say, “when tv time is over, I have to show you bunny foo foo. She was so proud. Although I have sang her that song, she had forgotten I knew it and must have learned it again at school. The new version, much like sitting “Indian style” has become “criss cross apple sauce”, is a little nicer. She couldn’t remember all of it, but I know at the end, instead of “bonking little bunny foo foo on the head”, she turned him “into a little goo.” (a monster.) The best part of all it? She couldn’t remember which two fingers to put up and had to hold up her two little fingers with her other hand.

Elise really is a character. She says and does things that are really hard to categorize – just unique. A few instances that I have been saving up:

1. A couple of days ago as we arrived at a birthday party and got out of the car. Elise said, “it’s kind of crack-y here”. She was referring to a parking lot that had a lot of cracks in it – the ground had buckled in a few places…it was in pretty bad shape. She immediately followed up, “it’s OK the city will fix it right?” Obviously someone must have given her that line in a similar situation, I wonder if it was when they were reconstructing a street near us and she asked why it was unfinished?

2. We were talking about what she had for snack at school…
Elise said that she had 3 graham crackers and everyone else had 2.
Us: Were you just supposed to take 2?
Elise: Yeah.
Us: Did you take 3?
Elise: Yeah.
Us: Did they say not to?
Elise: No, they didn’t see me.

We explained to her about that everyone should take 2 so that everyone can have enough. She nodded in understanding.

Us: So if you are supposed to take 2 are you going to take 2?
Elise: No, I’m going to take 3.

3. One of Elise’s bad habits right now is that when she gets bored of something she just tosses it aside or leaves it somewhere. One day she kept leaving out little ladybug hair clips.

Petie: if you leave these clips out again they are going to go in the trash

Later, after constantly leaving them around the house…

Petie: OK, I’m going to have to throw them away (she goes into the kitchen and pretends to throw them away)
Elise: Thank you for throwing away the clips, mommy.

She and Joelle are the complete opposite when it comes to this type of situation. Joelle would freak out that something would be gone (and hence is a lot less likely to break the rule and cause the problem…) whereas Elise immediately reacts “I didn’t want that anyway” more often.

4. When I suggested we get ice cream from the store instead of sundaes from McDonald’s because the sundaes seem to melt quickly and they are kind of runny when we get home, Elise said “but you can just turn up the engine really high and go fast so it doesn’t melt.”

Part of Elise’s schoolwork this year is that every day they do something with a new letter. Often she comes home with a letter decorated with something. For example, today she came home with the outline of an “I” on construction paper with a bunch of tinsel on it (icicles). A couple of weeks ago it was an “F” covered with little feathers.

Petie and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen and Joelle passed by the “F” project in the next room. We heard her pause as she walked by and questioned, “Why does Elise have this F in feathers?”

For a second we both thought she had said “Why does Elise have these f’in feathers?” Joelle and Elise had no idea why we were cracking up at the thought of our 8 year old saying something like that.

After a Spelling test at school, Joelle told us she got one wrong (a bonus word) and Petie joked, “…this is how empires crumble” because Joelle rarely misses spelling words.

Joelle cringed, “I don’t want to crumble!” I said, “Joelle do you know what an empire is? You can’t be an empire.” She said, “uh, it’s some guy in baseball?” (umpire)

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That same afternoon when Elise asked to watch TV, Petie said, “yes, but we should also extend an invitation to Joelle to see if she wants to watch, too.” Elise replied “I don’t want to mail Joelle a letter!”

Joelle went to her first piano lesson today and came home raring to practice. Her first lesson was mostly understanding the number of beats each note represents (e.g., whole note is 4 beats).

She brought out our small keyboard to the living room and asked Petie if she wanted to hear her practice. “Of course”, she said. Joelle sat down to play a couple of songs. As instructed, she just used a single key to practice the length of the notes.

I, too, came and sat down to watch her practice. She was cute working on it, of course. But what I probably will remember more is the way Elise reacted. She was incredulous that our attention was being taken up by what appeared to be Joelle just hitting a key over and over again on the keyboard. She looked at us as if she was thinking “seriously, you guys are coming from all across the house to listen to this?” She kept asking if she could PLEASE take her shower now and at one point actually laid down on the floor with her fingers in her ears. Where do they learn that?

Petie and I had separate errands to run yesterday. Joelle and Elise chose to split up (which is unusual). As Elise and I were on our way to the MAC, we passed a park.
Elise: “Hey, there’s a park.”
Me: “Hopefully soon it will get cool again and we can go to the park every weekend.”
Elise: “Yeah, not this week, we’ll wait until it gets cooler.”

I thought the conversation was over but the Elise kept on going.

Elise: “It’s better to be cooler because then you can go on the slide and your legs aren’t hot. Nana took me to the broken seesaw park [which was the park we passed] one time and it was cooler. I went on the slide. Nana took me there and we had ice cream and I had nuts on my ice cream. I liked that ice cream with nuts on it! That was fun when Nana took me to the broken seesaw park.”

Later when we got to Honey’s house she proudly showed me that she could mark her place in her book by putting it upside down. She said “Mommy showed me how to do that!”

The options ran through our heads – we wanted the kids to see the tour and I really didn’t want Petie to miss it so I could either just hang around with her purse or….the numbers clicked. It had taken us 15 minutes to get there and we had (a little less than) 30 minutes until the tour started. I said, “I’m just going to run for it – I should make it.” Hopefully being able to run instead of carrying kids would make up for having to go back up to our room and putting the purse away in the safe.

We quickly agreed that I’d meet them there after the tour if I didn’t make it back in time and I started to take off down the street. After about half a step I realized something and called back to Petie, “uh, I’m going to look like a purse snatcher!” Going along with the role play, I tucked the purse under my arm and ran from the law.

I’m sure I looked pretty odd running with a purse through the streets of Downtown Denver as most people were making their way to work on a Monday morning. I guess it was pretty unlikely that I would be purse snatching in broad daylight so any strange looks were probably more like “why is he in a hurry and why does he carry a purse?”

I made the roundtrip in about 20 minutes and arrived, winded, in time. One of the Mint workers obviously had a heads-up that I was coming and said “ah, you made it.” Several of the people on the tour greeted me when I went through security as well. Apparently the girls were distraught and were worried I wouldn’t make it.

We enjoyed the tour and I recommend visiting if you are in Denver – just make reservations….and don’t bring a purse.

One of the things we wanted to do while in Denver this summer was to visit the U.S. Mint. Petie fondly recalls her trip to the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. and thought that the girls would enjoy it.

Who knew how popular these tours were? A month in advance most of the tours were full. Luckily, I was able to score 4 spots in the 8 a.m. tour on the Monday we were scheduled to leave.

I pulled out the tickets the night before and noted that we were not allowed to bring purses or backpacks. Usually we have both with us, so that was important to remember.

We leave the hotel at 7:00 a.m. which is early, but when the kids are ready, they’re ready to GO. As luck would have it between catching all the lights and not having to wait for a bus we find ourselves across the street from the Mint at 7:15. It’s locked down and there is nothing around really (except for a long line of those hoping to get on the waitlist…ha ha) so we walk around the block.

Elise is asking to be carried by Petie so she asks if I can hold her purse. Uh oh. We both realize the problem – purses not allowed. Being the optimist I said “C’mon, they HAVE to have a locker or something we can rent.”

At 7:30, the open up the building so people with the 8:00 tour can start going through security procedures. Petie was right. “Sorry, you’ll have to take the purse back to your car, ” the security guard said. Petie and I gave each other a helpless look. “How far away are you parked?”, he wondered. Uh, we are staying at the Hotel Monaco across town. The security guard wasn’t budging. We wouldn’t be able to make the tour after all.

Part 2 to follow….