Pico DiPaolo

Petie showed Joelle a present she was getting me for Christmas, saying “Joelle, you can keep a scecret right?”

Joelle: “I can keep a secret, you trust me don’t you? I Think it’s THIS one (pointing at Elise) you have to worry about, mom.”

Usually on the weekends the girls both wake up around 7:00 or so.  Joelle goes into the playroom and plays quietly.  Elise, on the other hand, usually stumbles into our bedroom and whines (as if we woke her up) “I wanna watch tv, wanna sausage patty, want my choca milk”.  If you don’t have everything done within about 30 seconds she barks out orders because surely you didn’t hear her the first time.  Progress on one front just means you aren’t doing one of the other tasks.

A couple of weekends ago she came out of her room at 7 and quietly padded down the hall.  I played possum.  I heard her pad down the hallway with the light jingle of her bear accompanying her.  She came to the place in the hall where she was standing between the door of the playroom and the door of our bedroom.

She studied her options and opened up the playroom door.  I heard Joelle say something and Elise replied “Yeah.”  I was given a reprieve to snooze by the girls for the first time I could remember.  Sure Elise proceeded to open the playroom, do a lap around the house and slam the door shut every five minutes after that, but it’s progress…

As parents, we are constantly seeing ourselves in our children.  Often, I think Elise is more like Chris, but bringing out all the Christmas hoopla yesterday made me realize that really, children are bits and pieces of both parents and then they have a little dash of their own spice to boot.  I say this because she started playing with all the ornaments on the tree.  She moves them around and starts having them talk to each other and interact.  I used to do the same thing.  It makes me smile to see her do it.  Joelle is territorial over the ornaments that are her ornaments, but I keep fighting to let Lis play with all of them.  I remember how much fun it was. 

Little Elise is almost completely done with the baby phase.  She has diapers to conquer…and that’s about it.  Recently, she pulled out an old forgotten binky from a backpack.  Needless to say, we didn’t know it was there.  Chris held his breath to see if she would remember her addiction and pop it back in her mouth.  Instead, she said, “it’s a bink and put it down.”  She used to also insist that all pictures of Elise or Joelle as a baby were her.  However, we were in the playroom recently and she started naming off who was in each picture.  “That’s a picture of Joelle with a face.  That’s a picture of Joelle with a dance band…he he.  That’s a picture of Nana and Papa.”  She mysteriously stopped before acknowledging the last picture (which was of Joelle as a baby and a picture of Chris that actually doesn’t really look like him.)  I said, “Lisie, who is in the last picture?”  She said, “Two people.”  I pressed further and she clearly didn’t really know.  Finally, she said, “I know… it’s Unkey Joey and a baby!”  She would have insisted it was a picture of her not so long ago…

Joelle got her first lunch visit of the year from Petie and Elise.  Petie said it was cute because 1st grade lunch is between K and Pre-K lunchtimes so you get to see all the little kids come in.  I also learned that once you get to first grade you don’t have to sit with your class, you can sit wherever you want - whoa.

I was putting Joelle to bed tonight and she said “too bad you couldn’t come to lunch, maybe you could come sometime soon like in September or October”.  I said, “maybe next week even?”  Joelle quickly shot that down, “mmm, maybe in a couple or three weeks? Because mommy just came this week and there are some kids whose parents come like all the time.” (inferring that that is seen as undesirable)

“So you like it more spread out, huh?”, I inquired.  Joelle explained:  “Yeah, I mean these kids should have plenty of mommy time when they get home and on the weekends so they don’t need to come to lunch like EVERY week, right??”

Next thing I know when I come to her school I’ll get the “wassup?” upward head tilt instead of a hug

Remember back when we were little and we would settle down after bathtime and watch YouTube videos?  No?  Well I don’t remember how this started but now between bathtime and storytime the kids beg to watch some funny videos that we have shown them.

Here is their current favorite one.

Elise copying Joelle isn’t really all that new.  I still remember the first time it was obvious - when she was not getting her way and said “I want it NOW!” which echoed Joelle’s tantrums earlier in the year.

Gradually over the summer Elise has taken to copying Joelle more and more.   Joelle and Elise got out their dance outfits in anticipation of starting in a few weeks.  Joelle would do a dance move and say “Elise - do THIS” and Elise would copy, no matter what it was.  Even when not asked Elise is looking to see what she should be doing by casting a sideways glance at her sister.  A couple of nights ago Elise saw Joelle brushing her teeth and immediately improved her form to match.

Another aspect of her using us to learn what to say and do is when she repeats what we say.  When Petie and I are frustrated with them but not actually angry we might say something like “Goodness!”.  So Elise and I were at Honey and Grandpa’s pool the other day and I was trying to get her to hang on to the wall (which she could most definitely do if she wanted to…she has done it before).  As is her personality she was obstinately refusing to the point that she would let herself slip underwater.  As I quickly pulled her above water she sputtered and rolled around trying to grab onto something even though I had her snugly in my arms.  When she finally realized she was safe and swept the wet hair from her eyes she announced, “Goodness, Daddy” like “What in the world are you doing? It’s fine when you are holding me, why do you have to make things so difficult?” or as if I had just toppled over a cup of chocolate milk for the second time in a row….

Last night we were going to Berripop and Petie and I were joking about a song - I pretended I didn’t like it and, because it was one of her favorites she jabbed back “ooh, that’s like a slap to the face” and we laughed.  From the backseat we hear a little giggle followed by “haha, slap in the face!”

As her speech is improving, Elise is picking up some pretty funny words.  Today, when I asked her if she was ready to go inside, she said, “‘fraid not.”  I almost started laughing - it was so cute.  Our other favorite word (and when I say, “our,” I mean Joelle, Chris and me) that Elise says is, “bottom.”  She pronounces it “bot man.”  It’s truly a litmus test of whether or not she is in a good mood, too.  If she’s in a good mood, she pronounces it the wrong way because she knows it makes us laugh.  If she’s in a sour mood, she ignores our pleas to say it or replies with a curt ”bottom.”  (she learned to say it correctly very quickly.)

So, this last mention of learning what kind of mood she’s in…  reminds me that she’s started her terrible twos this past week.  Elise has always been a pretty fun, lovely child.  Sure, she can be a little demanding but was always pretty jovial.  Today at the library, she was ticked because some kid was using the computer she likes to use.  She demanded that he get off for her and when he didn’t… well, let’s just say 2 different librarians came to see if there “was a problem.”  (and we only lasted about 5 minutes in the library - I am not one of these moms that makes everyone suffer when my child isn’t behaving.)  She just gets very ornery at times.  It can be funny, in a second child kind of way.

In any case, her cuteness makes up for any trouble.  She mixes her “l” and “w”, so it brings a smile to your face when she says, “sit in your wap” or “I wuv you, too, mommie.”  I also loved how she got a box of cake mix out for me when I said I was making pancakes.

The girls were being pretty cute tonight.  Elise has gotten really good at copying everything Joelle does, step by step, line by line.  The only time Elise stops copying her is when Joelle reads and Elise, if she’s not tired, will stop and listen for a while.

After their “fashion show”, there were clothes strewn about the hallway and I asked Joelle to put one of the items away.  She said she “found it there”.  While I was explaining that she could still put it back, Elise swooped in and ran down the hall with it.  Puzzled, Petie said, “Elise are you putting it away?”  Elise said “yeah” and came back.  She went up to Petie and said “gimme a quarter”.  She had seen us give Joelle a quarter for doing things like helping us clean up, put her clothes away, etc.

So now Elise has a little piggy bank of her own, with a quarter in it. And she loves to go up and down the hall shaking it so we can hear how proud she is of her new treasure.

There were a few funny things that I wanted to write down from our recent trip to Wimberley:

–Now that Elise has mastered some words she thinks she’s a know-it-all:

Petie was reading to our nephew, Joaquin and said “oh look, Joaquin, regalo!”  Elise was walking by and giggled saying “regalo?” like “what is mommy making up now?”.

Nana asked Joaquin, “do you like Elise’s chappeau?” and Elise said “no…that’s a hat”

–When Elise was walking with us in the river she starting singing “stepping over stepping stones, 1, 2, 3…” at first I thought it was funny that she chose a seemingly random song from her music class.  Petie reminded me that the song continues on “the river’s very deep and the river’s very wide….”  So she associated that song with “river” in it to walking in the river.

–One day Joelle was being moody.  She sometimes gets into such a mood that she just gets into a downward spiral and ends up demanding something “NOW” (which is now copied by Elise…) . To get her out of it I said “why don’t we make up a song?” So we went line by line singing it over and over until we memorized each line.  We ended up with the following song and Joelle remembered it well enough to recite it all day long:

“There was once a pear that had a mustache…and a mouth…and it was pink…and it was tiny….and it was crunchy…and it liked to eat horses….and it liked to swim on peacocks….and it got shot out of a cannon…and then it got put on a flag…THE END”.

Whatever works to get her out of a bad mood…

–Elise has been getting sick sometimes on the trips to Wimberley, usually after about 25-40 minutes.  Shortly before the trip Petie was taking Joelle (with Elise in tow) to a birthday party and had accidentally taken her to the wrong movie theater.  This plus inclement weather meant the car trip had taken about 25 minutes.  Joelle was pretty good about it but at one point she asked “mommy, how long have we been in the car?”  When Petie answered “22 minutes”, Joelle said “oh no……Elise is gonna get sick!”

Petie has a saying - “commercials only work on kids and dumb people” and we have definitely seen that they work on kids lately.

A few weeks ago Joelle was watching American Idol and she came in and said “Dad, I heard that Zyrtec works better on allergies so maybe we should use that instead of Claritin”.

When we were getting toothpaste at the store Joelle said she wanted Crest because it was the best.  I asked why and she said “because the commercial said it gets your teeth whiter and cleaner than other toothpastes.”  She was so proud of her informed buying decision.