Pico DiPaolo

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.

Elise loves to pick out who everyone is in a book.  She is compelled to understand how all the characters fit into her nice and neat world.  For example, there was a book with a dad teaching a baby to swim.  So, that was her daddy and Lisie.  (She told me by pointing and announcing their names.)  The little girl on the beach was Joelle and the mommie sunbathing was me.  The little boy playing ball with Joelle?  “Joelle’s fwend.” 

I was reading the Berenstein Bear Ghost Walk to Lisie and when I got to a page with monsters and other fiendish Halloween characters, Elise announced, “mommie’s hiding.”  I was a little surprised because usually I can pretty easily pick out who she thinks is mommie in a book.  Sorry, none of these characters looked like me and I couldn’t understand why she said I was hiding.  So, I said, “yeah….,” a bit skeptically.  She picked up on my hesitation and said it again with more umph.  I suddenly realized that she had picked up that a wrapped up monster is a mummy and confused that with mommie!  She thinks a mummy is a mommie hiding!  It was so hilarious and smart of her.

Without counting, I know we’ve written about reading or a derivative of reading in some way a lot.  I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise to me that Elise seems to enjoy books as much as her sister, but it does.  They’re so different in so many ways, but books are a unifying factor.  Our girlies are at a tough age.  They fight a lot, they horde toys (particularly Joelle) and they hit (particularly Elise).  I’m always trying to find ways to bridge the gap and give them an activity together.  In that vein, I realized that I should try to get Joelle to read to Elise more.  At first, Elise did not want to cooperate.  She assumed, with some merit, that Joelle was just trying to take the book.  Joelle’s reaction was to say, “fine,” and stomp away.  I begged her to come back and sit on my other knee.  She did and I held the book.  When Joelle started reading, Elise did a double take and then looked at Joelle in awe.  Elise knows the words to the books because she has them all memorized and she knew that what Joelle was doing was magical.  It was so beautiful to see Elise so proud and in awe of her sister.  These moments are worth the gazillion fights.

I remember reading a children’s story at Thanksgiving about a turkey who wanted the farmer to name him because he’d noted that all the animals on the farm that had a name were never killed.  Wise thoughts from a turkey, I know.  It’s true though and I defy anyone to find a house more loved then our Wimberley house.  It’s had many names over the years, but it has a current set that I hope stick.  The upstairs room above the garage is “Nana’s Attic”, though Chris nicknamed it the “Alice in Wonderland” Room because of the tiny door on one side and the door that floats high on the other side.  It’s not hard to imagine the girls falling in love with that room as they get older.  The other bedroom is Poppy’s Treehouse because of the trees and the gorgeous porch.  I like the treehouse allusion because of all my childhood memories with Sarah and me playing in what she once dubbed her oneric house (I wish I had that essay she wrote!)

This weekend, Elise called what used to be the “carriage house” (Nana and Poppy’s one room garage apartment) the “Bird House.”  Her use of that word was definitely only because of the bird knocker on the outside, but I love that name.  It’s so fitting because it’s smaller and cozier and I like to think of Joelle and Nana hanging in the hammocks looking for birdies.  Joelle jumped in on the naming game and called what used to be the outhouse, the “kid zone.”  I think she likes it.

Thank you, Nana and Poppy, we love what you guys did and can’t wait to have more and more stories.  “God’s Little Acre”, certain to stick with the lovely sign, is very appropriately named.

The other day in the car the topic of Michael Phelps came up - I don’t remember why.  This was her monologue as part of the conversation.  She kind of said it in spurts as she was thinking about it.

“Oh, when I grow up I am not smoking”
“and if I drink it will just be like one glass of wine at book club or something”
“not every day, just like at book club or bunco”

As some of you know our house was a construction zone for a couple of months when we decided to have our master bathroom remodeled.

One of the more pleasant memories was how Elise reacted. Elise had gotten very used to people coming in and out of the house, shouting “HI” as they went back and forth through the house. I guess she had heard us warn her about getting in their path a few times, since after her nap one day she busted out of her room into the living room where they are working and shouted “watch out workies!”

I was reminded of the Katy Perry song this week in retelling stories from the Turtle classroom.  On Wednesday, when I dropped off Lis, I was beaming with pride as Ms. Iva told me how little Lis had distributed all the lunch boxes to the 11 little MDO kids in her class.  Apparently, the teachers line up all the lunch kits on the table while the little ones wait for them to get to the table.  Elise, watching this process since the beginning, decided to bounce up and distribute the lunch kits to the proper kid.  She got them all right.  She’s an expert mimic.  Ms. Iva also mentioned how she has become the best sharer in the class.  Just say the word, “share” or “___’s turn” and she immediately drops the toy.

Then, I go pick her up on Friday and I hear from Amy, having already picked up Lucy, that Elise is apparently in a crabby mood.  Indeed, I pick her up and she won’t give Ms. Iva her kiss good-bye.  I know that’s not a good sign.  Ms. Iva says that Elise has been terrible and has been throwing down anything and everything they give her.  I know that action well.  I particularly love it when she throws down her milk and we get a nice spray of milk on the floor.

Same baby?