Pico DiPaolo

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

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!”

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.

A lot is going on with Elise right now.  I took her to the doctor today, thinking her cold had gone into an infection, but he surmises she just caught another virus.  She’s cranky and totally not herself.  She woke up at 4 in the morning, refusing to go back to sleep.  She similarly refused to take her afternoon nap and decided that today was the day to crawl out of her crib for the first time.  Really?  Plus, she can’t utilize her bink because she’s so congested.  We’ve got a hellish cold, we’ve lost the bink and now we’ve lost the crib.  So, I leave her in her room screaming to kinda see what will happen.  Of course, I’ve left bear out of the crib – it’s the only thing we’ve got left! 

After 10 minutes of crying, there was silence.  I’m tempted to leave it, but I have to sneak back in to see what happened.  She’s curled up in a tiny ball by the door, clutching bear.  I scooped up my poor little angel to put her in her big girl bed.  I wonder how long nap will last today?

One year at Trinity – probably Junior or Senior year – we were studying for finals in Wimberley.  It was a great place to get away that was peaceful.  Reading Days at Trinity always seemed to be either loud (people who figured it was two days of vacation…probably business majors) or stressful (people in all the study lounges looking stressed at all hours of the day as they make their last stand in whatever class they are failing).

Wimberley has grown a bit since then, but still isn’t known for its selection of restaurants.  At the time I remember it was DQ, Subway or a couple of sit-down restaurants unless we wanted to go to San Marcos.  So we went to Subway.  “Can I help you?” the person behind the counter asked.  We told him what kind of bread we wanted, standard Subway protocol.  He replied with a straight face, “Oh, we don’t have any bread today”.

“OK…,” we paused.  “So, what do you have?”

“Not much”, he replied.  Not only did he not find it worthwhile to mention the lack of bread before we ordered but he didn’t have much of a back up plan either.  I honestly don’t remember what we ate for lunch that day, I just remember how nonchalantly the guy said he didn’t have bread as if it was the least popular side order on an extensive menu.

I think it all started with my innocent question about Chris’s new pull chain in his closet.  He had to put in a new light fixture because little Monster, who has been taught by Chris to pull the chain to make the light go on and off, pulled too hard one day.  Our house is 40 years old, so we still have pull chains in the closets and those pull chains are old.  The play room closet light fixture has also been replaced because one little friend thought it would be fun to swing from it.  Although it may have been fun, it didn’t last long.

As is true with a lot of things in life, the new light fixture came with a rather cheap little string.  There probably isn’t a big market for this type of fixture, huh?  Anyway, I suggested taking the fan pull off for Chris to use.  Unfortunately, it’s a little short.  I can barely reach it on my tippy, tippy toes.  The good news about that is that I can’t sneak in there any longer to accidentally find gifties and Elise certainly can’t break this one.  The bad news is that Chris does also have to reach high up.  On the right side, it hurts his herniated disc a bit.  On the left side, it hurts his arm that had a tetanus shot.  (He wounded himself on Sunday.)  He made me laugh out loud as he mimicked himself in the morning trying to turn on the light, alternating his reach to find the least painful way to get it on.

He proceeded to ruminate about his morning routine and commented that the one remaining light in the bathroom will definitely go out in the 20 minutes he’s in there one morning.  One of the 5 year cf bulbs went out after a short life of flickering light because I tried to use the dimmer on a non-dimmable bulb.  The other light is emitting a light flicker as well.  That’s why Chris surmises that it will also not make it to its 5 year goal.  We’re not really that lazy, but I think we’re just determined not to waste any energy on the bathroom because we’re remodeling it.  Although it pains our light green bones to do it, (the contractor even said, “the minute you start a remodel it’s environmentally unfriendly,” when Chris asked what environmentally friendly stuff we could install) we’re remodeling our master bathroom. 

Chris finished his story by saying that if the lights go out (all the girls are asleep when he gets ready for work), he’d just jump crazily in front of the window to get the sensor light in the backyard to come on.  He demonstrated for me and I laugh to myself again imagining his insane S.O.S in front of the window for illumination.  I think he might just have to wake me up.  …just this once, unless the light can just hold out….

Chris, Joelle and I were chatting about something over dinner and Joelle as part of her response said, “ok, good chat, anyway….”  Chris and I both immediately looked at each other with knowing smirks.  She is definitely our kid and she is certainly picking up our vocabulary and the way we say things.  Chris and I would totally say something like that, heavily laced with sarcasm and Joelle has picked it up.

In another example of Joelle growing up, we thought she had a grown up response to Charlie, who was visiting on Saturday.  When he was playing the Wii he was complaining that people were talking so he couldn’t pay attention and Joelle turned to him and said, “Charlie, people are gonna talk.”  Indeed, people are going to talk. 

Finally, I was in love with a note that Joelle left me one morning.  We leave notes for Joelle in a little mailbox and she occasionally leaves us one, too.  One morning, I woke up to find one beside me on the bed.  It read, Hi, Mom.  Fun, fun, fun.  Love, Joelle.”  I chuckled with her delightful note and realized that it was pretty much what I write to her each morning.  I mean, I outline exactly what we’ll do each day and to her, it translates as “fun, fun, fun.”  That makes me happy.

Chris will kill me for documenting this sad moment in our parenting history, but I would be remiss to only glorify the good times.  I think we glazed over the poopie incident at PF Chang’s, hoping we would forget.  However, Joelle won’t forget that moment and likes to tell people all about it.  Most recently, she let Melina know we were going to PF Chang’s on Saturday last and that maybe Elise wouldn’t eat anything.  …but maybe she would because last time she had a poopie and that’s why she didn’t eat.  I’ll leave it at that, Joelle’s rendition. 

Anyway, with the bink.  In fairness to us, Elise has been crying again at bedtime and nappie time.  Not heart wrenching tears, but a few upset protests.  She also has had a little separation anxiety with me again.  Just like Nana says, one step forward and two steps back.  This is the price we pay for her new vernacular. 

So, last night she cried when we left her in her crib for the night.  We didn’t think too much of it, but after awhile Chris went in to pat her and say, “night night, it’s ok.”  Her crying persisted.  She had her bink in her mouth and all her bed regalia (blanket, bear, etc.)

Finally, he went back in after half an hour or so.  This time the bink was out of her mouth.  When he reached for it he realized… it was only a stub.  She had bitten through it and was absolutely beside herself with grief.  Imagine, if you will, the women of Troy in that awful play we had to watch in high school.  Tearing their hair and clothes at losing all the men in the city. 

Luckily he noticed and luckily we had another to give her.  She settled down after that for snoozes and woke up in a happy mood this morning.  Chris also found the end to the bink and we didn’t have to worry about her having swallowed it, like we did the bullets.  Oops, did I mention the bullets?  Use your imagination on that one!  I’ve exposed enough of our bad parenting moments for one blog. 

Chris and I have usually kept our blog “clean” of a lot of political chatter.  We generally steer clear of topics that could stir up debates and stick to the funny family stories.  That is why we started the blog – to keep relatives and friends entertained with stories of our girls.  Also, to chronicle their childhood tales for later in life. 

However, how can I skip over the political season without mentioning anything at all?  Chris and I both voted yesterday in the primary.  I believe it’s the first time I’ve done so, but the race is so close between Hillary and Obama.  We felt we should.  It’s not that I don’t like voting.  I actually feel like it is a duty and privilege, my parents raised me correctly, but I do get frustrated not knowing much about the candidates (aside from the presidential race) and I do get a little crestfallen when I always seem to vote for the losing candidate. 

We live in a very republican area, but I generally don’t let that make me shy about letting people know I’ll be voting for Obama this year (or Hillary, if she wins).  I do think though that it certainly won’t change anyone’s mind on who they are voting for.  I’ve found that even getting down to the details with folks and having them realize that they are probably voting for the wrong person, they won’t budge on voting against their party.  However, I liked how eloquently my Mom put it to me last night.  She said, “Petie, don’t tell people who you are voting for or even what party you align yourself with.  Instead, say that you think, ‘it’s time for change.’”  I like that.  I did change.  I’m embarrassed to say that I voted for Bush and not Gore the first go round.  The second time, I didn’t make the same mistake.  Once again, I find myself being hopeful that things will turn out better this time. 

I’m gonna hate having my hopes dashed for another four years.