Pico DiPaolo

This has been a strange week. Most of the kids are back in school. Joelle isn’t. Her school starts back the Tuesday after labor day. I feel like we live in a ghost town or a hurricane evacuated city. Well, at least the school age children are evacuated. At the MAC, when I picked Joelle up from the kid zone, the ladies asked me why she wasn’t at school. I feel like this outlaw mom who doesn’t believe in school.

Joelle has been particularly antsy to start back to school, I think because of the last minute call from Wilchester saying that a spot was open if she wanted to attend pre-K there.  I went ahead and told Joelle about the call because she’s heard so much about the drama with Wilchester’s registration this year.  (They have 2 pre-k classes with 22 kids.  All spots were saved by parents who had another sibling at the school.  Turns out, 8 decided at the last minute to not utilize this spot they had saved.)  We were called the day school started.  Joelle made sure I called the lady back to say, “no go.”  Even then, I think she was suspicious that I would pull a fast one on her and she’d somehow wind up there.  (Do I do this?)

In keeping with the hurricane evacuation theme, I think the best line Chris had was, “yeah, no, Joelle isn’t going to Wilchester the day after school started.  She’d feel like a hurricane katrina evacuee.  Ok, class, this is Joelle, she’s a new student…” What a way to start school!  I know kids are adaptable, but what an unfair deal.  Everyone knows I love Spring Branch, so I can’t end without saying that she did have another option in Spring Branch.  They have an entire school dedicated to pre-K that she could have gone to without question.  They even split the classes by the elementary that they are zoned to.  I just didn’t want Joelle hopping from MDUMC to Wildcat Way to Wilchester.  (She’s already moved once from Children of the Woodlands.)

After our orientation last night at MDUMC, my heart is at peace.  She is in the right place for our family.  It’s funny that everyone gets so passionate about where their kids go to pre-K.  (I’m embarrassed to admit that I can now include myself in those ranks).  Obviously, there is no one right answer.  Otherwise, wouldn’t there only be one option?

Joelle has a term for tangy food.  “oooh, it’s sprite.”  She heard Nana and I discussing how she likes to call tangy things “sprite.”  She quickly modified her terminology after hearing us comment on it and now calls it tangy, like us. 

Anyway, Elise continues her quest to try and enjoy every possible morsel she can get into her mouth.  She had some sprite jello tonight (Joelle insisted everyone try some and Nana said it tasted like, “lemon meringue pie.”)  When I gave Elise her first bite, she had her concerned brow creased look.  Her second bite actually caused her tiny little body to shudder (I assume from the sour flavor).  Her third, fourth… twentieth bite was fast and furious.  I think she had her first sugar high on the way home – it sounded like she was giggling.

Chris has always had a talent to make me laugh.  I adore getting his short one-liner emails that give me a smile.  In case anyone else has any doubts about the source of humor in our family, here are some recent snippets from e-mails to each other:

Chris forwarded me a typical e-mail from the constable outlining crime going on in the area.  I wrote:  “yikes. crime is back. we seemed to have a lull for awhile – the rain.”  He wrote back, “that was like a haiku:

yikes. crime is now back
we had a lull for a while
due to the big rain”

Yesterday, I dragged Chris out to lunch with us because I had an extra kid with me.  Joelle’s little friend, Claire, was with because they are in art camp this week and Claire’s mom and I are carpooling.  Truthfully, I did want help (try three kids at McDonald’s rush hour), but I also thought he might enjoy seeing Jojo with her bud.  So, I wrote this e-mail in the afternoon, “Thanks for joining us for lunch, baby.  I hope you got a little kick out of seeing Joelle communicate with her bud.  I think it’s a whole new realm when you start seeing these little people interact.”  Chris wrote, “Yeah, it was fun to see.  I’m almost always available for a “surprise” lunch.  Elise didn’t seem all that shocked to see me.”  I said, “I like that Elise is growing up with lots of folks twirling about her all the time.”  Chris said, “It seems like lots of folks twirling about her, it’s really just Joelle on a sugar high.”

I’m so grateful Chris has this knack for keeping it light.  We’re gonna need that talent with a house full of all these girls!

It’s so frustrating.   Three weeks ago, I was jubilant about losing 7 pounds.  I felt great and loved it when people asked if I’d lost weight.  Fast forward to today, I feel awful.  I’m the exact same weight that I was three weeks ago, but the effect has worn off.  Losing weight is addictive.  I want another hit.  So far, the wanting to lose more weight hasn’t overcome the desire to eat. 

Saw this when we we were looking at restaurants in the park for our next Disney trip:

“ Make a culinary discovery of your own right in the bustling heart of Innoventions. Choose from cheeseburgers, deli-style sandwiches and scrumptious salads. Spice things up at our fixin’s bar.”

Ooh – discover a cheeseburger!

Learning to read is just so cool. I’m in awe of how all the pieces are clicking in Joelle’s head. It’s also teaching us that we can no longer spell to “say” things to each other without Joelle knowing what we are saying. We were invited to a party at Monkey Bizness and it happens to be the site of a tragic incident where a local mom got a burn from a slide and later died from a staph infection. When we got the invite, I said to Chris, “oh, this is where the Wilchester mom D-I-E-D.” Joelle immediately picked up on the spelling and tried to decipher the code. Quickly, I laughed and said the first phrase that started with “D” and sounded like “dee-eye-ee-dee”. Oddly, it was “duty free.” We all laughed… Note to self, come up with something funny to just change the subject! It worked.

Not to make light, of course, of the mommie who passed away. I must admit that I was in a bit of a funk that day after reading that e-mail with the news of her tragedy. What if it had been me? I was clearly trying to protect my baby from this story when I conjured up “duty free.”

Joelle will play with ANYTHING. It’s magical and sweet. I love her blossoming imagination (and that she will now play by herself). She was eating string cheese one night for dinner and then suddenly started playing with the last three pieces of string cheese. It was a mommie, a daddy and a baby. In different voices, I heard her orchestrate dialogue from the remaining two cheese pieces, “Mommy’s gone.” “I ATE her.”

In another unrelated food incident, I asked Joelle if she had eaten Elise’s puffs that were on my placemat. She said, “why do you ask?” I said, “Well, there were puffs here and now they are gone. just wondering.” She said, “I just took the puffs and ran. I wasn’t sure if I could have them.”

Joelle has always asked a lot of questions. We went through the why phase and all the other silly questions, but lately these questions have taken an interesting spin. They are often thoughtful and sometimes inspiring.

She asked Nana, “Does God swim?” I’d love to see other responses to this question because Chris, Nana and I all had a unique response. I think Chris said, “yes, God knows everything.” I know that I said, “Well, God is in all of us and so he is swimming if we are.” She asked Poppy one of her thoughtful questions, “why does that street sign say, ‘Gessner AND Memorial?’” Sometimes the answers are difficult to explain! It’s actually inspired me to want to take a bible study this fall. I’m finding my theology is rusty!

Admittedly, some of her questions and responses can also be a tad embarrassing. She’s just starting to really notice all the differences in people. For example, in just one trip to Whole Foods, she asked about three different people. On the way there, a man was standing on the side of the road. “Momma, is he African?” “Yes, he is African American.” In the store, a woman wearing on interesting array of feathers festooned all over her head offered for us to go over for story time. As she walked away, Joelle said, “she’s psycho!” Everyone in line chuckled under their breath. Without skipping a beat or taking a breath from the last comment, she said, “is that a girl or a boy (about the woman behind us)?” I said, “She is a woman.” Joelle said, “How do you know?” “Well, she has a scarf on her head and so she is likely Muslim and her faith tells her to wear it. Only women wear them.”

Oi, sometimes you wish there was an off switch, but then, you might miss some of the cool questions like, “Does God swim?”

Joelle and I were snackin’ before her big pizza party tonight.  We sat down in front of the tv.  Joelle, with her plate of nicely cut apples (no peels!) and mommie with the rinds from Joelle’s perfectly cut apples.  Elise, sitting in her swing by the tv, lurched forward to look at Joelle’s plate.  She then looked over at my plate, looked back at Joelle’s plate and then my plate again.  She looked up at me and belted out a huge wail of complaint.  Where is my food!?  It was just so hilarious to watch her little eyes dart back and forth between our stashes of food.  I don’t always know what she’s upset about, but in this case, it was quite obvious. 

This past Saturday afternoon Petie and I took Joelle and Elise to the neighborhood pool – even though it was sprinkling.  The process begins – each of us has to change and get our suit on.  Make sure we have pool toys for Joelle.  “Don’t forget the float for Elise – maybe she’s big enough now. ” “Sunglasses?”  “You have keys? I need to lock the door.”

We get out at the pool and everyone has their hands full of “stuff”.  Put sunscreen on all four of us (just in case).  Finally, time to get in. About ten minutes later it thunders.  Adults get out of the pool.  Adults get back in the pool to pull out the kids who are asking why they have to get out of the pool.

After getting out (around 3:30) Joelle said “I’m hungry”. I figured she just wanted some junk from the snack bar. So I said “well, by the time we all get home, change, decide where to eat, drive there, etc. it will probably be close to 5:00. That’s about when we usually eat dinner anyway. (Elise usually goes to sleep between 6:30 and 6:45 at this point.)

I propose going to Memorial Grill, a restaurant we have never been to that is less than a 5 minute drive away from our house. We pull up into the parking lot and it is pretty empty….not a great sign for a restaurant on the weekend. I glance at my watch and it’s 4:20. Petie agrees that is probably a record. I guess the two other people in the restaurant were finishing up a late lunch or something.

So, at around 5:10 we are walking out of the restaurant after eating dinner (including dessert!) and remarking how early it was to have already eaten. When we left the restaurant no one else was there yet. As we are getting in the car another car slowly pulls up and parks. An elderly man and woman shuffle into the restaurant. We can’t help but crack up–we finished before the “early birds” even arrived!

As an aside anyone on the west side of Houston should give Memorial Grill a try. Although Joelle, “expert reader” now, corrects me. “It’s not Memorial Grill, daddy. It’s THE Memorial Grill.”