Pico DiPaolo

With all the amazing mess, strange furniture placement and other changes in our lives with the whole bathroom project, I’m sort of surprised that the girls have kind of ignored most of it.  I think it’s hilarious to watch Elise, sitting in her chair watching Dora, ignoring the various workers coming in and out of the house.

Tonight, I decided that Elise really has some “street smart” baby skills.  1. She can usually imitate actions after seeing it only once.  2. She was able to remove the battery cover off an ornament which allowed me to finally understand why all toys make us screw the battery cover on and off.  3. She knows to suck in her belly when a footie PJ ensemble is being closed up.  4. When she wanted in the chair that Joelle was in, she knew to grab Joelle’s lovey and run.  As expected, Joelle bounded after her and Elise got the chair.  5. She likes to forage for her own food.  She often has the monkey grass berry residue on her shirt, which means she found another berry and ate it.

Tonight, I also got to witness a funny Elise moment.  This was a very rare occasion where Elise was in Joelle’s room when we were kissing Joelle good night.  Elise usually gets tucked in first.  I saw Elise process this development.  She turned and slowly sneaked out of the room.  I was following her and saw her first run to the playroom.  It was as if she was thinking, “I’ve gotta get some more play time in!”  She did an abrupt stop though and turned back to her room saying, “Nigh-Night.  Bear.  Bink.”  She grabbed bear and climbed into bed.  She pulled up her own covers, another street start baby move of hers.

Joelle asks if I want to play with the stuffed nativity set we have.  She is trying to put all of the wise men, shepherds, Joseph, Mary, etc. on the animals that come with the set – sheep, a cat, a dog, etc.

“Why are they riding the animals?” I ask.

Joelle answers, “All the nativity characters need an animal, so they can attack stuff and use them for food. Baby jesus doesn’t need an animal because he can use this (she pulls out the manger) to shoot guns and fireballs.  Baby jesus is a big boy now.”

When Petie walked by and I told her what we were doing (I was stationing a wise man behind the manger to “take cover”) she said, “I bet you almost forgot how to play this type of game”.

What happened to changing clothes on the Barbies to get ready for the ball?

Don’t worry, the next night we were “taking care of babies”.