E., Current

Playing Rock Band on the Wii in Aunt Kristin's basement

As Elmo at the Children's Museum

Grocery shopping at the Children's Museum

At the beach in the rain.  Why not?

The PuddleJumper is a legal life saving device.

At the play-place in the Mall with Nanny

Preschool driver ed.

Me & Nanny

Elena does the bunji-jumping thing at the mall now.

First Day of First Grade

8/22/12 in the CFCI parking lot 8:00am

Questions she's been asking this summer:
1.) How did the world start?
2.) Who was the first person in the world? Or were there lots of first people?
3.) How come I can't imagine forever?


Summer accomplishments:
1.) Hung out with awesome babysitter
2.) Learned every song to every episode of My Little Pony
3.) Taught younger sister how to be an awesome playmate
4.) Went to Jungle Rapids with one of her BFF's
5.) Harvested lots of stuff in the back garden with Dad.  Made veggie care packages for neighbors, own initiative.
6.) Honed swimming/diving/somersaulting skills in the pool
7.) Had a couple of pool play-dates with school mates
8.) Earned and saved money
9.) Enjoyed visit from Uncle Alex, whose gift for her happened to be a new purse to house said money
10.) Helped Dad make beer
11.) Went to PA, had a great time with cousins and killed on the Trail Blazer at Hershey Park
12.) Got a super-cool hair cut

Latest Hits, by E.

"Row, row, row your boat/ Get me down the stream!/ Mewily, mewily, mewily,...[unintelligible] butta....sketty!" followed by hysterical laughter, because the joke is that instead of saying the thing about life being a dream, she's saying life's a bowl of spaghetti.  It's a mash-up of "Row Your Boat" and some song from Dora.  There's maybe a certain philosophical truth to it, too.  Another one: "Knock, knock!" [you say "who's there?"] "Rupping...moooo!  Get it?  Mooo?"  It's her take on the "interrupting cow" joke.  I like the part where she asks you if you get it.

Then there's:
"Spicycle" (bicycle)
"Smustache" (mustache)
"Bace" (her friend Grace)
"Don't pie." (don't cry.  Alternative: "Baby pyin'?")
"I'm really hummy!" (I'm really hungry)
"Ice keem" (tough one to guess)

She has trouble with some words that start with double consonants, as most kids her age do, but Avery never did.  It's delightful, though, seeing the language development the way it typically happens.  It was delightful the other way too, don't get me wrong - there's nothing like a toddler who speaks in full, extremely clear sentences before her peers are even saying "Mommy" to give a parent a swelled head (even though it has very little to do with you).  A friend of ours who's a language buff pointed out that language develops in kids the same way it developed in the human race, so as a language gets older, words shrink and consonants that were formerly separated by a vowel get scrunched together.  Little kids have to develop the physical capacity to say those compacted words.  Interesting.

Questions

"How do fish take a bath? In air?"
"What if someone's name was Cheese Toast?"
"What if it snowed but it was warm snow and we could play in it without coats and gloves?"
"Why are there so many kinds of tomatoes?"
"Do cats have lips?"
"Why are butts funny?"

-Avery

Bellefonte (borough) QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau

Bellefonte (borough) QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau

She's Two!! (Oh, Sh*t)

Recently E. is unstoppable.  In the best and worst way.  A few examples: insisting on helping make dinner every night, knowing where her shoes, socks, and coat all go after we come in the door, fighting tooth-and-nail with Avery over something she's decided is hers, talking in four and five-word sentences, climbing on anything and everything, breaking and entering, burning scrap wood in a bucket out back....okay, kidding about those last two.  But she's a "pistol," as they say.  It's the second-child thing.  They want to do everything the older one does, and they're not as closely supervised.  So it's scissors, scotch tape, toilet paper, tissues, hand lotion, baking soda, oven mits, loose wires, old cell phones, underwear, out-of-season clothes and junk toys from Chick-fil-A....these are the tools of toddlerhood, and they are powerful.