So sweet

Today I was working at my desk in the family room while E. played.  We were alone together while Dad and A. were out.  She'd found an old doll of hers from last Christmas, a cloth one with a floppy plastic head and an outfit you could wrestle on and off, and she was happily testing the tensile strength of the threads that held its arms on when....well.....the inevitable happened.

I dropped what I was doing when I heard her wail, because you can tell immediately when it's not just an "Ow, I pinched my finger trying to close the lid on my fake jewelry box" but rather an "I'm super-traumatized right now cause my baby doll's arm fell off!"  I hugged her close and told her it would be okay, and she clung to me and sobbed as if her heart was breaking.  And it was. 

Finally she was ready to hear about solutions.  But to add insult to injury, she developed the need for a major diaper change at this point, so while we talked we took care of that business as well.  I explained about my sewing kit, and that Baby's arm could be repaired in less time than it would take Dora to rescue a pygmie marmoset, even with Diego's help.

Looking up at me from her changing pad, E. said, "Thank you."  She said it in her little helium voice, with her toddler-ish pronunciation, but her tone was very mature and serious, like the tone my grandmother took while thanking her beloved daughters for speaking at their beloved father's funeral.  "No seriously - thank you," E. might as well have said.   I wasted no time procuring the sewing kit and getting that arm back to rights.  Times like this I realize how important my job is.

E., Current

To launch this post, I'm starting with either a HUGE complaint about Blogger or a HUGE revelation of my own stupidity.  Please, will someone tell me why I cannot insert text into a post in which I've already inserted the photographs?  Is this a Blogger thing, or am I just hopelessly inept?  Thanks in advance to my readers (both of you) for any feedback.

Here is the text I wanted to include, and I'll put the pics in afterward this time.  Again.

Elena's recent accomplishments:
1.) Did the bunji-jumping thing at the mall for the first and second time.  I didn't let Avery do that until she was 4.  Goes to show you what happens with the second child....what happens to the parents, that is.  We get more realistic, and by more realistic I mean less pathologically overprotective.  Please don't ever tell my mother I said that, though.  It's more ammunition for her constant criticism, which she's completely unaware that she levels at every opportunity.  I didn't write that last sentence out loud, either.
2.) Learned to stick her face in the water in the pool, and then generalized to the ocean.  Repeatedly, on purpose, and solely because it frightened her parents.  Nice.
3.) Cut her own hair.  Finally.  I've been holding my breath waiting for this to happen, in part because it's my observation that every female child does this around the age of 2, and partly because I have a superstition (Avery's fault) that as soon as Elena cut off own hair and I was forced to give her the Dorothy Hamill style, her curls would be gone forever, like her older sister's.  But for good or ill, she has a completely different head of hair than Avery does - thinner, I guess - and the long, chunky strands she cut out before I tackled her and snatched away the Fiskars did not make the world of difference to her look that Avery's incident did.  So apparently I rushed her to the E.R., and by E.R. I mean Sweet-N-Sassy, the local salon for little girly-girls, for nothing.  She looks about the same.  Cute as Hell.  I mean Ever.

The photographic evidence of all this and more is as follows.

Elena on bunji at the mall

We went to the beach in the rain.  Kids don't care.

Playing Rock Band on Wii with cousins in Aunt Kristin's basement.

As Elmo at Children's Museum, Wilmington, Nanny's visit.

Grocery shopping at Children's Museum

Climbing on turtle at the mall

Preschool driver's ed at the mall

Nanny and Me, Wilmington mall circa 8/17/12

I'm here 'cause I did it to myself.

My pretty sparkly cheek heart, reward for making it through hair cut.

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