Merry Christmas

Warning: Do Not Attempt

Lessons Learned: Do not attempt to do last minute Christmas present wrapping in the presence of a toddler (even gifts for adults that she couldn't be less interested in). She does not understand the concept of wrapping and will constantly try to tear the paper, stand on the paper, grab the roll of paper and run around the house with it, or rapidly unroll it until it is ripped, wrinkled and unusable. Next year, perhaps we should think about getting her some rolls of wrapping paper for Christmas. I never realized how entertaining it could be. She is more interested in this than my cat was.

The Joy of Christmas (Trees)

Marty's biggest regret about marrying me is that I am allergic to pine trees, thus we are unable to have a "real" Christmas tree in the house (he is a wonderful husband for sacrificing his life-long Rockwellian dream of having a real tree so that I enjoy the holidays hive-free. I love you, Marty!). However, whether its a real pine tree or an artificial one, any kind of Christmas tree is proving to be a source of endless entertainment for our one and a half year old and, in turn, for us.

First of all, decorating a Christmas tree with a toddler is an interesting process all in itself. Elise loved pulling the decorations out of their boxes, putting the decorations on the floor under the tree (she quickly gave up trying to put them on the tree), and pulling the decorations off the branches once Marty or I put them on. The whole process was hilarious. "I can see why it would be confusing, Ellie, but those are not the kind of balls you throw." She only broke two ornaments, which, considering the craziness that surrounded this activity, was pretty good. And really, it's for just this kind of reason that crazy clue was invented.

And the fun doesn't stop once the tree is up and decorated! (Although I am finding it less and less fun to remind her to leave the ornaments ON the tree, please - she loves pulling them off! She is worse than a cat!) Ellie's new favorite games also revolve around the Christmas tree. The lights on our Christmas tree are on a switch that you just have to press a button to turn them on/off. Ellie quickly figured out how to do this, and she could probably stay occupied turning the tree lights on and off for hours. She presses the button to turn the lights off, gasps, and cries "Oh no!", then presses the button to turn the lights on, beams, and cheers "Alright!" This game doesn't get old for her or for us. It has us in stitches every time.

The other Christmas tree game is playing peek-a-boo behind the tree. She stands behind the tree, very still and quiet, and then sticks her head around the corner of the tree and says "peek-hue" which is just too adorable for words, especially when she doesn't knock the ornaments off in the process. This game also does not get old, and has provided hours of entertainment. Adding to all of her Christmas delight, is a 2 foot Christmas Winnie the Pooh Bear, courtesy of my cousin Colin (who I think is technically Ellie's first cousin, once removed) that is holding a little lantern and a pot of honey and he rocks back and forth in a Christmas Joy kind of way. Ellie loves Christmas Pooh so much, that she will actually stop in the middle of Peek a Boo or Lights On and Off to run over and give Pooh a quick hug and kiss.

Last year, I got excited about Christmas for the first time in decades because having a child breathed new found life into the holiday for me. Even though she had no clue it was happening, it was her first Christmas so it was special and wonderful to see it all through her eyes. This year, she again has no clue that it's happening, but the fact that she can delight for hours over something as simple as a Christmas tree, reminds me that, to quote my cousin Sarah, this really can be the most wonderful time of the year (corny but true!). And we have many, many fun-filled Christmas adventures to come.

Ew

For a few weeks now, Elise has been saying “Ew!” and pointing at her diaper when it is dirty. When she was younger, she just cried when her diaper was dirty (and it was usually a process to figure out why she was crying in the first place because there were lots of frustrations that she cried about), but now that she’s getting the hang of this talking thing, she can much more eloquently express herself. Ew is right! But recently she has been saying “ew” and pointing to her diaper, and when I go to change it, I realize that the diaper is clean. Then a few minutes later, it’s dirty. Hmmm. I think this kid has figured out when she has to go to the potty. From what I hear about potty training, that’s half the battle. And lucky for me, she hates having a dirty diaper, so I imagine that potty training will be fairly easy with her (and yes, I know I just cursed us to have a child who is still not potty trained by age 8).

Elise developed a mild fascination with the potty a few months ago, I think through a combination of several kids at her daycare potty training and me flushing her poop in the toilet at home. Using the potty is something that we have certainly not discouraged, but have not actively encouraged either. She’s still young for actual potty training, but as long as she is showing an interest, we thought why not make the resources available, should she choose to use them. So, I bought a little Elmo Potty seat and put it in the bathroom and said not a peep about it.


There have been a few occasions that she goes into the bathroom and asks to sit on her Elmo potty (but I think this has more to do with her love of Elmo than having to use the potty). I indulge this request each time, but it is always a lot more work than it is worth. The time it takes to remove her shoes, pants and diaper is always significantly longer than the amount of time she actually sits on the potty (which is usually about 5-10 seconds) and she never actually goes.




Last week, though, the weirdest thing happened. We were in the living room playing, when she got up and ran into the bathroom. She put the Elmo potty seat on top of the toilet and started pointing to her diaper saying “ew”. So, I took everything off and plopped her on the toilet. And then…she actually peed! She looked very proud of herself, and I must admit, I never thought I could be so excited to see urine. We are certainly not packing away the diapers or starting potty training because of this latest development, but we are pretty excited about it nonetheless. It was probably just a fluke thing, but the fact that it even happened blows my mind. When did she become such a big girl?

Aye, Aye!

As one that has always had a particular affinity to the word 'no', you can safely say that Elise has never been a yes child- in spirit or speech. In fact, I can probably count the number of times she's actually uttered the word yes in her entire lifetime on one hand, though it would take all of my fingers and toes to count the times she's said "no" in last half hour alone.

However, perhaps as a sneaky way to avoid getting a reputation for being agreeable, Elise has randomly started saying "aye" in affirmation where a "yes" would clearly suffice. Example:

Mommy: "Elise, would you like to read this book?"

Elise: "Aye!"

It's as though her deep-rooted Irish/English heritage has subconsciously kicked in or she has been secretly frolicking with pirates (is that your influence, Owstons?!). I have absolutely no idea where this new development could have possibly come from, as all of the people in her limited social circle (and on Sesame Street) say 'yes', plain and simple. Maybe she thinks that yes is boring and is trying to bring Middle English back. Well, I suppose that if this is the way she chooses to rebel, of all things, I can deal with it.

Owie!

The worst injury Elise ever had happened a few months ago when she was walking around outside and randomly tripped on the sidewalk. She began crying, and I picked her up and started my “you’re fine, it’s ok” mantra, lazily checking her knees and hands for (the inevitable) scrapes to add to all the others (She does not pay a lot of attention to what she is doing so she falls and trips and runs into things often. She always has a bump, bruise or scrape of some sort). But when she turned her face to me, I noticed that blood was actually dripping out of the sides of her mouth. It was terrifying. Blood was everywhere. We scrambled in the house and began poking around to try to figure out what exactly was bleeding. When we couldn’t figure out the root of it (or get it to stop), we dragged our neighbor, who is a Nurse Practitioner, over to inspect it and make sure that Ellie was not going to bleed to death.

Elise playing the piano with her second cousin, Cassin, 8.

Turned out that she must have bitten her tongue far back in her mouth when she fell – perhaps she’d been feeling her new tooth with her tongue when she tripped – and as I have mentioned before, the girl is a Bleeder. She had blood oozing out of her month for a good half hour before it finally let up. Our neighbor assured us that she was not in danger of bleeding to death. But it really was quite a scare. There's nothing like thick red blood pouring from your child’s mouth to freak a parent out.

Last weekend, though, we added another traumatic injury to her short list. She was coming down a slide at the playground when she accidentally turned her body so that her hip and foot got caught diagonally across the slide. This caused her to come to a screeching halt on the slide and to wail in pain. I picked her up, realizing it must have hurt, and coddled her for a few minutes trying to calm her down. When the crying nearly subsided, I tried to encourage her to get back on the jungle gym. I put her down, and she took one step and her leg completely gave out on her. She wailed. We went through the process again, and when she’d calmed down, I set her back down. But she could not put any pressure on her leg without crumbling over. Every time she tried to put her foot down, she cried “OOOOOwwwwwwieeee!”
Elise giving hugs to Shoshana's daughter, Lauren, 8 months

Of course, being the Worrier that I am, I freaked out and announced that we needed to go to the hospital immediately. This did not seem like a rash decision to me, as my 16 month old baby couldn’t put any pressure on her leg. But both Marty and my friend Christy basically told me I needed to relax and give it more than 30 seconds before running to the ER. She probably just twisted something. So I plopped her down and began frantically inspecting her ankle, knee and hip, looking for bruising or swelling. There was none. This was, of course, a good sign, but she still couldn’t put pressure on her leg so I continued to panic.

We drove back to Christy’s house, hoping that some time off of her leg would help it a little and that everything would be better by the time we got home. It wasn’t. At first, things were just as bad as they were at the playground, but after a little while she was standing and squatting without a problem, though she still couldn’t walk. A while later, she began walking a little, but couldn’t run without her leg giving out on her and crying “owie.” By the next day, she was running around like a maniac again without any problems at all. We never really did figure out what exactly happened. It was hard to tell if it was her hip, knee, foot, back or entire left side of her body that was actually injured, but Marty seems to think that she hyper-extended her knee.

I hate seeing my child in pain. That, on top of the fact that I am the type of person that worries and panics about pretty much everything, made for a very rough 24 hours. I don’t do it on purpose and I can't control it. I really wish I could see my child limping and think, “she just needs some time to rest and it will be better” instead of “she will be crippled for life,” but like it or not, that’s just who I am. I know that one day there will be worse injuries. I know that there is a good possibility that she could break bones or need stitches one day. I know that kids get hurt and that there is nothing I can really do besides keeping her out of obviously dangerous situations. But that doesn’t mean that I am going to freak out any less if and when those time come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For the Meredith (Wolfe/Todd/Bittner) Clan: we may not be celebrating Thanksgiving with you, but we are already gearing up for Christmas. Happy Holidays!

The Toddler Handbook

When a friend of mine recently commented that I gave her the same advice on a particular situation as her mother gave her, I joked that when you become a mother, you are given a handbook with all the textbook mom advice. While there may be no Mom Advice Handbook (as much as I wish something like that did exist), I am starting to wonder if there is a Toddler Handbook that is passed out to children once they reach a certain age. Or maybe toddlers just sit around at daycare talking in what seems like gibberish to us, but they are actually doling out tricks of the trade, a la Look Who's Talking.

The most interesting development in Toddlerdom is Ellie's keen procrastination skills. See, once children realize that they are missing out on the fun stuff (packing tomorrow's lunch and watching Grey's Anatomy) after they go to bed, you begin the epic "But I don't want to go to bed" battle that probably lasts until they are in high school. Of course, Elise can't quite verbalize her desire to stay up a little longer yet, so she has begun to take the much craftier approach: thirst. Yes, it seems that every night right before it's time for bed Ellie gets struck with a sudden and dramatic urge to quench her limitless thirst. As a parent, you feel obligated to give her some water, because really even prisoners get that right. So, we hand her a sippy cup and she slowly raises it to her lips and takes the tiniest of sips before pulling back and making a comment about Elmo or pointing out the elephant on the blanket. "Yes, yes, that is an elephant. Are you all done with the water?" we ask impatiently (as there are lots of lunch items to get in order) It's always a very quick "No!" and sippy cup immediately goes back into her mouth for a lingering slow motion drinking session that probably yields less than a mouth full of water. Seriously, how does a 16 month old know to do this? I thought that those were pure 3 year old tactics. I think she's been hanging out on the playground with an older crowd. Or just reading up in the Toddler Handbook.

Another bizarre Toddler phenomenon that Ellie has recently picked up is adding "ie" to everything. Why do toddlers do that anyway? I guess once the novelty of talking starts to wear off on the parents, the toddler feels the need to try to cute it up again or something. To toddlers, suddenly doll becomes dolly, horse becomes horsey and so on. Among other things, Ellie has taken to saying "upie" instead of "up", "Opie" instead of "Opa" (her grandfathers) and my personal favorite "uh-ohie" instead of "uh-oh." Sure, it's sort of cute now, but I hope she outgrows it at the appropriate developmental time. There is a very fine line between cute toddler "ie" and annoying baby-like kid "ie".

The final classic toddlerism that Elise has picked up are the tantrums. It's like they watch video showing the detailed play-by-play: This is how you should scream when you don't get your way. This is how you should kick your legs once you have fallen to the ground stop-drop-and-roll style when they try to make you walk somewhere you don't want to go. This is how you should hit inanimate objects when you're frustrated or hear the word "no." Urgh. It may be textbook, but no one in all these years has figured out how to prevent it from happening. I am hoping that she goes ahead and gets it all out so she can reach her tantrum peak early. That way we can have patience and bliss for the remaining toddler years. Yeah, right!

I will be on the look out for that Mom Advice Book. Maybe there are some good tips in there.

He Who Shan't Be Named

Ok, I know it probably seems like I throw the term “obsessed” around fairly loosely but I am not really exaggerating when I say that Ellie gets obsessed with things. Her obsession with dogs and buses and babies, as I have reported in the past, are all completely legitimate and I am not confusing “obsessed” with “really likes.” Or at least I thought that was the case until a few weeks ago week when we really learned about what it means to be obsessed.

Yes, Ellie has an obsession, a real obsession, and it is completely out of control. It runs deeper than anything we could have imagined and her love of dogs, buses and babies pales in comparison to her new fixation. We refer to him as “our little red friend” or “he who shan’t be named” (because we have to speak in code so as not to arouse an all out frenzy) but she simply refers to him as ELMO. And she refers to him a lot. As I said, she is obsessed.

It started with a book we have that I mentioned before called Hide & Seek that features Elmo and Grover hiding ‘Where’s Waldo’ style (thanks a lot Aaron and Kate!). She loves this book so much that she would sit there and flip through its six pages over and over again until the end of time if we let her. This is amazing in itself considering that she won’t sit still to do anything else for more than 5 seconds. As soon as we get to the end of the book, she says “more?” and back to the beginning we go. On every page she points out “ELMO!” (or sometimes "Hiding!") with equal enthusiasm as though it was the first time she ever noticed him hiding behind that painting. On several occasions, we have actually resorted to hiding the book or elaborate trickery to get her to stop reading it. It’s not that we’re not thrilled that she wants to read, of course, it’s just that the book has six pages. Unfortunately we do not share the same unbridled enthusiasm for finding Elmo in the same six places again and again (at this point it could be done with closed eyes in the next room) It gets old.

Elmo is not just in this book. As it turns out, Elmo is everywhere. You seriously can’t hide from him, even if you wanted to. He’s like this omnipresent creepy little red stalker. We’re walking down the street…she points out that there’s Elmo on the poster in the bus shelter. In the grocery store…look it’s Elmo on a balloon. At daycare…Elmo on that kids lunch box. In our cabinet...there’s Elmo on that box of crackers. Oh look, there’s Elmo right on her diaper. Of course Marty and I never notice. Ellie will scream “ELMO” in whatever setting we are in and we will spend the next minute trying to figure out if she’s hallucinating or if there is actually an Elmo somewhere that she’s pointing out to us. And there’s always an Elmo. That book has made her VERY efficient at finding him, even in the most hidden and remote places.

But the obsession reached new and terrifying heights last week. We put Ellie to bed, as usual, after reading the (six paged) Elmo book for 20 minutes. About 15 minutes after we put her down, she started hysterically crying in bloodcurdling screams. This is not typical behavior in the least. She usually goes to sleep with not much more than a whine or two every night. So, naturally, the hysteria was worrisome and I went into her room right away. She must have fallen out of her crib or gotten her leg mangled in the bars or something, right? Nope, she was standing in her crib looking completely fine, so I quickly picked her up and started inspecting her body for open wounds or blood. No blood, no wounds. She looked at me with this sad devastated little face and sobbed through her tear-streaked face “ELMO!” Seriously. That’s why she was crying hysterically. She missed Elmo. Seriously. Now if that’s not obsession I don’t know what is.

P.S. Yes, we caved (well, her Oma and Opa did) and got her an Elmo doll. I know, I know, we're just enabling her obsession, but really what choice did we have? She doesn't wake up screaming anymore, that's for sure. And you should see how much she loves this thing. Urgh.

Pickiest. Eater. Ever.

Elise has officially become the pickiest eater on the planet. See below the complete list of things that she will eat (and keep in mind that she cannot eat anything with dairy or soy because of her allergies):

• Cut Green beans, no salt added canned only (no frozen, fresh, French style, etc)
• Frozen peas – must be made fresh, will not eat if refrigerated
• Frozen carrots – but only the little square kind that come in peas n’ carrots mixture; will not eat fresh or canned carrots, or frozen carrots that you cut into squares. This makes the list, but she will not eat more than 5 or 6
• Pears – fresh or jarred. Loves.
• Peaches – fresh or jarred, though starting to eat less and less. Might be headed off the list
• Apple – usually only if you are eating it
• Whole wheat toast (I can find one brand that doesn’t have soy protein or milk)
• Whole wheat bagel (ditto about the soy and milk. Will also eat cinnamon raisin bagel if I am eating it but not if it’s hers)
• Waffles (same soy issue. Eggo recently changed their Nutrigrain waffle recipe from dairy and soy free to include both milk and soy. Now we have to buy the very expensive organic kind)
• Pancakes, plain only (will not eat apple pancakes, although she will eat apples and pancakes separately just fine. Must cook from scratch because mixtures contain dairy)
• Pasta – freshly cooked only; will not eat if refrigerated
• Sausage – only BJ’s brand plain sausage; will not even pretend to make any exceptions to this rule. But her love for BJ’s sausage is overwhelming. She would eat 4 at a time if we let her. This is particularly odd because she hates and refuses every other type of meat ever.
• Fried egg – I am putting this on the list to be generous because she actually ate it for the first time today. It is very likely that she will never again eat an egg, but I am feeling optimistic from our experience this morning.
• Cheerios – by the fistful. Will never, ever turn down the opportunity to eat. By far her favorite food
• Honey graham sticks (only kind of cracker on the planet that does not contain soy)
• Gerber sweet potato puffs (only flavor that does not contain soy)

I am not leaving things off this list. It is completely complete. This is the ENTIRE breadth of what our child will eat. At first glance, you may say to yourself "16 things! That's a lot!" but remember that she eats three meals a day, as well as 2-3 snacks. It's impossible to keep an even remotely balanced and healthy diet that doesn't bore her (she gets bored easily) with 16 food items to choose from (especially when there are minimal veggies and fruits). Also keep in mind that she is constantly deleting things off of her list as well. Recently taken off the list (probably because she got sick of it because her repertoire is so small) – and by taken off the list I mean that she used to love but now screams “NOOO!” like a crazy person if you put said food item within 30 feet of her mouth: bananas, cantaloupe, honeydew, grapes, mandarin oranges, sweet potatoes. They're dropping like flies!

Never even on the list: every other food imaginable.

Bonus (One Up) Halloween Picture Extravaganza

This one's for you, Louie...



























Ellie with neighbor "monkey" Myles

I Am Toddler, Hear Me Roar

My friend Christy and I were in Old Navy a few weeks ago when we came across an adorable children’s lion costume that was ½ priced. Not only am I a sucker for a bargain, but when you ask Ellie what a lion says, she says “roar” with her nose crinkled and eyebrows raised and it might be the cutest thing ever. It was meant to be. Ellie would be a lion for Halloween.

When we got home, we thought we’d try it on her so that Christy could see her in the costume since she wouldn’t see Ellie on Halloween. Well it turns out that my daughter is terrified of lions. Or maybe its just bargain priced lion costumes from Old Navy that scare her. Whatever it was, Ellie screamed while we were putting it on her and was anxiously trying to tear it off of her body the whole time she was wearing it. This did not bode well for a fun filled Halloween.

Not one to easily accept defeat, we devised a plan to get her used to it. We laid the costume out on the couch, in plain view, for the weeks preceding Halloween. That way, she could get used to seeing it and realize that it wasn’t, in fact, scary. Every time we passed the couch, we encouraged her to pet the cute lion and before bed we gave it kisses. I must say, this was a brilliant plan. And she did warm up to it. But when we tried to put it on her on Wednesday, she freaked out again. She wanted nothing to do with wearing that lion. (Maybe this has something to do with the fact that she is a self-imposed vegan. Perhaps it’s not that she doesn’t like eating meat, but more that she is making a political statement about the treatment of animals that also carries over into her clothing choices. Next year she will most certainly be dressed as a vegetable).

We finally got the costume on, through protests and tears (and at this point I am feeling very guilty for forcing my child to dress in a ridiculous outfit that she clearly despises for my own amusement, but sometimes you have to wield your power as parent and dresser). We dragged her outside so that hopefully she would get distracted enough by the other kids in costumes to forget that she was wearing this bizarre lion costume that she hated so much. This plan actually worked a little better than “Operation: Stop Being Scared of Lion”. In fact, she ran around the porch for a while laughing and having a grand ol’ time in her lion suit. Seeing as how she relaxed a little bit, we decided to take her for a walk around the block to show off her adorableness but to skip the trick or treating because she’s too young for candy and we don’t have enough self control not to eat the candy ourselves. She loved seeing the other kids in costumes and thought it was fun that so many other children were outside.

About halfway through the walk around the block she remembered that she hated the costume and took the top part off. She left the cute little lion feet on though, and that was cute in itself. It ended up being a fairly successful Halloween, but I will take the lessons learned from this experience to make sure that she is not afraid of her costume next year. No matter how irresistible the bargain.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

I missed a week of Ellie's life this week. I know, I know, poor Marty. I have friends who have missed many whole weeks or months of their children's lives and I have nothing but respect and admiration for them, because there is no way on Earth that I would do this again. Even though I know I will. See my problem is that Ellie is on the verge. On the verge of what you ask? She's simply on the verge of toddlerdom. So for those of you that have either never experienced toddlerdom or have blissfully forgotten, allow me to provide this short definition.

Toddlerdom: A fictional, although all too believable location, rooted in reality, where your small cherubic, allow me to stress angelic infant, accelerates at breakneck speeds towards childhood with tantrums and whining leaving behind all traces of the cherub and instead replacing it with a toddler...warts and all. Did I mention the whining and the tantrums and diaper rash?

What's so great about all that, you ask? It's the acceleration. I was looking at some old (relative term) pictures of Elise the other day and I was amazed at how different she looks. With each passing week she looks more and more like a little girl, more like her mom and less like the perfect little cherub born almost 16 months ago. She is gaining new skills and abilities every single moment - literally perfecting new words and activities in a day. But the pictures are the key for me.

While I was away this week, Elise would look at two books with her mommy - books that Meredith made for Elise and I for Christmas and Father's Day. They are pictures of the two of us with captions. Throughout the book, Meredith would ask who is this? Elise would respond, 'baby' and 'daddy'. Do you know how cool it is that my daughter not only recognizes me, but knows me?!? Meredith would hold her up to the phone and she would say, 'Hi Daddy!' Has your heart ever jumped out of your chest and flown 2000 miles in an instant? At first it's cool. Then it aches. See, the problem is that the aching didn't stop. For three days, it just ached.

I used to like traveling alone. I used to love traveling. I used to think that people who didn't like traveling alone had no adventure in them. Now, I have anchors. Anchors that keep me home even when I'm away. I didn't realize that having an anchor doesn't weigh you down, it doesn't tie you down, it just makes you aware of where home is and makes it hard to leave. I was in San Antonio this week and the only place I wanted to be was in the port of Philadelphia. My port. I travel with pictures so that I can not only recognize my anchors, but I know them and can be with them everyday. Even with the whining (which Elise has taken to an art form) the only place I want to be is Toddlerdom in Philadelphia.

Say My Name

I am not sure whether it's considered a developmental milestone or not, but Marty and I think it's the most exciting to happen since she learned to walk: Ellie can say her name! Well, it sounds more like "Eh-wee" than Ellie but the point is there. L's are hard to say. In fact, just this past week it's like something has clicked in her brain with the whole speaking thing and she's suddenly saying a lot more.

She's saying "mommy" very, very clearly. She's been saying daddy for quite a while now, but she always called me Mama until this week. Trouble is though, now that she's got the hang of "Mommy" she wants to use it indiscriminately. She calls me Mommy, but also uses it as a term of endearment for her father and her grandparents (and sometimes our neighbors and complete strangers). Not really sure what that's all about but for now it's sort of cute and hopefully it will pass so she won't go around calling every stranger that walks by "mommy " until she's 7, because that would be potentially embarrassing. She has also begun filling "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" in for words that used to be in her vocabulary like "up" and "down" and "out". I am beginning to understand why people say that your child learning to speak is a mixed blessing.

Additionally this week, she busted out with "Myles" (our neighbor's child), "empty", "Elmo", "Abby", "Grover", "more", "back" and the cutest one: "thank you" (She says "Tank too" when you hand her something, or if she hands something to you. It's really adorable.) It's surprising that so much of her vocabulary consists of Sesame Street characters, especially since she gets about 30 minutes of exposure to the show a week (and had never even seen it at all until about 3 weeks ago) and only has one Sesame Street book, but I guess there's a reason that they are such popular children's characters. They know what children love and seriously deliver! I think it's hilarious that she will point out Elmo and Grover again and again in her "Hide & Seek, Near and Far" book (sort of like Where's Waldo) but you ask her "where's the pig" in the animal book and she completely ignores you, as if to say "The pig is the only thing on the page, Mommy, I will not condescend to answer your ridiculous question". She knows what a pig is but it's not as challenging as finding the allusive Elmo or Grover in the maze of craziness in Tibet, and I guess my girl likes a challenge.

Also for a few weeks now, she has been mildly obsessed with babies. She points to every child (in person or in a magazine or picture or diaper box) she sees under the age of three and screams "BABY!" like it's the coolest thing that ever happened to have stumbled upon a baby (even though there happens to be an abundance of children in places we go, like the playground, and we have pictures of babies all over the place so she is screaming BABY about every four seconds). I guess she doesn't realize that half of the kids she's calling baby are probably older than her, but whatever. In fairness, at least she refers to herself as a baby too. She even points to Marty sometimes and calls him baby. I am not sure what's worse, calling her father "mommy" or "baby" but it seems like "daddy" is now passe. I am sure he's hoping it will make a comeback soon.

Sleeper

When Ellie was first born, Marty’s brother Tom gave us the advice that we should be loud when the baby is sleeping (use regular voice, keep tv on etc) so that she wouldn’t get used to only sleeping in silence. He had a good point and the proof to back it up - his daughter Abby would probably continue sleeping if a truck drove into her bedroom - however when we tried, it did not work out as well for us. If we were making lots of noise, she wouldn’t fall asleep. Then if she was asleep and we were talking normally, she would wake up.

Regardless of how loud or quiet we were trying to be, Ellie was just a natural born light sleeper. When she was still sleeping in the cradle in our room, she woke up when one of us rolled over in bed! When we moved her into her own room, she woke up when we walked down the hallway or sneezed in the next room! When we were riding in the car and she was sleeping in the back, the second the engine turned off she was immediately awake, no matter how long she’d been sleeping or how tired she was!
Sliding with Grandpa

There is nothing worse than accidentally waking a sleeping baby when she would’ve otherwise slept through the night (especially when you’re tired and exhausted too) so what followed was months and months of tip-toeing, whispering and avoiding taking showers while she was sleeping. We would even avoid getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night at all costs because it would inevitably wake her!

Needless to say, going into her room to check on her was completely out of the question. For a Worrier like me, not going in to check on your child takes a LOT of self-control, especially when you have an infant. As time passed, I got used to my light sleeper and have always stayed out of her room once she's down for the night. A few weeks ago, however, it was a pretty cool evening and I was concerned that she would be cold because her pajamas didn’t cover her feet. Even tough I knew it was risky to enter her room in the middle of the night, I decided to go in (against my better judgment) and put a blanket on her before I went to bed. I turned the doorknob in super, super slow-motion, crept very slowly and softly into her room and gently rested a blanket on her feet then crept out. To my surprise, she continued snoozing away, without even a stir.

In the Pumpkin Patch

The next night, even though I put her in pj’s with feet, I was still concerned that she might be too cold, so I decided to tempt fate and go in and cover her with a blanket once again. Once again, she slept through it all. Is it possible that a child can “outgrow” being a light sleeper? Apparently so. And I’ll admit it: I’m lovin’ it. I am completely addicted to going into her room before I go to bed every night. I love how peaceful she looks. I love how she’s always in a different, uncomfortable-looking position every night- sometimes her face jammed up against the crib rails, sometimes her knees tucked under her with her butt up in the air, sometimes on her back with a stuffed animal peeking out from behind her shoulder blades. No matter how uncomfortable the position seems like it would be, she always looks cozy and happy.

Picking Apples in the Orchard

Elise is becoming less of a baby and more of a toddler every day. She’s talking more, getting better coordination, understanding more – she’s even tolerating the car more! It is so exciting and wonderful to watch her grow and learn, as she changes from a baby into a little girl. But amidst all this change and growth, I do cherish those few moments every night, watching her while she’s sleeping – looking so small and serene. It reminds me that she still is, and always will be, my baby.

Enjoying the Apple!