Wit and Wisdom - 2 Year Old Style

Elise has been coming up with the most random and hilarious things this week. Here are just a few examples:

Ellie and neighbor Miles are playing in the yard, when Miles runs into his house to grab a snack. He comes back out with two individually wrapped string cheeses and hands one to Ellie. She looks at it for a moment, then hands it back as she says,
"I actually don't eat cheese."

-------------------------------------------------------
Ellie pretends to take Mommy's nose off of her face "I took Mommy's nose." she tells me, "I'm going to put it in the washing machine. It's gonna clean it."

-------------------------------------------------
Ellie on the phone with Oma "So...whatcha been doing?"

------------------------------------------
Mommy: "What do you think we should we name the baby Ellie?"
Ellie: "Um...Mommy."
Mommy: "That name is already taken. Can you think of another one? A name for the baby?"
Ellie: "Elise"
Mommy: "How about a name that is not already the name of someone in our house?"
Ellie: "Daddy."
Mommy: "Sweetie - Mommy, Elise and Daddy are all of our names already. What do you think we should name the baby?"
Ellie: "Pee-pee"
Mommy: "You think that we should name the baby Pee-pee?"
Ellie: "Yeah. Pee-pee"
Mommy: "Ok, you officially have no say in naming this baby."

------------------------------------------------------------
Ellie finishes her pancakes, so Opa cuts up his pancake and puts it on Ellie's plate. Ellie pats him on the back and says "Good sharing Opa."

-----------------------------------------------------
Mommy and Ellie using the potty together, Ellie on her little potty, Mommy on the big potty. Ellie asks Mommy if she wants the Elmo toilet insert for toddlers that she usually puts on the big potty when she goes on there. Mommy declines, but Ellie is adamant so Mommy takes it and rests the potty seat behind her back and does her business. Ellie says "Yay! Mommy peed on Elmo!"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mommy: "We're going to see Oma and Opa today!"
Ellie: "I love Oma and Opa - they're not too loud"

Visits Near and Far

This past week was full of visits near and far - some more exciting than others! It started out on Monday when we had to take Elise to the doctor to get her elbow looked at again. For the fourth time since the first time it happened, Elise got "nurse maid's elbow" (sort of a dislocation of the elbow). The last few times it has happened, we did the maneuver the doctor did in the hospital and set it back into place. But for whatever reason, this time it just did not go back, so we had to enlist help from the doctor. Our pediatrician suggested that we have a consultation with an orthopedic surgeon to make sure that she will not need surgery to fix this issue. Once it happens the first time, it does happen a lot more easily and more often, but now it's becoming a serious problem in that she is doing random things to pull it out of place herself. The idea that she would need surgery is absolutely terrifying, and hopefully it will not come to that. While at the pediatricians office, she mentioned that Ellie should not still be getting the eye "gunk" that she still gets (she seems to often get mucousy eyes - not pink eye, just mucous) and it seems like she may have blocked tear ducts and may need to get tubes in her eyes to alleviate the problem. So, we also got a referral for the optometrist too. Urgh. Our poor little baby! We'll try to schedule these appointments next month.




On Tuesday, I took her to her first ever appointment with an allergist. Even though I was dreading putting Ellie through the testing, I have been looking forward to this for two years now so that we can FINALLY have some answers as to what Ellie is definitively allergic to. It has been frustrating that she seems to always have a rash, hives, runny nose, eczema, etc and we are never completely sure what is causing it, so we are unsure what to avoid to keep it from happening again. For example, in the last few days at Bethany Beach, she developed this horrible rash/eczema on the backs of her legs. Even though she didn't really complain about it, it looked really horrible - the type of thing that strangers stare at and steer their children away from so that they won't contract whatever disease our child has. It was awful. But where did it come from - the suntan lotion? chlorine from the pool? did she eat something she's allergic to? It could have been any number of things and we never did figure it out - it just cleared up after several days and applications her prescription eczema cream.





Anyway, the allergist was probably the nicest man on the planet - and he was even better with Ellie than our pediatrician! He had her laughing and feeling comfortable within seconds. She did not even cry for the whole thing (and we were there for more than an hour) - I was so proud of her! They used a plastic tester thing to prick her back with 18 different common allergens, then we waited for 15 minutes to see the results. And the results were... negative. ALL OF THEM. Even the dairy one! So now, basically, I am more frustrated than ever. I swear I am not imagining that Elise is always randomly breaking into a rash or getting hives. I know for a fact that after she eats something that lists milk as an ingredient, she develops and rash and hives several hours later. I have seen this. Other people have seen this too. We are not all crazy! So, basically the allergist said that we will now do a blood test. And if the blood test comes back negative, we will do a "dairy challenge" (give her a big ol' glass of milk and wait to see if there is a reaction) in his office. It is possible that she has outgrown the allergy (she has not had dairy since 18 months) but he did say that usually children outgrow the dairy allergy at 1 year or 5 years. Who knows. Regardless of the dairy thing, it does not explain why Elise has an almost constant runny nose and rash. This test basically said she is allergic to nothing. He did say that it is possible that she just has extremely sensitive skin - but what does that mean? Again, there is nothing that can be done about that. So we are back to square one apparently.



Heidi, Riley, Heather, Tyler, Ellie and me on our college campus
Now, for the fun visit! On Thursday after we picked Elise up from Marty's parents house, we headed down to Fredericksburg, VA for a weekend visit with some friends from college. Our friend Heidi (and her 3 year old daughter Riley) hosted while Meredith, Ryan and their new baby Evan, were in from California for a wedding. It's a pretty lengthy trip (4-5 hours) and as you know Elise has been notoriously nightmarish in the car since birth, so we have never attempted the trip down there before now. She has gotten a lot better about being in the car, but still her tolerance for being the car seat is still fairly limited. So we thought that if we left around 7:30pm, she would sleep in the car most of the way and our problems would be solved. We did not anticipate that:


1) She would not fall asleep until after 9pm


2) We would hit no traffic whatsoever and make it down there in a smidgen less than 4 hours - arriving a little before 11pm


3) There would be so much excitement when we got there (dog, baby, new people) that she would see her two hour sleep in the car more as a nap and would be ready to go
Ellie, Evan, Riley and Tyler - probably the only time Evan cried the whole time so the girls were trying to comfort him



We put her down in the pack n' play and visited for a little while with Heidi, Meredith and Ryan, then headed to bed around 12:30. Elise was still wide awake, playing in the bed. We tried telling her it was bed time and ignoring her, but she was making lots of noise, banging around, standing up and whispering "Mommy, can I get up?" and "I want to play with the dog" that no one was getting any sleep. Finally at 1:30 am it became obvious that ignoring her wasn't working and she wasn't going to magically get tired and go to sleep, so we all got up and went for a walk around Heidi's neighborhood. Ellie had fun chasing after frogs and looking at the stars (which she doesn't see at home because we live in a big city and also because she is usually in bed before stars come out). After an hour of walking around, we got back to the house, read a book and FINALLY all got to sleep at around 3am. Luckily, she slept until about 9am, instead of her usual 6am!

Me and Ellie, Meredith T. and Evan, Heather and Tyler, Heidi and Riley

On Friday, another good friend from college, Heather, and her son Tyler (17 months) came up from Richmond, and Shoshana and her girls (Regan 3, Lauren 17 months) came up from Raleigh. It was so much fun (if not completely surreal) to watch all of our kids play together and to catch up with each other. Even with the crazy sleep situation the night before, Elise was in a pretty good mood and had fun running around with the other kids and despite of all the excitement even went down for a decent nap (after a lot of work on Daddy's part). She didn't even seem to bat an eye when I was holding baby Evan (it was the first time she's seen me hold a baby and not get jealous), which makes me feel more confident about her reaction to Juan in a few months.
Tyler, Ellie and Riley



Unfortunately, Shoshana had to head home, but the rest of us went over to Mary Washington's campus to reminisce about the good old college days and walk around. Elise had a blast playing in the fountain and pushing her baby in the stroller. It was bizarre to see our child playing in the same spots where I hung out with friends, "studied", and first met Marty! After the campus visit, we got frozen custard from local hot spot Carl's (yum!) and then went back to Heidi's to visit a little longer before Meredith, Ryan, Evan, Heather and Tyler all left.





Riley and Ellie boogie down
On Saturday, Ellie and Riley continued to play and have a blast together at the playground and at Heidi's house. If only Juan could come out a 3 year old girl, we would be set! Ellie was completely enamored by Riley - wanted to do everything she did and followed her around constantly, and Riley had an equally great time telling Ellie what to do! There was little to no arguing over toys or anything else, so it was pleasant for all of us. We'd originally planned to stay all day Saturday and head out Saturday night (so that she could sleep in the car) but after the disastrous staying up until 3am incident from Thursday, we decided to go ahead and get on the road in the afternoon and take our chances. She slept in the car for the first two hours or so (unfortunately the traffic was so terrible that only got us to DC - I'd forgotten how much I hate Northern Virginia traffic!) and for the next two hours she did really well. Then we stopped in Delaware for dinner and a break from the car - and Marty and Ellie ran around in the parking lot like maniacs for about 30 minutes to burn off some energy. Marty joined Ellie in the backseat for the last leg of the trip and did a wonderful job keeping her entertained and distracted.


Regan shares a necklace with Ellie


We used Sunday to recuperate from the busy week and have been enjoying the boring, trip-free week!

Luscious, Luscious Hair

Ok, I admit it. Ellie has been "follicle-challenged" for the first two years of her life because of me. Yes, it's my fault. No, I haven't been cutting her hair (although people actually ask me that all of the time - honestly why would I cut my child's hair into a mullet? why?) but I definitely did bring on the baldness. When Ellie was first born and the doctor announced that we were parents to a baby girl, I admit, my first irrational feeling was panic. Hair-induced panic. A little girl means doing little girl hair. It means pony tails and pig tails and braids. It means all of these things that I haven't the slightest clue how to do.

As the mother, all eyes are going to be on me to make sure my daughter has presentable hair. When she has a lumpy, lopsided ponytail people are going to look at me like I'm the crazy one. Not Marty; he is not expected to know how to do such things. In fact, he is expected to make her hair look silly. People will laugh and say, "Oh men can never do little girls hair" and think it's cute when Marty puts her hair up all lopsided and lumpy, but if I do it people will think that I am a terrible mother. It's sexist but true! Not to mention, she has this gorgeous red hair that everyone stares at and comments on so her hair is a focal point to begin with. Everyone on the planet will be paying even more attention to her hair and will be judging my hairstyling skills! So I began to panic, right in those first few hours after giving birth. How does one learn to put a pony tail into a child's hair without big lumps in it? I can't even do that to my own hair. I wonder if there is a class that I could take...

Well, here we are two years later and it is still not an issue for me. Not because I magically learned how to do hair but because my daughter still does not have enough hair to put into a ponytail, therefore I cannot make it lopsided and lumpy. Hence, I jinxed my child with baldness. However, we've noticed in the last few weeks that things are actually happening in the hair department. It's like she turned two and the jinx wore off and all of a sudden she's growing hair. Don't get me wrong, she's still no Rapunzel, but she does actually have a little bit of hair on the top of her head and it's really coming in in the back and it's getting fuller and thicker. And it's curly! (Marty and I both have stick straight hair, so we have no idea where that came from - maybe it's a red head thing)

The funny thing is that Ellie loves hair. She loves having her hair brushed, and loves brushing other people's hair. She will stand perfectly still for an obscene amount of time (she doesn't stand still for anything else ever) to let you brush her hair. And when you're done, she runs over to look in the mirror and says "I pretty!" I have no idea where she gets this from, believe me it's not something we've taught her. She just loves her hair. I predict that she'll actually need her first haircut in the next six months. It's crazy to think that sometime soon she will actually have so much hair that some will need to be cut off, but I do believe that is on the horizon.

I am not panicked about putting a pony tail in her hair anymore though. My skills have not improved and I do think I will be horrible at it, but honestly it doesn't bother me anymore. I have come to realize, that like everything else with parenting, there will be trial and error, but eventually you figure it out. Besides, so what if her pony tail is lopsided and lumpy? It won't mean that people will think I'm a bad mother. They will think her father did her hair.

Ellie-isms

When Marty's sister, Amy, and her friend Laura left the beach house after a week of hanging out with Ellie, they both pointed out that they have begun to talk like her. It's true, Ellie has tons of catch phrases and ways she says certain words that are addictive - Marty and I catch ourselves talking like her all the time too. Here are some of the Ellie-isms that you can't help but pick up when you spend a lot of time in her presence:

"Who dat?"
"O-Tay"
"Um....Sure"
"Sounds good"
"Dat's not so bad"
"Dat's tastey!" or "dat's not tastey" (to describe whether or not she likes something she's eating)
"I don't like it"
"Dat's too noisy"
"I bumped the head" (meaning I bumped my head)
"neneneneneno...don't do it"
"soooo much" (in response to someone saying I love you)
"Dat's not nice"
"how about this one?"
"and Louie too?" (fill in any name)
















Ellie with her cousins Abby (5) and Nate (14)

Beach Please, Hold the Ocean

The Molloy clan spent the past week in Bethany Beach, Delaware with almost all of Marty's family - his parents, brother Kevin, nephew Nathan, sister-in-law Rachel, and even his sister Amy and her friend Laura flew in from California for the family vacation (we missed you Tom, Abby and Scott!). We stayed in a gorgeous, huge house with all sorts of entertainment (including a pool table, ping pong table, community pool, fitness center and playground) located about a mile from the beach. Marty's parents also brought along their Wii, which provided hours of entertainment for the whole family - and even Ellie wanted in on the Wii fun!

Amy has not seen Ellie in nearly two years, so obviously Ellie was much different than the drooling 5 week old that Amy last visited! Ellie has identified Aunt Amy in pictures for a long time now and was very excited about her being on the vacation. Likewise, Amy was thrilled to be able to finally spend some quality time with her niece. Ellie has had this bizarre stranger anxiety for a while now, so we were a little worried that she would take a while to warm up to Amy, but it turned out that it was definitely NOT a problem. Ellie warmed up to Amy within an hour (maybe less) - then the two of them were nearly inseparable for the rest of the vacation! In fact, every time that we went anywhere without Amy, Ellie literally cried the whole time "I want Amy!" and on the last few days, Ellie was saying "I love you Amy!" completely unsolicited. We were so happy that the two of them had a chance to really bond and get to know each other, and now we are going to work on convincing Amy that she needs to move back to the east coast! I think that Ellie will be first in line.




It turned out to be a pretty HOT week, with temperatures in the mid-90s and the humidity making it feel in the hundreds almost every day. We made it out the the beach really early a few mornings - trying to get there before it was too sweltering to bear and the sand too hot to walk on. Again this year, Ellie was terrified of the ocean ("I don't like it! It's too loud!") but enjoyed playing in the sand. Aunt Amy also brought her endless bucks of ocean water to play with in the sand, so she did get a taste of the ocean without having to actually go to the scary shoreline.


While she was scared of the ocean water, she really took to the pool this year. The complex had a baby pool (9 to 18 inches deep) and a regular pool ( 3ft to 5 ft) and it took her a little bit to get comfortable with it, but by the end of the first day, she was running back and forth between the two pools playing and having a blast. In the baby pool, she loved walking in the water, sitting with Mommy and throwing her sand toys in and then retrieving them. In the big pool, she loved walking on the stairs (by herself - "I don't need help!") playing motorboat with Mommy and Daddy, swimming on her tummy while kicking her legs and riding on Mommy's back.

Another exciting highlight of the trip were the rides. We went down to Trimpers Rides (one of my favorite childhood places!) at the end of the boardwalk in Ocean City one night and it turned out to be such a hit that we returned two more times during the week. She went on the Merry-go-Round, airplanes, dog ride, and drove a bus, but her favorite was the teacups ride. She probably went on the teacups 5 times - once by herself. She had a blast and it was so much fun to watch her enjoying all the rides I loved as a kid.

We had a wonderful and relaxing vacation and Marty and I both feel spoiled from spending so much time with Ellie for the past 10 days. We are going to miss her so much when we go back to work on Monday! Marty pointed out that it was the last vacation we'll take as a family of three - its' so crazy to think that next summer we'll be a family of four with a 3 year old and a 9 month old! That will certainly be an adventure.

Bethany Beach 2008

Party of Four: A Trial Run

When our friends Christine and James asked us if we could watch their 7 month old daughter, Milan, for the weekend while they were out of town, we thought it was a perfect opportunity to have a little test run of what life is going to be like everyday in the Molloy household in three short months. Marty and I have already been thinking about how everything is going to work logistically with the second child - how are we going to get everyone ready in the morning and get out of the house on time? How are we going to do bedtime with Ellie in the middle of newborn madness? How is anyone in the house ever going to be able to get a bath or shower?

Well, what better way to start to figure some of these things out than to actually do it? The plan was to meet Christine and James on Thursday evening to get Milan, then head over to Marty's parents house to pick up Ellie, and take both of the girls back home (ideally while they smiled and cooed at each other in the backseat - and/or slept.) The first spoiler to our master plan was that I had a big grant due at work on Friday and was unable to get it finished early enough on Thursday to go with Marty to pick up Milan and Ellie. So, Marty cheerfully took on the task by himself saying breezily "What's the worst that can happen? They cry on the way home? Big deal - I can handle crying for an hour."

So you can imagine my surprise when Marty pulled into the driveway that night, handing me my screaming child while pulling the other screaming child from her car seat, ranting about how he just experienced the worst three hours of his life. Turns out that Ellie was really not in the mood to share her Daddy with someone else. When Marty showed up at his parents house with Milan, Elise was instantly jealous and started acting like a complete maniac. She didn't want Marty to touch Milan, look at Milan or have anything at all to do with any child that was not herself. Ellie completely regressed - stopped using her words, cried about everything and generally acted like a monster for the two hours that Marty was at his parents house. Then came the car ride...Ellie screamed and cried the entire way home. Milan, who was being perfectly wonderful and pleasant during Ellie's earlier tantrums, was trying to sleep and got extremely cranky that this little two year old would not stop screaming in her ear and let her sleep. In fact, Ellie seemed to be purposely trying to keep Milan awake, because whenever Milan started crying, Ellie stopped. Then when Milan stopped crying Ellie started whaling again.

Dealing with all of the crying and terrible traffic for an hour might have been the worst torture Marty ever experienced and I think I actually saw steam coming from his ears upon their arrival. Once Milan was happily in bed, Marty tried to talk to Ellie, who kept saying "No Daddy, go away. Go be with Milan!" When I was putting Ellie to bed a bit later, trying to explain to her that Daddy and Mommy love her even if we have to give our attention to someone else, and babies need more help than she does because she's a big girl and can do thing for herself, she started crying. I asked what was wrong. Does something hurt? "Milan hurts" Ellie cried. It hurts that Daddy was paying attention to Milan? "Yeah" she sobbed. Oh boy. We are in for it.

After both girls were safely asleep Marty detailed the horrors of the day and suggested that we go ahead and plan to give Juan up for adoption because there is no way that we can handle two children without killing one of them, killing ourselves and/or divorcing. "There are tons of people in this country that would love to adopt our baby!" he encouraged. I promised him that Ellie was going to get used to it after a brief adjustment period and asked him to hold off on signing the adoption papers. Then I crossed my fingers and prayed that I was right.

Luckily for the entire Molloy family, I was right. Both girls got up the next morning around 6:30 and from the very start, Ellie was a completely different child than she had been the night before. She was extremely helpful and loving with Milan - handing her toys, running to get things she thought she'd like, trying to share her meatballs...it was like some sort of miracle happened overnight and Marty and I felt a huge wave of relief. We all had lots of fun all day - we hung out at the playground, crawled around on the ground like lions trying to teach Milan to crawl and even played with our neighbor Miles in his baby pool for a while.

At one point, I decided that I should do a quick vacuum of the living room rug if Milan was going to roll around on it (she kept rolling off the blanket) so I asked Ellie to help me clear off the other things off the rug. Once we'd finished clearing the rug, all but for Milan, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner, and Ellie cried "No! Don't roll over Milan!" because apparently she thought I was going to vacuum the baby up. Since Ellie would have been a fan of this idea the night before, I felt very encouraged that she was suddenly so protective of her new friend.

I had a trip planned and had to leave on Friday night, so I left both girls in the capable hands of Marty and his brother Kevin, who successfully held down the fort until Christine came home on Saturday afternoon. We are both feeling a lot more confident that we can, in fact, handle two children and that Party of Four won't be such a nightmare afterall. We are just keeping our fingers crossed that Juan is as laid back and easy as Milan. And it would help if Juan comes out as a 7 month old.