Apple picking, one year later

Last weekend we went apple picking again, almost exactly one year later with the same awesome neighbors and the addition of my parents. I was looking at these two pictures of us from last year and this year and I started thinking about all the changes that have happened to Ella in the past year. Obviously 0-1 marks the biggest change in terms of physically going from being a crying, gelatinous blog, to learning to walk and talk, but really, the changes that happen from one to two are nothing short of miraculous. I was looking at some blog posts from a year ago, and I realized that last year at this time she was just learning to put words together to form sentences. She was saying "yesth" instead of "yes" and calling a blanket a "nanight." Now, she uses words like "actually" and "definitely" and requires me to "tell the truth." When I pick her up from daycare and ask her about her day, she says, "I don't want to talk about it." She tells Mike that he is her boyfriend, and when she finally gets in the bathtub after fighting us about it, she says, "See, that wasn't so bad." Now she has hair that streams down her back when she's in that tub, and when I look at her little body, I can already see it slimming out. She's getting those "kid legs" that come from spending days running and jumping like a real kid, not a baby, or even a toddler. She has cuts and scrapes now that I've never even kissed, and she knows what it means to pinky promise. She knows how to remember things, and when I first told her we were going apple picking, she said, "With Arlo and Violet? Like last year? Remember, Mom?" Yeah, buddy, I do remember. I'll try to always remember all of it, but when I don't, please remind me.

Who was that kid?

Back in the days when I had a fussy baby, it was easy to look at everyone else's children and only see how perfect they were and how imperfect my baby was. Other people's children didn't scream at the grocery store. Other people's children liked sitting in car seats and strollers. Other people's children were actually enjoyable to be around. Mike would try to tell me that when we saw those other babies, we were only seeing a moment of their days. We didn't know what the other 24 hours and 59 minutes looked like, and though I knew this was true, it was a hard truth to accept when it seemed like everyone's baby was happier, more content, and more relaxed than mine.

Fast forward two years to when Ella and I are sitting in Quest Diagnostics for an hour and a half on a Saturday morning. The whole idea was a recipe for disaster, and yet, somehow, it worked out. Ella woke up at 4:45 for some godforsaken reason, and by 6 a.m. we were on our way out the door. She was thrilled that she actually got to see the stars and the moon and she still likes to talk about the "crescent" she saw that morning. We stopped at Ami's Crispy Bagel in Waterbury (because they are the best bagels ever, and you are crazy if you don't go there). Then, we headed over to Quest and arrived at 7:05. I was feeling pretty confident that we were going to be in and out of there....until we walked in and saw an already full waiting room. At 7:05. On Saturday morning. But, there was no turning back, so we grabbed a number (20) and squeezed our way in between a very large man, and a very smelly older woman and began reading the one book we'd brought with us.

This is the part where I am supposed to describe the disaster that was Saturday morning at Quest. Except, well, it wasn't a disaster. For an hour and a half, that girl sat or stood quietly, read The Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, ate gold fish, got really excited when a new number was called, and was just...well...a really good girl. I never had to tell her to be quiet. She never said anything about how large the man sitting next to us was. Hell, she never even pooped. Even when we went in to actually have my blood drawn, she just stood there and watched like it was no big deal.

I kept telling her over and over again what a good girl she was, and she just kept looking at me like, "Yeah. Mom. Duh. I'm a good girl."

At one point, I realized there was a young woman watching us, and I wondered if she was thinking, "Man, I could never take my child here. I can't believe how good that little girl is." I almost wanted to go up to her and say, "She's never like this." But, the truth is, sometimes, however few and far between those sometimes are, she is like that, and she still has the power to surprise me. Thanks Beezer.

My muse

 Yesterday in Creative Writing I asked my students to write a poem in the style of Gertrude Stein. If you know anything about Stein, then you know what a difficult task this is. If you don't know anything about her, then, well, you aren't really missing much. The overall point was to write a poem that was experimental in form and word choice and didn't follow the usual conventions of what we think a "poem" is supposed to be.I asked them to write about someone or something that seems indescribable. They grew increasingly frustrated, so I decided to write a poem about the person in my life who cannot really be defined by words alone, Miss Ella B. I think you'll see that even though this poem doesn't technically make sense, it sums up Ella B quite well.

Ella B Let her be and be and b

Ella B let her be and be and believe and live and buzz yellow wind

Let her swift run electricity

Carbonated lightning

Let her be of a squeal squawk run

Let her be zipper clang and scream of trumpets blaring

Ella B Ella B Ella B be be beat thump crash and swish splash

Be bathtub and belly down and up and down and up

Let her be a heat in winter a ship dives deeper

A wild thunderclap will be her and b and b and b

Believe and Live and Ella B

Really, really, bigger

 Recently, Ella has joined the ranks of all the other toddlers, preschoolers, and older kids who cannot wait to "get bigger." Whenever I haven't seen her for a while- when she is at school or has been sleeping- she will look at me and stand as tall as she possibly can and say, "You want to see how really, really bigger I got?"

What's funny to me is what getting bigger means to her. The first part is that she will literally be bigger and this will allow her to reach things that are higher (that I, of course, don't want her to reach), and do things that are difficult, like reach the pedals on her bike, or throw a ball as high as Daddy. The more interesting part of this is that she understands that getting bigger also means becoming more grown-up, a status that affords you more privileges. So what kinds of privileges is she interested in? She desperately wants to use grown-up scissors instead of her frustratingly dull ones. She also wants to go to a "big kid" school like Izzy and Arlo and Robby and Joey. She wants to swing by herself and swim without floaties. While I was driving the other day she told me, "When I get too big for my car seat, then I can drive."

To her, being bigger means freedom and broader horizons and new possibilities and I can't deny that being bigger does offer all these things. Ever since she was born, she has always been ready for the next thing: crawling, walking, talking. What's next? What's over there? What are those kids doing? Her fearless desire to know, and see, and do is what I admire most about my big/little girl and I never want to take that away from her, but there are times we all wish children could appreciate the beauty of being little, the freedom that comes from having no responsibilities in the world beyond playing, eating, snuggling, and sleeping. If only I could switch places with Ella B for one day so she could be really, really bigger and I could be really, really smaller and we could both appreciate the benefits of each existence. For now, I guess we'll just have to live our own lives, enjoying our own freedoms, while longing for those of the other.

What a pip

I thought I'd give you a few of Ella B's recent gems to make your Tuesday a little funnier:

I asked Ella if she had a dirty diaper. She replied, "It's a mystery."

One day, when I found her moving her arms and legs very slowly, I asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I'm doing Tai Chi Mom."

After reading a story where a worm is reading a book, the following conversation ensued:

Ella: That's silly
Me: Can worms read books?
Ella: No, they don't have hands!

You're welcome.

"Why that's an airplane?"

 It has finally happened. We have entered the "why" stage of childhood development. At this point, she is clocking a good 200-300 "whys" a day for sure. This makes my parents very happy because as legend has it, I was the queen of the why. I even had to stop going to catechism because all the questions were making the nuns a little nervous. And I'm telling you, I really don't mind all the questions. Questions in and of themselves are great and, really, I am happy to answer them. Here's an example:

               
                "Mom, why is that man outside?"

                "He's mowing his lawn."

This is fine. The question is straightforward, and I can easily answer it. The problem is that it doesn't end there.

               

                "Why's he mowing his lawn?"

                "So it will look nice."

                "Why it will look nice?"

                "Because when the grass is short, it looks neat and clean."

                

 Even up to this point, I feel confident that the questions and subsequent answers are logical and possibly even valuable, but it doesn't end there.

               

                "Why it looks neat and clean?"

                "Because...because when you cut it, it becomes more even and flat."

                "Why it does that?"

                "Why does it do what?"

               

 We inevitably end up in this place where we both sort of forget what "it" is referring to, and she gets frustrated because she wants the line of questioning to continue, but we've both pretty much forgotten what we're talking about.

                 

This is the part that drives me crazy. The questions that have no answers, like, "Mom, why that's an airplane?" Why is that an airplane? Because it's an airplane! How am I supposed to answer that question?! Ask me about God. Ask me about sex. Ask me about the meaning of life. But please don't ask me, "why that's an airplane?" because really El, it just is, and that's going to have to be good enough.

It's not always fun to be right.

From my earlier posts, you know that my husband is a fearless, "Sure, why not" kind of guy, while I am more of a, "Gosh, I don't know" sort of girl. This helps to balance our relationship, but it also causes a lot of strife. A few weeks ago, our friend Alex organized a little camping trip with some other parents and kids and invited us to go along. That's right. Camping. Outside. In a tent. With a two-year-old. Don't get me wrong. I love to camp. I am happier in the woods than just about anywhere else, but that red-flag side of my personality came to life and squealed, "Ella going to sleep in a tent? This is going to be a complete disaster." To which my husband replied, "You think everything is going to be a disaster." Cue the giant fight in the car. I'll spare you the details, but ultimately Mike won and soon we were camping bound with our tent and a tiny little sleeping bag for Miss Ella B. 

Now, the title of this post indicates that I was right. I was and I wasn't. Let's begin with the wasn't part. Camping was not a disaster. We swam in the lake, took a family boat ride, roasted marshmallows, made new friends, and overall, had a really awesome time as indicated below.

Super excited about the boat ride and the life jacket. Also, she is obsessed with her water shoes and wants to wear them everyday. She now calls Target the "water shoes" store.

Eating lunch with her new friends Emmett, Ned, and Finn

In her new camping chair, ready to make her first s'more.

With Larry

Caterpillar

 These pictures definitely prove that our camping trip was mostly a success. Ella had a great time and so did we. The failure part came as the sun began to set. All day she was in love with the idea of sleeping in a tent. She loved her little sleeping bag and the idea that mommy and daddy would be sleeping right next to her. She loved hiding and playing in the tent and thought the whole thing was pretty great, until, of course, it was actually time to sleep in the tent. We read books, we pretended to go to sleep with her, we let her stay up late in hopes that she would pass out, but she was having none of it. She finally looked at Mike and said, "Want to go home," with these big tired eyes. Quite shockingly, Mike looked at me and said, "You were right. I was wrong." Now, these are not easy words for my husband to say. I'm glad I was sitting at the time or I might have fallen right over. I was right. She wasn't ready to sleep in a tent, so Mike packed her up, put her in the car and drove home. He told me to stay and enjoy myself and that he'd come back in the morning.

As I watched his tail lights disappear behind the trees, I should have been thrilled. Not only did my husband admit that I was right about something, but he also gave me the whole night off to enjoy with my friends. So why did I feel so defeated as they drove away? Because sometimes you really do hope you are wrong. As much as I can't stand to hear him say, "See, she's fine," whenever Ella succeeds at something I don't think she is ready for, it is always worth it because it means we are doing something fun together. The truth is, I would have gladly traded my "rightness" to have my little family sleeping together in that tent so I could wake up to her smiling face right next to me.

I went to bed feeling a little sad and a little lonely, but in the morning, when Mike and Ella returned, I remembered that camping is not just about sleeping in a tent. It's about campfires, and caterpillars, and swimming, and getting good and dirty, and laughing with friends. Ella may not be ready to sleep in a tent, but she is ready for the fun of a camping trip, and she enjoyed every minute of it.

This time around, I was mostly right. I can only hope that next time I'll be completely wrong. That would be the best.

Grapes of Wrath

Today's post seems appropriate given that lately I've been thinking and blogging a lot about who Ella is and who she will become. I wonder if in ten years we will be shocked by how different she is, or if that same opinionated, fearless, energetic spark will still be going as strong as ever. I wonder, how much of her is just toddler and how much is really, truly Ella B?

I thought about this a lot last week when Christina and I took Ella and Loreli to the library for toddler hour. Because Loreli is only one and Ella is two, playing together can be a bit challenging. The girls were playing in a little kitchen area and Ella was filling up a grocery cart with all kinds of fruits and vegetables. Loreli kept grabbing things out of the cart and Ella was getting annoyed, and said, "No, I'm playing with this Loreli, thank you," with a full attitude. Although she was definitely pretty snotty about it, I was still proud of her for at least trying to handle her frustration politely. At one point, she decided to take all the toys she wanted to play with and carry them into a little pretend train station where she could be free of little baby hands and anything else that might disrupt her play. It's funny to see her interact with kids younger than her because I rarely get to see her as a "big kid" and, in general, she gets the idea that she is bigger and needs to be patient and understanding, no easy task for a toddler. She has also mastered the art of "you are annoying me so I am going to go somewhere else with this stuff," which is also a pretty solid life strategy.  Learning to "play nice" with others is not easy, and while she isn't perfect, she's figuring it out fairly well.

Cut to about ten minutes later when I've convinced her to stop hoarding the toys in the train station and we are all back in the kitchen area. A few "older" girls (maybe five years old) decide they are going to set up a little market to sell all the food to each other. They start grabbing everything from the shelves and placing it at their fruit stand to sell. Ella simply watches them as they empty the shelves, leaving nothing for her and Loreli to play with. The only thing left was the carrot Ella was  absentmindedly chewing on and which one of the girls promptly snatched out of her hand saying, "These are for pretend. You don't eat these." With that, the girl walked off to her now fully stocked farmer's market, leaving Ella empty handed and with a furrowed brow.

At that point, Christina gave me a look that said, "Hey, that girl totally just bullied Ella out of her carrot. Let's get her," but knowing my daughter, I wanted to see what she would do. For a minute, she just stood there and surveyed the situation, presumably sizing these girls up and weighing her options. She could simply accept defeat and move on to the next area, she could come whining to me about some girls who aren't playing nice, or she could stand up for herself. A moment later, she walked up to the table full of plastic fruits and veggies, grabbed a bunch of grapes, looked right at the girls and said quite confidently, "I'm taking these grapes," and walked away.

Now, was this the nicest thing she could have done? No, perhaps her tone was a little rude. Perhaps the honorable thing would have been to ask the girls if she could play with them or if they could share some of the food with her. But let's be honest, the rules on the playground are not always fair, and sometimes you have to let people know who you are and where you stand. I'm pretty sure she couldn't have cared less about that bunch of grapes. I'm fairly certain she picked them at random and didn't even really play with them after that. Somewhere in the back of her little two-year-old mind, she wanted to send a message that said, "Listen up ladies, I'm Ella B. Don't mess with me," and whether it was right or wrong, I was proud of her because one day I won't be there to step in if necessary. One day she is going to be on the real playground without me and someone is going to take her ball, or pull her braids, or push her off the swing, and while I certainly don't ever want her to get in a fight, I do want her to be confident enough to say, "I'm taking these grapes," and let everybody know that she means it.  

You look awesome

Looking at this confident, spunky little girl, it is hard to imagine that she could possibly grow up to be a self-conscious teenager. This is the girl who checks herself in the mirror and literally says, "You look awesome" to her own reflection. In so many ways her disposition is nothing like mine was at her age. She will fearlessly jump from the highest point she can find, while I had to be bribed with saltwater taffy to roll forward over the uneven bars. She'd rather spend her days running as fast as she can, while I preferred to spend my days drawing at the coffee table. In my mind, these differences will serve her well in the future. I imagine her to be a physically and emotionally strong sixteen-year-old girl. The kind of girl who would never let a boy (or anyone else for that matter) treat her with disrespect. So, basically, the opposite of sixteen-year-old me.

I hope these traits are reflections of her true personality and not just her toddler personality that will one day disappear like her round belly and baby curls. But spending my days with high schoolers is a constant reminder of how adolescence can break down even the toughest girl, and deep down I know that she is just one mean comment away from second guessing herself, and I know that some of that is actually my fault.

I discovered my culpability firsthand today during a conversation I accidentally had with my two-year-old. It went something like this:

Me: (glancing at a woman on the cover of a magazine sitting on my kitchen table)

"Those shorts could not be any uglier."

Ella: (looking down at her shorts)

 "Couldn't be uglier?"

Me: (feeling awful)

"Oh buddy, not you. The magazine."

Now, I really don't know if she even knows what the word ugly means, but that isn't the point. What matters is that this one small moment had the potential to teach her something. It says to her that it's okay to ridicule the way people look, that in fact it is very easy to do, and that how other people view how she looks is important.

Do I think I did irreparable damage to my daughter today? No. She's still walking around right now thinking she's the greatest thing ever invented, but it reminded me that I don't have a baby anymore. I have a little girl, and it's my job to set a good example about how to talk about myself and how to talk about other people.

It reminded me that I need to watch what I say so that I can help that spitfire turn into a confident woman, and maybe in the process I can learn how to see myself that way, too. Because Ella B is right, you do look awesome, and so do I.

This Week in Cuteness

The other day someone asked us which age has been the best so far for raising a munchkin. Mike and I didn't even need to make eye contact before saying, "This one." Some people are baby people. I assume those people don't care about sleep, or have bad hearing, or maybe they are composed of mostly robot parts. Most likely, they had even-tempered babies and, therefore, a very different experience than I had. You all know the stories, so I won't bore you with them again. The point is that Mike and I have finally gotten to that place where we think to ourselves and out loud, "God damn Ella B, you are so freaking cute. Just stay like this forever." Toddlerhood is where it's at as far as we're concerned and it just keeps getting more hilarious every day. I thought I'd take a few minutes to share this week's cuteness update with you.

1. The Hokey Pokey- The other day she started doing it in the driveway, singing along and putting her two little pointer fingers in the air as she twirled around.
2. The picture- She has started drawing people and, specifically, her family on a regular basis. It might not look like much to you, but I actually saw her draw Mike's head and then say, "Daddy's beard" as she scribbled on the bottom of his face. She drew herself much smaller because, "Daddy big. Ella little." Obviously.
3. Family- This is her new favorite word and now we have to do lots of things as a "family." Wednesday night we all had to blow on her dinner to cool it down as a family and then we had to have a big family "Rawr!" session in which we all pretend to be dinosaurs. Before bed we have to have a "family hug."
4. Yesterday morning when she woke up at 5:30 she looked at me from her crib and said, "party time."
5. Potty- she has become increasingly interested in the potty and actually peed in it two nights ago. When she sits on it she pushes as hard as she possibly can to make something come out. She was very proud of herself when it actually worked.

That's about it for the weekly update. Hope your life is filled with as much cuteness as mine is!