Funny/Cute things Elle says...

I've been trying to keep a mental note of some cute/funny things Elle has said recently, and I finally took the time to write some of them down. I know this is a lot of writing, but since this blog is essentially Elle's baby book (and Lauren's), I wanted to make sure I saved them. So, feel free to read any of them and get a glimpse into our favorite 2 and a half year old's mind!

The other day, Elle walked toward Lauren and grabbed her hand and started moving it toward her face. My first reaction was to tell Elle to stop and be more gentle (since she usually has a hard time playing gently with Lauren) until I heard what she was saying, “Baby Lauren, it’s Father, Son, Holy Sprit!” And this is a follow-up to when were in Augusta for Christmas, and my mom and I took the kids to the local science museum. There was one of those large marble balls that spin and are covered in water. Elle walked right over to the water at the bottom, dunked her hand in and made the sign of the cross. Too cute! So, even though she still walks around going, “I’m not Jesus, mommy! I’m not Jesus!”, she’s kind of starting to get it!

Elle’s also on an ownership kick—she lets everyone know what’s hers and what belongs to someone else. She walks around saying, “You’re my mommy, not Sam’s mommy, but my mommy.” Or, “Lauren’s my baby sister, not Coral’s baby sister, my baby sister!” Or, most recently after she had pooped in her diaper, “It’s my poopie, mommy, it’s not Coral’s poopie, it’s my poopie!” Yes, Elle, it’s all yours!

Elle’s really been loving her daddy lately, so she talks about him all the time when he’s gone. Yesterday, around lunchtime, she came up to me and said, “Mommy, I miss daddy.” It’s the first time she’s ever said she missed anyone, so it was really sweet!

For a while now, Elle’s been using some new adjectives. When she doesn’t want to walk anymore while we’re out running errands, she’ll lay down on the ground and say, “Mommy, I can’t walk; I’m too big (or I’m scared)!” Not sure where she got that from…I definitely think it’s the age, but Elle has also been getting “scared” of things a lot more frequently. Every morning when we start to walk downstairs, she says, “Hold you, mama, I’m scared—there’s monsters!” And then she’ll randomly run over to me throughout the day and do the same thing. She also still has a major fear of bugs and will often wake up in the middle of the night grabbing her feet and screaming “No bugs! No bugs!”

Elle has been obsessed with labeling people by gender recently. She goes through the whole family plus Sam and Noah on a daily basis (i.e. “I’m a girl, mommy’s a girl, baby Lauren’s a girl, daddy’s a boy, Sam’s a boy, and Noah’s a boy”). And, if you ask her any questions about herself or say, “Elle is….(insert pretty much anything here),” she will quickly correct you and say, “No, I’m a girl!” Well, she had also recently learned that girls have vaginas and boys have penises, so the other day, we were walking through Target (me, Kyle, Elle, and Lauren), and she loudly proclaimed, “Daddy has a penis!”

We always try to encourage good manners, so if Elle doesn’t do it on her own, we remind her to say “please” and “thank you”. Well, she’s now taken it upon herself to remind us and Lauren! Every time she hands me something, she looks at me very seriously and does that mom-tone-voice and says, “Mommy, say ‘bank (thank) you,’ Elle,” and she does the same thing to Lauren. It’s too funny! But, I guess I should expect this because Elle still tries to copy most everything we say or do and she’s really bossy. She tells Sam (the little boy I watch who’s also 2) what to do all day long; luckily, he usually listens to her. If she gets in timeout at all during the day, she will put all her babies in timeout and say, “Timeout—you stay right there—I’ll be right back!”

Elle has also really been loving her Papa (my dad) recently. It was Papa’s birthday a little over a month ago, so she loved singing “Happy Birthday” to him and for weeks went around saying, “Happy Birthday to Papa!” And she often asks if we can go see him when we get in the car to go somewhere, so I’ve had to explain to her that Papa lives far away, so we can’t go see him any time we want. So, she continually reminds me, “Papa’s far away, Mommy.” A few days after I first told her this, she saw an airplane and as it flew away she said, “Mommy, the airplane’s far away! Papa’s far away too!” I thought that was a pretty good understanding for a 2-year-old. So, even though we can’t see Papa, she pretends to talk to him on her play phone all the time and asks to call him most every day and loves to “show” him all her toys through the phone. We can’t wait to see Papa again soon!