Rain

It's finally raining here in LA after one of the most severe droughts we've had.  Consequently, Elise has very rarely experienced rain even though she's 2 years old.  She is in heaven.  When I picked her up from school today, she was screaming in delight because she knew it means that she would go outside to see the rain.  She said, "I want to take a shower in the rain."

We were supposed to go to Disneyland tomorrow and we've been hyping it up for about 2 weeks not.  When we broke the news to her this week that we couldn't go because of the rain, she said, "I bring a umbrella."  I didn't even know she knew what an umbrella was.

She is saying the most hilarious things these days.  She makes up songs and sings them to familiar melodies.  She is such a happy kid!

Correcting Daddy

This morning, Elise was playing with Mar's nice necklace, so I told her, "Elise, please don't play with Mommy's nice jewelry."  She responded, in her best how-could-you-be-so-dense voice, "It's not jewelry, it's a necklace!"  Probably not the last thing I'll learn from that silly girl.

Buggy poo-poo

Elise is scared of bugs even though I will pretend like they are nice and fun.  She hates them and says that they scare her.  I have to wonder if it is genetic because all the women in my family have a serious bug phobia.

Lately, she has been drinking her bath water and I've tried everything in order to stop her.  So one day I told her that there was buggy poo-poo in the water (which I guess is technically true?) and she got so scared and grossed out that she tried to leap out of the bathtub.  Now when she takes baths, she will inspect it to make sure that there are no tiny specs in it.  But she still drink the bathwater and the buggy poo poo does not dissuade her from drinking...just makes her want to get out of the tub.

bryant!

the worst part of elise's day is always bedtime.  she hates having to go to bed when she knows that we are also not going to sleep.  tonight when bryant put elise down, we heard the following from her room...

"dada!  dada!  dada!"  followed by..
"bryant!  bryant!  bryant!"  followed by...
"bry!  bry!  bry!"  followed by...
"dad!  dad!  dad!"

and then she started to fake cry, which was some serious bad acting.  and hilarious.

Cute things Elise says these days

- "mama, do you want some?" As Elise tries to share her food with me

-"mama, remember..."  She says this about 20 times a day, wanting to talk about different memories or random topics for discussion.  The topic she brings up most often is, "remember, I lost my Lego man.  Where's my Lego man?" We lost one of her favorite Lego pieces and she asks for it daily.

Baby fever

I officially have baby fever!  Just a month ago, the idea of caring for another infant sounded like pure torture but somehow with the start of the new year, something inside me just clicked.  We can't even start thinking about getting pregnant until next YEAR and so I will just have to enjoy all of my friends who are now pregnant or have newborns.  I don't want to be pregnant until I'm done with my PhD, I'm more settled in my career, and my body is totally healthy again (haven't gone to the gym in 2 years).  That and I've always wanted a 4ish year gap between two kids (for many reasons).  For one thing, that means less double daycare we'd have to pay for! 

One reason why I'm even entertaining this idea is that parenting has gotten really easy.  Elise is so sweet and independent now!  Another funny story as a follow up to the my previous post...

Today, Elise asked to see her church art paper she made today and I very guiltily told her I threw it away. 

She had a look of shock on her face and she said incredulously, "You threw away my church paper?!"
 I said yes. 
She then said, "Remember, you threw away my school paper, too?!!" 
I apologized profusely and I actually retrieved the church paper from the trash since there were only a few scraps of paper in there.  I've learned that I can't throw away of her artwork until she has fully forgotten about it.  :)

Reprimanding Mommy

Elise is in full-on conversation mode now.  She busts out with at least 3 new phrases everyday.  I think she would talk more, however, if she watched TV.  Since dismantling the PBS app on my phone, she now doesn't watch any TV at all.  I don't mind TV, but it's the incessant begging of shows that drives me crazy, so I like that we just stopped cold turkey.

Anyway, yesterday I made a mommy mistake and Elise made me have it.  When I picked her up from school yesterday, she had one of her daily art pieces, a paper with blue crayon scribbles all over it.  She has 2847837539 of these and can make 10 of them in 1 minute if we let her.  Anyway, when I picked her up, she showed me and said, "I want to show dada" like she always does.  Later that evening while I was cleaning up, I threw away the paper.  When she later went to throw something away, she saw the paper and became alarmed and yell, "Mommy, did you throw away my paper?!"  I said yes and she said, "Say sorry!!"  She then came over to me, started petting me gently and said, "Sorry....sorry mama".  (She was teaching me how to apologize).

After I apologized profusely, she said, "I'm going to tell dada".  She ran to him and said, "Dada!  Mama threw away my school paper!"  Bryant acted disappointed and then Elise made me apologize again.  We made a big show of it.