Ella welcomes Annie June! - Stories Page 2

"Well, like why peanut begins with the letter 'p.' And how your muscles attach to your bones."

Ah. Serious indeed. Ella has also done some serious thinking about what she wants to be for Halloween, and after flirting with the idea of dressing up as a robot, a dragon, and Snow White, she has finally settled on being a pumpkin. Whew. Dodged the Disney Princess bullet for another year. We've already bought the orange felt and I'm knitting a pumpkin hat, complete with stem, so there is no turning back at this point. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Our poor Ella is sick. She is dozing on the couch next to me after a little "cross-your-fingers-and-hope-it-stays-down" soup. Having an ill kiddo is horrible. And I don't mean because of the midnight puke clean up and endless laundry. It's horrible because as a parent you are powerless to do anything to take away the stomach upset and misery. You procure popsicles, serve Sprite, wipe a forehead with a cool washcloth - but really all you can do is sit next to her and try to offer some emotional comfort as she rides it out. And you Google "rotavirus" while she sleeps, praying that you can keep enough fluids in her so that she doesn't get dehydrated.

The bright side, if there is one, is that I've gotten to spend the entire day with my sweet girl. We've indulged her and let her lie on the couch to watch several hours of TV (usually she doesn't get to see more than the occasional Sesame Street or Mickey Mouse Club House), and her viewing preferences are fascinating. She watched a couple of cartoons this morning, and then she wanted to see the US Open ("I like this tennis!"). After a nap, some books, and a failed attempt at eating, Ella asked for the TV to be turned back on. I flipped through the channels and she begged me to put down the remote and let her watch . . . Lawrence Welk on our local PBS station. (Her great grandparents Georgene and Aubrey are smiling down on her from somewhere.)

Off to the kitchen to get more ice chips. Here's hoping that Ella will soon be up to her old tricks.

In honor of the upcoming Olympics, I will share with you Spencer's theory of parenting. Well, it's more metaphor than theory, really, but here it is. Parenting is like curling. You slide the stone across the ice, setting its direction. After that you can brush like heck to try to guide the stone where you'd like it to go, but ultimately, the stone is going to go where it wants. Or something like that. This past weekend, Ella was a flower girl in Spencer's cousin's wedding, and as we placed her into the hands of a flock of twenty-something bridesmaids and took our seats in the church, I thought about curling. I hoped the lessons in manners and listening had stuck and that she would sweetly glide down the aisle without picking her nose or throwing a fit because her hairsprayed 'do was making her scalp itch. I hoped she wouldn't get distracted by the candles halfway down the aisle and wander into a pew to have a seat and study the flames at her leisure. When it was her turn to walk down the aisle, she smiled, moved slowly and surely, and (of course! This is Ella we are talking about!) soaked up the spotlight. I smiled at her encouragingly (brush, brush, brush) and felt so proud that later, when she wiped ketchup across the front of her silky white dress, I hardly cared. That's what dry cleaners are for.

I'm sure there are kids out there who, when you ask them to brush their teeth or put on their clothes, respond with, "Yes, mother," and then they go and brush their teeth or put on their clothes. They don't, for example, get distracted by the dental floss and unravel yards of it or begin stacking books into towers or mashing staple after staple into paper instead of doing whatever it is you've asked them to do. I'm sure there are compliant children in this world. We just don't have one of them.

What we do have is a confident, head-strong, friendly (most of the time) child. Yesterday when we were leaving the house, a woman walked by with her dog. Ella made a beeline for the street, yelling, "Can I pet your dog?" The woman and the dog stopped, and here was the conversation:

Ella: I have a book about a beagle. It's called "The Floppy Eared Beagle." What's your dog's name?

Ella: I have two middle names. My name is Ella Aubrey Williams Thompson. I'm four. Your dog likes me. I'm going to give him a hug. You need to come back to my house sometime. 1204 Saint Christopher Street. Okay?

Remind me not to teach Ella her social security number. She'll be giving it out to every dog walker and grocery checker and everyone else she chats up. Which is pretty much any person she encounters.

Kidding aside, I actually like this aspect of Ella's personality. She is so people-oriented and quick to make friends. She seems to like everyone and assumes everyone will like her back. This past weekend we had a family vacation at Bunker Hill Ranch on the Jack's Fork River in the Ozarks. After sitting on a bench outside her Mimi and Grandpa's cabin for just five minutes with a girl named Sophie, Ella invited her to come back to her house for a sleep over. As the two of us hiked one rainy afternoon, she told anyone we passed, "Hi! We're exploring!" At a restaurant last night, when our sever announced that her name was Taylor , Ella replied, "Hi! I'm Ella. Have I met you before?" And the she proceeded to order milk to drink and informed Taylor that milk has calcium and will give her strong teeth and bones. Today when I told her of our 4th of July plans and that she might get to play with Rohan, a four-year-old she has met exactly three times, Ella replied, "Ooh. Rohan. I love her."

These kids. You never know what is going to stick. Ella can't remember what season or month it is, but she can't seem to forget the slightly sad amateur belly dancers she saw at the farmer's market a few weeks ago. Yesterday she was prancing about in a skirt, a hiked up t-shirt, and a construction paper hat, insisting that her name was Maria. "Am I a beautiful dancer?" she'd ask in a weirdly high-pitched voice as she strutted around the living room to the tune of "Cherish" by Madonna. The Youzeum, a recently opened museum about the human body and its health, likewise made an impression. Specifically, Ella can't seem to get enough talk about her "ooey gooeys." That's the stomach and intestines for those of you who don't speak four-year-old.

Also, you never know what Ella will hear. Certainly she can't hear her mother asking, for the 15^th time, for her to brush her teeth. But during dinner, when she seemed too preoccupied with rolling her peas around on her plate to really be listening to her Uncle Marty talk about why he didn't do well in high school chemistry - "I couldn't do the math" - Ella piped up, "I can do the math. Two plus two equals four!"

It's growing season. Spring has sprung, and now that mama is done with classes for a blessed four weeks, Ella has finally been able to get outside and dig in the dirt. She helped plant annuals in hanging baskets and phlox in the flower bed. Our vegetable garden is in, so (fingers crossed) later in the summer we'll have sugar snap peas and tomatoes. Ella is of course doing growing of her own. At least in her imagination. Lately she has told us that when she grows up she will be 6 feet 6 inches tall (just like Michael Jordan). Also, she is going to be a dentist. And a mama and a writer and a cooker. All of which is fantastic, except this week we've discovered that we have a leaking pipe in the wall behind our washing machine, so I kind of wish she wanted to be a plumber.

Ella and I just returned from a road trip to Texas . I dragged her to three different towns over six days, so I guess I got what I deserved. And really, the trip was 60 percent delightful and only 40 percent awful. Maybe it was even 75 percent delightful, but the fact that I viewed the trip through the phlegmy lungs-on-fire lens of a chest cold has skewed my perception somewhat. I'll give you all the highlights and let you be the judge. We'll get the bad stuff out of the way first.

(Side note: I will state for the record that the few hours Stacy and I got to spend together after the kids were in bed, catching each other up on the states of our lives and swapping parenting tips/war stories, made living through Ella's behavior and my less-than-stellar coping with said behavior totally worth it. Stacy, I know you are reading this, and I hope you feel the same way!)

2/27/08 - original date of post.
I know that all parents think their children are extraordinary. "Did you see her latest crayon drawing? So Picasso-like." "Did you hear him? He used the word 'lepidopterist' correctly in a sentence." We are no different. Ella seems wildly creative, articulate, and bright to us. She appears to be sprouting up into this leggy, big kid, right before our eyes. Imagine our surprise, then, when a visit to the doctor revealed how absolutely average she is, at least physically. She is in the 50th percentile for height. She is also in the 50^th percentile for weight. Her fine motor skills are right where they should be (she demonstrated them for the doctor by unbuttoning and buttoning mama's sweater).

I'm not sure what I expected. Certification for Ella's genius? Praise for our obviously superior parenting skills? A medal for the fact that our kid will eat broccoli? Perhaps Ella sensed my vague disappointment and tried to make up for it with a little showing off. "I can skip!" she declared, as she hopped down the hall towards the reception desk so we could check out.

Later I had a good laugh at myself for my reaction to Ella being so middle of the road. It dawned on me that her being average should be a relief to me. There are parents I know dealing with their children's developmental delays or physical difficulties, so I am incredibly grateful that - so far - Ella is happily camped in the 50^th percentile of everything. And really, there are so many ways in which she exhibits her uniqueness and smarts every day. Recently we had some pretty severe thunderstorms, and we were discussing this weather at dinner. She said, "The storms were heavy." "Yes," I said. "I could not carry them," she added. Just this evening when I picked her up from school, she rolled up her sleeve and showed me a scratch on her arm. Before I could ask her what happened, she cheerfully declared, "It looks just like an exclamation point!"

And then there is my favorite recent exchange:

(See the aforementioned fine motor skills in action as Ella bakes cookies at Epcot in Disney World.)

We not only survived Ella's weekend of birthday parties, we actually enjoyed ourselves. Having one party with her friends and another with family made for more work but much less stress. And Ella, riding her cake and frosting high all weekend long, enjoyed being celebrated not once, but twice. For the kiddos, we had (at Ella's request) a costume/dinosaur party. Weeks ago Ella started making noise about a Chuck E. Cheese bash, but then she mentioned some sort of dress up party and I grabbed onto and promoted that idea with a fervor matched only by my loathing for that creepy, pizza-pushing mechanical rat. When I asked her what exactly happens at a costume/dinosaur party, she said, "Kids put on their costumes and then their mittens and hats and coats. Then they move to my house." When the first guest arrived, Ella transformed into a little miss manners. Gesturing toward the cheese crackers and juice boxes she asked, "Would you like a snack, Caroline?" "Would you like to do a craft?" she inquired, waving a fistful of markers. We had dinosaur masks, dinosaur hats, and dinosaur candles on the cupcakes. And when the last kiddo left I noticed that Ella looked a little wilted and glassy eyed. Turns out we also had a 100-degree fever. Oops. Well, half of the kids at the party were coughing and wiping running noses on their sleeves, so we probably didn't give anyone anything they weren't going to get already.

The next evening we had grandparents, aunts, and uncles over for brisket and birthday cake. As she opened her presents, Ella amused us all by cutting every ribbon at least four or five times, muttering to herself, "This looks like a job for scissors." Ella received some amazingly thoughtful gifts, including puzzles and games, a "Peter and the Wolf" CD, a play kitchen set, pots and pans, and a drawing table covered with a collage of photos of Ella and all of her family. And really, that was the greatest gift of all - our Ella surrounded by loving family. Family that won't be too upset when a few days from now they discover they've caught Ella's cold.

1/6/08 - original date of post.
Last week it was 6 degrees. Today it was 65. Ella and her daddy took advantage of the spring-like weather to take one of her Christmas presents for a spin.

12/23/07 - original date of post.
Ella wants everyone to know that she looooooooooves Christmas. Also, Christmas loves her. I'm not really sure what that means. She has been talking to the moon lately, and this morning on the way to church she told me that when she turns 28 she is going to marry her daddy. Much of Ella's world is a mystery. A joyful mystery, but a mystery just the same. Listen to her rendition of "Hark the Herald, Angels Sing," and you'll hear what I mean.

A week ago I was bustling around the kitchen in my usual fashion, simultaneously trying to fill the dog's water bowl, feed the fish, and unload the dishwasher, when something made me pause to watch Spencer and Ella. They were standing at the counter with their backs to me. Spencer was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with a short-sleeved t-shirt layered over the top. Ella was also wearing jeans and layered t-shirts. She was helping pour cereal into a bowl, and the conversation went something like this.

Spencer: "You want cereal for breakfast?"
Ella: "Yes. Daddy cereal.I call it Daddy-Ella cereal." (translation: raisin bran)
Spencer: "I'm going to have Daddy-Ella cereal too. With extra raisins. Do you want extra raisins?"
Ella: "Yes."
Spencer: "I love raisins."
Ella: "Me too. I love raisins."

It was an ordinary moment, but days later I cannot stop holding this image of the two of them in my head. Ella and Spencer are so much a part of one another. And of me, for which I am incredibly thankful.

Ella keeps insisting that "if you get on fire, you dial 9-9-1 ." I tell her that the firefighters will come if you dial 9-1-1 , and she says, "No, Hannah said it is 9-9-1 ." Argh. We will perish in flames because Ella believes a four-year-old knows more than her own mother.

Ella's beliefs surrounding numbers also reveal some sort of Hindu leanings. She was recently reflecting on her age and asking yet again when we would be celebrating her birthday so she can leave three behind and become a glorious and grown-up four-years-old. After some thought she declared, "When I get through all of the numbers, I will just start over again."

More numbers:

10 - How old Ella thinks she should be before riding a roller coaster.

12 - The age at which Ella predicts she will like French onion soup.

35 - The number of pounds Ella weighs. (Also the age Spencer insists Ella will have to reach before he allows her to date.)

5 - The number of times in a row we had to play the board game Candy Land this past weekend.

3 - The number of times Ella has changed her mind about what she wants to dress up as for Halloween.

Ella has a sassy new haircut. And a sassy attitude to go with it. Something about being able to see her long neck makes her seem older, and the new haircut is coinciding with her trying out some new behaviors. She is two going on fourteen.

On Sunday we visited Mimi and Grandpa's for some good company and even greater apple pie. After trying to get Ella to collect her things and get ready to head home, she looked at me, crossed her arms, and declared, "I'm not talking to you." She eventually made her way to the car, gave departing hugs and kisses, and let herself be buckled into her car seat, but my asking why she was mad at me resulted in the same statement: "I'm just not talking to you." This little experiment lasted only an hour or so, but for the duration there was one person to whom she would talk: daddy.

Yes, daddy is the one who thinks of reading bedtime stories by flashlight, who rubberbands chopsticks together so she can tweeze her food, and who watches Disney movies with her on weekends (so I can do homework). These contributions to her well-being are more appreciated than my cooking her dinner, shooing her to the bath, nagging her to pick up her toys, and lecturing her about the importance of clean teeth and manners. I've been waiting for her to notice that Spencer is infinitely more fun and patient than I am, and I think this realization is finally dawning.

Ella is also having an epiphany about the opposite sex. When I recently asked her who she had played with at school, she said, "I played a little with Avery, but then I told him to go away."

"Do you think you hurt his feelings? Why did you say that?"

Ella looked at me seriously. "Mom, sometimes I want to play with boys and sometimes I don't." What could I say? "Amen, sister" did not seem appropriate, so I just changed the subject.

Ella is also increasingly interested in all sorts of animals, declaring that it is "giraffe day" or "dinosaur day." Last night as I tucked her in, Ella said, "Mom, we should get some books on frogs." Good thing I work at a library. This evening her bedtime stories were all about frogspawn, tadpoles, froglets, and the benefits of webbed feet. Of course, she announced that tomorrow would be "frog day."

Now that I think about it, maybe Sunday was "act like an obnoxious, dramatic teenager day" and I just missed the memo. "Frog day" sounds much more pleasant.

There are a lot of firsts in the life of a child that aren't traditionally documented in a baby book. We just experienced one a couple of weekends ago. For the first time Spencer and I spent a weekend away from Ella. One of Spencer's high school friends was getting married in New Hampshire, and since children were not invited to the ceremony and because plane tickets were something like a million dollars a piece, we decided to ask Ella's Mimi and Grandpa Mike if they would keep her for the weekend. (Grandma Ann and Grandpa Butch got to watch the hairier, four-legged grandchild.) About two weeks out we started preparing Ella for our absence, trying to make it clear that we were taking a trip and she would be staying here in Columbia, having fun with Mimi and Grandpa. She seemed pretty excited about spending all weekend with them, but I couldn't tell if she was really getting the fact that mama and daddy wouldn't be there with her. I had this low level of anxiety for several days, half-expecting a complete freak-out when we had to say good-bye.

I needn't have worried. When we first moved back to Missouri, we lived with Mimi and Granpa for a few months while we got our feet under us and/or recovered from our mini nervous breakdown. Ella has been comfortable there ever since. She knows that they have trains and bubbles to keep her entertained, juice boxes to keep her hydrated, bath toys that are enormously superior to the ones with which her parents stock her own bathtub, and - of course - an endless supply of grandparent love to lavish upon her. When we called from our cabin on Squam Lake to see how everyone was doing, Ella chirped in the background, "Is that mama?" Her Mimi said, "Yes, do you want to talk to her?" "No," Ella answered matter-of-factly, and went back to doing her puzzle with Grandpa.

At least when we got back she seemed happy to see us. We brought her a present of a small bag of marbles, and she said, very seriously, "Ooh. These are wonderful. Thank you." She told us that while we were gone she went to the park and flew a kite for the first time. She proudly explained that she had gone to the MU football game with Mimi and Grandpa, and this year she was a "big girl" so the "canyon" didn't scare her anymore. (When Missouri scores a touchdown, the crowd is treated to a very loud cannon blast.) Indeed, she did seem very much like a big girl. So secure, so happy. I felt proud of her, and - to be honest - a little bit melancholy. She is more and more of a big kid every day, always talking about when she will turn four, asking when she will be old enough to play baseball and football, predicting that she will soon be "as tall as like mama." I know this will happen sooner than I'd like, so I'm trying to pause often, to soak up the funny things Ella does and says, and to remember to enjoy these firsts of her childhood.

You know those warning tags on hairdryers that seem completely ridiculous? The ones that read, "Do not use this appliance in bathtub," or make some similar (and completely obvious) statement? I always wonder who in the world those are written for. Who doesn't already know this common sense sort of stuff?

I have to remember that for Ella that nothing is obvious. For instance, she needs to be told that she really shouldn't try to make snow angels in her sandbox. (That was a fun bath - and hours later she showed me a piece of sand on her finger and proudly announced, "This came from my ear!") Until you tell her that she shouldn't eat gum off of the ground or drink the bathwater, she doesn't know not to do it. So of course the same goes for dashing out into the street or getting into a car with a stranger. These aren't the cheeriest of rules to teach, so we've also been working on social etiquette, the pleases and thank yous. And we've had a lot of opportunity to practice lately.

You see, we just had a week-long visit from the Florida Grandmoms, and Ella had a fantastic time swimming and swimming and swimming at the rec center, reading at the library, swinging at the park, and completely wearing herself out. Ella's mom and dad had a great time too, going on an actual dinner-and-a-movie date on our anniversary! But after all of this loving and undivided attention, Ella experienced a bit of withdrawal that manifested itself as the need to whine, scream, and/or cry whenever making any request. Sometimes the crying was accompanied by Ella clutching at our clothes, arms, legs, and hands. Let me be clear that this behavior did not happen after we said no to her - it was her only mode of communication. Without warning she would come screaming into the kitchen, throwing her arms around my legs and wailing, "I WANT AN ICE CUBE! I WANT AN ICE CUBE!" We tried our best to say things like, "When you can speak to me in a calm voice like the one I am using now, I'd be happy to give you an ice cube," or we'd simply model the request we'd prefer, saying pleasantly, "May I please have an ice cube?" This sort of felt like holding up a flimsy umbrella in the middle of a hurricane, but after a couple of days where Spencer and I contemplated selling Ella so we could afford to pay some professional to trim our horrid-looking trees (they have been threatening to drop large dead branches onto our house), Ella's behavior has improved markedly. She sometimes even says please without any prompting.

I'm worried about how much I worry. There are the fears that Ella will drown, fall down the stairs, or otherwise suffer head trauma (she might inherit this tendency from her father). Then there is the fretting about the emotional or mental damage I or others might inflict upon her. Will our letting her watch Cinderella three times in a row during our 15-hour car trip to Colorado result in a princess-obsessed, "marriage will be my fulfillment," melty-brained Ella? Will my worrying make her a worrier?

I don't walk around constantly wringing my hands or make Ella where a helmet at all times (like her daddy did in college) or anything. I mostly try to keep my fears to myself, doing what is reasonable (as opposed to neurotic) to keep her safe, and then I try to let go. At the end of July we visited Pop, Grandmother Linda, Uncle Marty, and other members of the Thompson clan in Lakeside , Ohio . This kind of idyllic collection of cottages and parks on the shore of Lake Erie was a perfect location for a family vacation. Ella particularly liked the park and its many opportunities for climbing high enough to give one's mother a coronary. But Grandmother Linda can testify that I mostly sat on the bench smiling encouragingly instead of hovering underneath the jungle gym, trying to find the best place to put my portable air bag to break any falls. (No, I don't actually have one of these. I just did a Google search, and I don't think anyone makes them. Yet.)

A couple of weeks later in western Colorado Ella caught her first fish. It was a beauty of a rainbow trout. She will tell you that she felt a "chuggle" on her line, and then she "reeled, reeled, reeled, reeled" it to the boat. And while there are still days when Ella inhales nothing but carbs as if she were preparing for the next day's ultra-marathon, on this trip she ate nearly three small brook trout in one sitting, along with a big heaping helping of summer squash. Was I proud? Yes. 99% of me was so pleased that she tried and liked this new food, this trout that my family has caught and eaten on Grand Mesa for over 80 years, and I told her so. The other 1% was worried she was going to choke on a fish bone.

I asked Ella what I should write about on her web site, and she said something about sticking her tongue out, which would be very funny. Funny, yes, but not much of an update. Instead I will fulfill her almost nightly request, "Talk to me about my day."

Today, dear Ella, you woke us up yelling that you had dressed yourself, and indeed you had, except for the buttoning of the shorts part, which is tricky. After you brushed your teeth you ate "daddy cereal" (raisin bran) and spent an hour painting pictures that started out bright red and green and yellow but became muddier as the paint colors mixed together. You painted yourself, a circle with lines for arms and legs and a big squiggle of curly hair plopped on top.

We played at the park where you tried out all of the slides, not caring that the recent rain made your bottom all wet. We shared a snack of carrot sticks and Cheerios. You fed at least three carrots to Cooper, who was happy to have them. We walked the trail through the park before heading home, and you told me you were looking for "a dog trailer and a turtle trailer and a cut-down tree trailer - I don't know if I can find all of those trailers, but I will try."

After lunch there was a failed attempt at a nap. You decorated yourself and me with Crayon band-aids as I did some school work at the computer. You cut up paper and glued it to more paper. You played on the deck, lit a sparkler with daddy, and watched your tomato plants grow a little. We all had dinner together. You ate a homemade frozen yogurt popsicle. You played in the bath with your rubber ducks. We read three library books, daddy told you a story, and then you chattered for about an hour before finally falling asleep.

Last week when I picked Ella up from her Mimi and Grandpa Mike's, I heard about a story they'd read in which the kids were drinking hot chocolate. It gets above 90 degrees in Missouri these days, so Grandpa Mike suggested that perhaps something cold to drink might be more appropriate. Ella cocked her head and said, "Like a Coca-Cola or something? A Diet Coke?" Umm . . . great. Ella does not watch commercial television, but somehow she knows to request a fizzy cold soda by its brand name. Thank God it is farmer's market time.

I should say I consider myself extremely lucky that Ella eats a wide range of food. Unlike some of her friends she is not allergic to milk or wheat or eggs. Granted she will not eat casseroles or lasagna or any other dishes where the ingredients contaminate each other, but one of her favorite vegetables is broccoli, and she'll eat a spear or two of asparagus if there aren't any green beans around. I confess I almost wept with joy when she told me recently that her favorite food is cheese (mine too, sweetie!). But she is still a kid. When given the choice between french fries and limp steamed vegetables to go with her chicken strips, she's going to choose the french fries. With a bucket of ketchup, thank you very much.

On market Saturdays I feel like we are undoing any of the unwise food choices made during the week like the Wednesday night mom-is-too-tired-to-cook pizza or the day Ella decided that nothing but plain spaghetti, string cheese, and ice water would pass through her lips. This morning when we first arrived at the row of white tents shielding their bounty from the brutal heat of the sun, Ella began lobbying for tomatoes. We bought some from a nice Mennonite couple who threw in a free baby yellow squash because Ella had been admiring it so much. Ella then ate an entire tomato out of hand. This is the girl who will not eat anything on her plate a store-bought tomato has touched, much less the store-bought tomato itself. She then ate about half a pint of sugar snap peas. Okay, there was some honey ice cream consumed somewhere in the middle there, but I'm thinking that all of the running around and around in the sprinkler this afternoon cancelled that out.

So here's to farmer's markets and their berries, greens, and beans. And here's to Ella - fingers crossed that our sweet pea keeps right on loving the sweet peas.