Doug is a great translator

Elisabeth has a cold. Last night at dinner, she really didn't feel good. She climbed into my lap and asked me to sing her "Jesus songs." Despite my growing up at church every time the doors were open, only a few Jesus songs sprung to mind. I sang Jesus Loves the Little Children and Jesus Loves Me. Then she sat up and said, "oh, I know a Jesus song!! I know!" (I wish you could see her little finger pointing straight up (like making a #1 sign). "That song about Jesus.... where he couldn't stay in the hospital? Yeah Jesus can't stay in the hospital."

I was stumped.

Finally, Doug said, "Away in a manger?" And she said, "YES! That's it! Jesus couldn't stay in the hospital so had to be born in a manger."

I am quite thankful he was there because otherwise, Elisabeth and I would still be at the dinner table arguing over which song it was.

another funny saying

Elisabeth has just really blossomed this week with funny sayings. I love it, it makes me remember that she's just a little girl!

I went to a farmer's market yesterday with Heather, and I brought home 6 ears of sweet corn. There is seriously nothing better than fresh picked sweet corn. Elisabeth agrees. She was very excited when I brought it home, and talked about it all day. "Mommy! We're going to have corn tonight. Corn on the hedge!" We corrected her a few times, but then we stopped. I'm pretty sure I prefer corn on the hedge to corn on the cob anyway.

It reminds me of the Amelia Bedelia story where Cousin Alcolu has to prune the hedges and he goes out and puts prunes on the hedges. I think we'll be eating corn on the hedge for a long time.

oh, and I mis-spelled how Elisabeth says freckle. Its not freeckle, its frinkle.

two cute words

Freeckle and googles.

This summer, we've done a lot more swimming and other outdoors activities than in summers past. We've learned that Elisabeth, brave as she is, becomes a big chicken when she might possibly get water splashed somewhere within 3 feet of her face. I feel sorry for her, because she seems genuinely petrified of getting water in her face.

Yesterday, I took her to a local water park where they have a big pool with lots of slides and they also have a "lazy river" type of thing where you can float around in a big tube or swim. Doug stayed home with Charlotte (who is sick with a summer cold!!!). I had previously thought I could handle the two girls, but I'm so glad I didn't try. Elisabeth requires both of my arms and all of my strength. Most of the kids Elisabeth's age wear life vests that they hand out for free there. The vest keeps her from sinking, but she has no faith of this fact so she clings to me for dear life. Two times she managed to let go of me and doggie paddle around. She was really proud of herself. But the lazy river was just about her greatest nightmare. We floated in a tube, her on my lap. And after 30 seconds we encountered the first of a few "water features" where they have buckets dumping water on your head. I thought she was going to have a panic attack right then and there. Needless to say, we got off of the lazy river at our first opportunity and went back to the safety of the 12 inch deep toddler pool.

Our neighbors were there also. They suggested I let Elisabeth wear goggles. She was thrilled with this. I am now worried she will want to wear goggles in the bathtub. Anyway, she calls them googles. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising since she has a very good understanding of what it means to "google something." But it is perhaps an interesting commentary on our life that our kid learns what googling something means before she learns about swim apparel.

All of this sun exposure has caused me to get more freckles. We showed our freckles to Elisabeth, who was fascinated with them. And ever since, she's been asking to see freeckles, which I think is one of the cutest mispronounciations she's had.

I'm curious to see if she demands googles at swim class tomorrow. If she does, she's out of luck. The only pair I have is useless, the rubber strap fell into about 32 pieces when I got them out last night after we got home. The good money is on Charlotte swimming before Elisabeth.

If you got a problem, yo I'll solve it...

There are things that I cannot change. Such as the fact that Elisabeth is trying to slowly kill me with her independent (nice word for stubborn) spirit. Many times each day, I'll ask her to do something. Her immediate response is "no, but..." As an example, today we were getting ready to go to Target to buy some cheap home decor to replace the home decor that is now covered in things such as barbeque sauce, honey, cat puke and cheerio dust (the waiting list to be a visitor in our home is long, for obvious reasons). I said to Elisabeth, who was fiddling with Doug's computer - opening the CD drive - "what are you doing?" Elisabeth said, "I'm going to play the Arthur game." I said, "no, you need to get ready to go. Besides Daddy and I can't figure that game out, it must be broken." Elisabeth said, "no... but... I am just going to play for a feeeeeeeew minutes. I can play it by myself."

"No... but" must precede 75% of the things Elisabeth says. Maybe this is an indication that I say not to do things too frequently, but when she's doing backflips off of the couch, feeding Charlotte things she's not supposed to be eating yet, touching daddy's computer with slimy hands, not going to the potty when it is very clear that she needs to - I have to tell her not to do these things. She's 3. She needs direction. Hearing "no, but" precede everything out of her mouth is killing me. I have a plan in place to cure her of this, involving timeouts and every other aresenal in my bag, but that usually takes a few weeks. I don't need to eliminate it. I just need to lessen it.

There are, however, things I can change. Elisabeth's other way of driving me nuts these days is chewing on her hair. Normally I wouldn't care. But I am the one who has to wrestle her daily to brush her hair and then weekly to wash it. Both of these tasks are daunting to say the least. The washing has crossed the line into abuse, I fear. Dumping water on her head while she screams bloody murder. Anyway, the chewing of the hair isn't helping. It makes her hair crunchy, ratty, and brittle. All of these things lead to tangles, which are my nemesis because then I have to hold her down and brush her hair. After her 53rd warning of the hour to stop chewing her hair, I carried through on my threat of cutting her hair right off.

She was thrilled with the idea. I was mostly thrilled with the idea. I got out the hair cutting stuff. Got her a stool and some books to prop her up on. Then I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. So after calling my mother and my neighbor, both of whom have raised little girls, and getting no answer from either of them, I consulted the oracle of oracles - google. A quick search for "how to cut hair" yielded a page showing how to do an angled bob. I quickly read what they had to say, and dove in with step one.





So after step 1, I had a panic attack. I had no clue what I was doing. None. I couldn't let her sense my insecurities, so I started trying to figure out where the nearest salon that might cut a 3 yr old's hair was. Then I decided that I had already started, I would finish and if it was that bad, I'd take her somewhere to have it fixed. I went back to consult my google find. Things got complicated here. There were words I didn't understand. It was obviously drafted for someone who had been through beauty school which I, most definitely, have not. So I begun to wing it. I mean, I've had my hair cut approximately 31 zillion times - see one, do one, teach one - right? I began by determining the length the front needed to be so that she couldn't chew on and worked backwards from there. She was really frustrated with me because it took so long. But I think, in the end, the results are good!



For a comparison, here's a picture I took of her at the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum on Friday (she's in a Cessna)



So, we still have the "no...but" situation, but the crunchy hair situation has been resolved with a little help from my friend Google. And did I mention that I did at least 75% of the haircut with Charlotte strapped to my back to keep her from screaming her head off? Fun times. Sadly, I can't threaten to physically remove too many things if they are the source of irritation for me. I'm pretty sure that would justify calls to the authorities. But hair? That I can change.

someone explain this to me

As part of my quest to eat fewer carbs, or at least balance the carbs that I do eat with some protein, I've started eating some bacon with my breakfast. I went to Costco and got the big package of Kirkland (their generic brand) precooked bacon. It said it was made by Hormel on the outside. It was absolutely delicious. Not a ton of fat, quite tasty, all in all perfect. It quickly became Charlotte's favorite food (aside from pizza, of course).

Then I ran out of this bacon. So I went to Safeway, and bought Hormel pre-cooked bacon. Ought to be the same, right? NO! This new bacon does a disservice to all things ever called bacon. It is offensive to the very notion of bacon. It tastes like I imagine a greeting card tastes - a greeting card steeped in tea made with bacon bits and cigarette ashes. Chewy is an understatement. You're better off ripping it into bits and swallowing it whole. Absolutely horrible. Charlotte tried one bite and looked at me with this look that said, loudly, "Mommy, I trusted you. Why did you do this to me?" And now she won't touch it.

So Hormel bacon branded by Kirkland? Gooooooood. Hormel bacon bought at the grocery store? Dog treats.

The little one loves pizza

Yesterday, we went to our favorite lunch spot. Well one of them, anyway. We always order the same thing. I have a marinated steak kabob wrap and the girls share a 7-inch cheese pizza. We all share a basket of their amazing fries, which are fried in olive oil. My sandwich comes with baked pita chips and grapes, of which I get to eat none. They are immediately distributed to the little people. I usually come home with a takeout box with 3 pieces of pizza in it, which is exactly half of the kids pizza.

Then yesterday happened. Elisabeth, as per usual, ate my pita chips and some grapes and some fries all the while complaining the pizza was too hot. Pizza miraculously goes from too hot to too cold with Elisabeth.

A quick aside about food temperature and Elisabeth. She used to want all of her food cold. Like really cold. Essentially frozen. Just put the chicken nuggets on her plate and let her gnaw on them. Now she wants it "warm." This is a completely unattainable goal. Inevitably what I give her is too hot or too cold. I go for too hot so that there is some hope she'll touch it a few minutes later and decide it is "warm" but this doesn't frequently happen. On the off chance that I hit "warm" on the first try, I get quite an affirmation. "See, mommy! I knew you could do it! You got it warm! Good job!"

Back to pizza. So Elisabeth picked about. She managed to eat all of one piece and some of a second. Charlotte, however, plowed through the grapes I put on her plate, a bunch of fries, and ladies and gentlement, that kid at 4.5 pieces of pizza. And she was madder than a hornet when they came and took the (empty) plate away. She just sat there for thirty minutes shoving pizza pieces in her mouth as fast as I could tear them off. It was actually a sight to behold.

I was terrified to pick her up and carry her to the car through the restaurant because she's got a puking track record. I very gently carried her out. She kept it all down and then had herself a nice restful fat bellied nap.

I'm very curious to see if she's blown past the 5th percentile at her 1 yr appt.

11 years ago today...

I started my first post-college job, at MicroStrategy. All of the new hires started in groups called "bootcamps." We went through 6 (?) weeks of training together. Throw a bunch of recent college grads together, add in good paychecks and you'll get a bit (ok, a lot) of craziness. I was quite lucky, I think, in that my bootcamp group was fantastic. I'm happy to still call many of them friends. But oh how times have changed. Let's compare Erica from 1997 to Erica from 2008.

• July 21, 1997 Erica lived for two weeks on brownies, beer, and ice cream because she got home from work very very late every night and that's all she had in the fridge/freezer and really, she didn't know how to cook anyway.
• July 21, 2008 Erica just made teriyaki pork tenderloin with rice and veggies for her family. She is, however, having a beer.
• July 21, 1997 Erica drove to her first day of work while drinking her traditional Coke for breakfast - the Coke for breakfast that she'd been having every day since sometime around 1988.
• July 21, 2008 Erica no longer drinks Coke for breakfast. Realizing that maybe it isn't the greatest plan, she now drinks a little bit of coffee for the caffeine, lots of water, and counts the minutes until lunch when she feels she can have her icy Coke.
• July 21, 1997 Erica drove to her first day of work in her brand spanking new Ford Explorer Sport (which despite what the Floridian salespeople told her did in fact need 4WD since it does in fact snow up here in Virginia and there is NO WEIGHT over the rear wheels of an SUV and when that SUV is rear wheel drive, this presents a problem. I digress.) and spilled the aforementioned Coke all over her brand spanking new white linen pants. Cursing, she wondered if there was anything worse that could happen on a first day.
• July 21, 2008 Erica knows that there are worse things that can happen on a first day. Spit up. Stains like Coke, and smells a million and a half times worse.
• July 21, 1997 Erica was only responsible for her own life and did a mediocre job at best of managing it.
• July 21, 2008 Erica is not only responsible for her own life, but is at least partially responsible for the lives of two children and three pets. I'm happy to report they're all still kicking. Although Silly the cat is rapidly using up her lives, at least as far as they exist in my book.
• July 21, 1997 Erica had no idea that accepting a job at MicroStrategy would introduce her to Doug - her best friend, soulmate, and support system. She merely liked the DC area and wanted to do anything other than biology and get paid for it.
• July 21, 2008 Erica is happy to have outgrown the July 21,1997 Erica.

11 years can really fly by. I can't even contemplate that in 11 more years, Elisabeth will be 14 years old. I feel like I blinked and here I am.