Baby Dora and Baby Beluga

For quite some time now, Ella has taken to calling herself Baby Dora (named, I can only surmise, after Dora the Explorer whose television show is one of Ella's favorites).  If we call her Ella, she will quickly correct us. "No, Mommy, I'm Baby Dora."  This is cute as long as she is not milking the 'baby' part of her new name to avoid doing a task she knows how to do.  Neither Josh nor I has a lot of patience for her refusing to put on her shoes or go to the bathroom because "Baby Dora doesn't know how.  She's just a baby."

Then a month or so ago, she heard the French children's song Alouette and started calling herself Baby Dora Alouette.  This was frequently accompanied by her singing Alouette which is charming in all of the adorable mis-pronounciations of the French words.

Most recently, she has told us that her name is Baby Dora Alouette Bad Guy.  And sometimes Baby Dora Alouette Bad Guy Bad Man Bad Fish.  I blame the boys in her class at school for teaching her about bad guys although, rather adorably, when you ask her what a bad guy does, she tells us that he is someone who throws other people's things in the trash.

Somewhere along the way, she decided that her brother needed an equally good name to go along with Baby Dora so she started calling him Baby Beluga.  There are frequent references to Dash being a little white whale which is actually pretty spot-on.  He is little and he is white.  And he is (kind of) on the go.  Are you singing Raffi to yourself yet?

Tonight I said to Dash, "You are such a sweet boy!" and Ella replied, "No, Mommy, he's such a sweet WHALE!"

Omar, lost in the woods

Based on my recent posting about Ella and the last number, you are probably thinking that Ella is some kind of math genius.  I am here today to tell you that we still have some work to do.

This afternoon we took a walk around the block because the weather was so darn perfect.  The sun was shining and the fall leaves were dancing to the ground in the wind.  As we were walking on the street, I asked Ella to hold my hand and she asked me why.  I explained that I wanted her to be close to me in case any cars came by.  She then explained to me that Omar did not hold her hand when he was on a walk and he got lost. 

Me: Lost where? 
Ella: In the woods!

Me:  How did he get home?
Ella:  Someone else found him and brought him home.

Me:  When did this happen?
Ella:  Um, thirty years ago.

Me:  How old is Omar?
Ella <with a look that says Come-on-Mom-why-do-you-ask-such-ridiculous questions>:  FOUR!

Teaching about giving

I've started thinking about how to teach my children about giving.  On a daily basis, I hope that Josh and I are passing on the message that helping other people is an important part of life.  But as the gift-giving holidays are approaching, I've been trying to come up with more concrete ways to show our kids that giving to others is an important part of the holidays.  Ella has been asking a lot about Santa and what kinds of presents he might bring.  I try to bring the conversation back around to gifts she might like to give to other people in our family but I can tell this is going to be an uphill battle.  And I don't want her to only think about the people in our family but about our larger community and people who might really need things that we take for granted every day.  I know that Ella has no idea how lucky and privileged she is, and that's OK.  She's three, so her world view is not exactly, well, worldly yet.

But how to really show her how to give?  That's a tough one.  Josh and I have taken the easy road in the last few years - we take our holiday bonuses and give a large portion of them to a few charities that we really believe in.  Each of us picks one or two organizations each year and off go the checks.  It takes almost no time and almost no effort and it makes us feel like we've done something good.  I hope we'll always be in a position to give to worthy causes but somehow writing a check doesn't seem like a lesson that will mean much to our three-year old. 

So lately I've been feeling like we could do more to actually show our children some helping activities in action. You know, that whole 'kids learn by watching their parents thing'. The reality is, of course, that we are painfully busy with our everyday activities and I haven't yet come up with a good volunteer opportunity that Ella could actually witness.

One thing that I love about Ella's preschool is that one of their core principles is Tzedekah (the practice of justice and charity) and they actually act on this concept quite a lot.  This week the children are bringing in cans of food for a Thanksgiving canned food drive in conjunction with the synagogue where the school is located.  They line them up in the hallway and make a huge number line to count all the cans as they come in.  It's a good numbers exercise, at least, and maybe it's starting to plant the right seeds.

What are some good ways to teach a young child about giving back?  I'd like to know what other parents with small children do to start instilling this important value.

[An addendum.... one of my favorite irreverent parenting sites had a relevant post about this topic that made me laugh: Lydia's Plan for the Holidays]

Mama, is a hundred the last number?

This past weekend, I took Ella on a trip to Philadelphia to visit my dear friend Kate and her two-year old son.  I'll write about that adventure soon because it really was just that, quite an adventure.

But a quick story now that happened while we were in Philadelphia.  Ella and I were both sleeping in a double bed in the guest room (a topic for yet another post) and when I opened my eyes on Saturday morning, there was Ella's smiling face, not six inches away from my own face.  Her first words were not of the "I love you, Mama, and <in my fantasy> can we go back to sleep for another two hours?"  but rather "can I have candy corn for breakfast?"  After a quick explanation that pure sugar is not considered an acceptable growing food, she then, in her very Ella way, looked at me and asked very seriously "Mama, is a hundred the last number"?  

Quite the question for a dark, cold, early morning.

I mumbled something about a million, billion, trillion, and then infinity.  And then I suggested we go downstairs and make some cinnamon toast.

A fantastic drawing

The other day, Ella spent quite some time working on a drawing on her easel.   She called me over to see her very elaborate drawing and described all the parts to me.  There was mommy and daddy, Ella and baby Dash.  She not only drew each of us but wrote our names around the edges.  Then she drew our beds (at the top in the big circle) and our house (at the bottom in the big circle). 

I love seeing the art she comes up with on her own.  This is the finished product:





Apples, apples, apples!!!

I've mentioned before how distressing I find it that Ella eats so few fruits and vegetables.  The fruits are especially mysterious to me since I see so many children her age who will eat apples, bananas, berries, watermelon, and so on.  Her fruit intake lately has consisted of raisins (sometimes), dried strawberries, fresh strawberries, and well, that's it.

So tonight for dinner, as I often do, I put slices of apple on her plate (next to her grilled cheese sandwich. I know, I know, not exactly family dinner fare but to my credit, it was on whole wheat bread and had mashed squash mixed in with the cheese, OK?!).  She and I sat chatting during dinner and she told me several times that she doesn't like apples and was only planning to eat her sandwich. 

At some point during the meal, I told Ella that starting in a few days, we were going to have a new rule, the One Bite Rule.  I told her she would need to take one bite of new foods just to see if she might like them.  This just came to me while we were talking, born certainly out of my annoyance that she wouldn't even try the delicious, mountain-grown, fresh, crisp yummy apple on her plate THAT I KNEW SHE WOULD LIKE IF SHE WOULD JUST TRY IT.  Deep breath.

Anyway, after being told about the One Bite Rule, Ella gave me a lengthy spiel about how she has a Two Bite Rule with her babies and how they don't like to try new foods and how they just take teeny tiny nibbles.  Typical Ella.  I asked her if she wanted to start the new rule tonight or wait until tomorrow.  She said tomorrow. Typical Ella.

And then she started nibbling the apple.  Tiny bites, no microscopic bites.  And then she started taking actual bites.  One piece disappeared, then the next, and as I sat there, practically tap dancing on the inside, she proceeded to eat the entire serving of apples.  She told me how it was sour and then sweet and how much she liked how it went crunch, crunch, crunch.  And then.... wait for it.... SHE ASKED FOR MORE!

I'm not entirely sure why I am so (ridiculously, some might say) excited about my three-year old eating an apple.  But I sure am!

[And in an unrelated noted, for those keeping track at home, we're on night 4 of sleeping shirtless] 

No shirts at night

Pajamas have long been important to Ella.  She has gone through several phases of 'mix-up' (i.e. only wearing mismatched pajama tops and bottoms, and mismatched socks), 'match-up' (all matching pajamas and socks), various odd layering phases such as wearing a summer nightgown with long pants and long sleeves on top, and some very specific decisions on short versus long pajamas depending on the various injuries she may have incurred and where a bandaid might be located.

Two nights ago, she woke up crying at 2 a.m. and when Josh went to investigate, he found her in bed with a wet shirt from a water cup she'd had in her bed.  She insisted on changing her shirt and everyone got back to sleep.  The next morning, however, she announced that she was no longer going to wear shirts to bed since they could get wet.  She told us that pants and socks don't get water on them in bed but shirts do.  There was no amount of arguing about how other clothing could get wet or that she could avoid all water spillage in the night by not insisting on keeping a water cup in her bed.  Nope, shirts are the problem in her mind and that's that.

And sure enough, last night, she went to bed in her pajama bottoms and socks and no shirt.

Wonder how long this phase will last.