Sailor Ella

The hilarity just keeps on coming over here, so here's another snippets post, courtesy of Ella:

"Swear to God, slap my face again," said to her baby doll. (Go right ahead and put those Mother of the Year certificates in the mail...) My mom witnessed this one, and she told me Ella said it with the utmost tenderness and love, and was not in the least bit threatening. I think she maybe was trying to reassure me that Ella wasn't mimicking a horribly abusive mother.

"Sunabitch, my toe!" falling to the ground and holding her toe, mimicking what she had seen me do minutes earlier when she came running over to me and caught the top of my big toenail with the underside of her shoe and I was mortally wounded. She "sunabitch"'d one toe, then took off her other shoe and "sunabitch"'d the other. (Again, those certificates can be sent directly to me.)

Why I feel it's appropriate to post about my two-year-old's swearing sort of escapes me, especially since I'm the one she spends her days with and she's clearly not picking this up on PBS. For some reason I'm apparently totally willing to publicly implicate myself in all of this. For those of you who don't see Ella regularly, she really doesn't do this terribly often, but when she does it is so hilarious - mostly because she says these things in exactly the same way I do - that they're what I remember most and therefore what gets relayed to all of you. If you have children, I'm sure you'll understand how this sort of thing happens, and if you don't have children, why don't you just shut the hell up about my parenting skills?

I'll do my best to be a more civilized example, and in the meantime, I'll continue to share my slip-ups, courtesy of our little parrot Ella Mae.

Ella-isms

As a follow up to the last post, below are several of Ella's latest gems of wisdom. I was reminded to publish this post this evening, when Sean gave Ella a brand new toothbrush, complete with ladybugs, to hopefully help with the nightly toothbrushing battle. Ella's first order of business: brush her belly, poke herself in the eye (after I told her not to poke herself in the eye because it would probably hurt, apparently to make sure I was telling the truth), stick it in her buttcrack, and brush Maggie's teeth.

“It’s a nice sunny day!” She says this every time we’re outside in the sunshine.

“Yes, Mama!” Her standard reply whenever I call for her. It seems so grown-up coming from such a little person.

“I want to hold you,” said when she wants us to hold her.

“Good job, Daddy!” said to Sean when he finished mowing the lawn last weekend.

“Going to let him go back to his family,” said each and every time she lets a bug go. “Family” is pronounced, “fwamwy”.

“Thank you, Mama. That so nice.”

“I brushing my hair so pretty so we can go to the zoo. My friends will be so proud of me!” Said as she was brushing her hair on the morning we met our playgroup at, you guessed it, the zoo.

“OH! He’s so cute! I hold him *every* time,” said of a cute little squirrel at the zoo.

“I going outside for a couple of whiles.”

The other day Ella was playing with the side of the garbage bin in the kitchen, and when I asked her not to do it, she looked me and with a sigh of exasperation, said, “I do it all the time.”

After responding to Ella calling for me from the other room:
Ella: “Don’t yell at me.”
Me, a bit surprised: “I’m not yelling at you, honey.”
Ella: “You’re yelling at me for days.”

At the Asian market this week, I couldn’t find the rice noodles I was looking for, and Ella, seeing that I was a little bit frustrated, asked what was the matter. When I told her, she put her hands up, shook her head, and said, “Oh, damn!” Naturally there was a very nice couple right next to us, who will no doubt nominate me for Mother of the Year.

One night this week we were trying to get Ella to brush her teeth, a previously enjoyable task which has for some reason turned into a nightly throw-down. This week my tactic has been to sing songs about brushing, one of which has a line that repeats the phrase “tooth decay”. “I yike tootie cakes!” she declared at the end of the song. That obviously worked really well.

Ella

I thought it was time I dedicated a post to our littlest and cutest member of the family, who is growing at an alarming rate and somehow getting cuter and more exasperating every day. When Ella was an infant I can remember asking anyone who I thought might give me an answer, “When will this get easier?”, and more than one person told me that it never gets easier. As soon as you master one challenge, another unexpected one rears its head, and that continues all the way through adolescence and early adulthood. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they told me, you’ll find yourself sometime in the near future longing for those days of trying to comfort an inexplicably crying baby in the middle of the night in exchange for the completely unreasonable and illogical toddler who has taken that baby’s place.

That little pearl of wisdom is proving true for us. In some aspects, our days are so much easier now than when Ella was a baby. Now I can actually get a few things done during the day in those moments when she’s happily entertaining herself. She’s mobile and can communicate now, which is a definite improvement on constantly having to guess what was wrong, but as she becomes more independent, the fits become more baffling. One assumes that if an infant is crying, there is some tangible thing that they need and when they get whatever that is, they will be comforted. One should just throw that assumption right out the window with a toddler. There is often absolutely *nothing* wrong, but that is no reason not to throw an epic 45-minute screaming and kicking fit.

Despite the frustrations that come with living with a toddler, there are far more happy moments than sad, and more achievements than setbacks. Although she’s a total firecracker, Ella is incredibly polite, and she melts my heart every day with her cute little pleases and thank-you’s and no-thank-you’s and ‘scuse me’s. She’s also quite expressive, and squeezes her tiny arms around my neck at least once a day and says, “I love you, Mama.”


Our most exciting Ella news of late is that she is potty trained! WOOHOO! She's still using her little potty at home, but isn't opposed to using a regular toilet when we're out and about. We've taken several trips away from home with her in underpants, including an entire morning at the zoo, and I'm so proud to say she hasn't had a single accident and is great about telling me when she needs to go. Her only slips in the past couple of weeks have been at home when we're outside, but that seems to have passed. (Thank goodness, because I was definitely not cool with her dropping trou in the middle of the driveway to pee...) Although she still wears a diaper at night and at naptime, they are almost always dry when she wakes up. It was a bittersweet moment putting her diaper changing pad in storage in the basement. I so clearly remember when she was so tiny she could practically swim on that changing pad, and now she doesn't even need it anymore.

Ella has an insatiable thirst for learning, and I’m constantly amazed at how quickly she’s picking up letters. She knows at least 10 letters now, and is starting to learn their sounds. “F says ‘fuh, fuh, fuh’,” she’ll say. Perhaps the most surprising part is that I really haven’t been trying to teach her letters because I assumed she might be a little young for that. But she picked up “W” on Sesame Street one day, and the floodgates opened. She started pointing out every “W” she saw, on street signs, in books, and on TV. When I realized she was interested, I started to point out other letters, and she has picked them up incredibly quickly. Now she’s even making out letters in her own scribbles and paintbrush strokes and delighting in her seemingly magical ability to “make letters”. I do hope this is a precursor to a life-long love of reading and learning, and that she keeps that thirst for knowledge.

Thanks in large part to Wah Wah Jill, Ella absolutely loves pretending, and wants every inanimate object she comes across to “talk”. When playing blocks, she’ll pick up one block, declare it the mommy, and get a smaller block to be the baby. “I want them to talk,” she’ll say, directing me to play the part of the baby block. She loves bugs, flowers, and birds, and wants to know the name of each new one she sees. Surprisingly, she actually remembers the names, and rather than calling a bird, “bird”, she calls it a robin or a sparrow or a dove or an owl, and so on. She knows the names of all of the bugs we see regularly, and names each flower in our yard.


I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be with Ella each day and to share in her little victories and discoveries. My adventures in motherhood thus far have taught me that although there will always be challenges in parenting, it is so important to appreciate the time we have with our little people in the present. It’s impossible not to think about how much better it will be when they sleep through the night, or are finally potty trained, or whatever the challenge of the day happens to be, but I am trying my best to be aware of the treasure that is Ella’s childhood while she’s still a child, rather than wishing it away in hopes of easier times. I hope I will look back at this entry someday when an impossible teenager has replaced our precocious toddler and we’re longing for the days of two-year-old hissy fits about nothing, and remember those soft little arms around my neck and that adorable small voice telling me she loves me.


The gorgeous photos in this post are courtesy of Kelly Bennett, one of the most talented women I've known. Our experience with her was magical and I couldn't recommend her more highly. You can find her and more of her work at www.kellybennettphotography.com.

Fence

Sean and I spent the entire weekend either actively building the fence or going to the hardware store for the seventeenth thing we forgot to get the last time we were there. The adventure started Thursday, with a trip to Sutherland's Lumber while Ella was at Sage’s house playing with Annica (thanks, Sage!!). Apparently I am not capable of counting higher than 21, because we were six 2x4’s shy of what we needed. We picked those up at Lowes, but good lord, we had to look at every single board they had to find six that were relatively straight and not split or otherwise wrecked.

Just as we were getting ready to dig postholes Thursday afternoon and while I was at Ace Hardware buying screws (which we had of course forgotten at Lowes), Maggie went right ahead and had a seizure. We rushed her to the vet, and there went the rest of Thursday. Incidentally, Maggie seems to be fine and we’re not going to worry too much unless she has another one.

Friday was posthole diggin’ day, and we went right to work in the morning. Our neighbor, Janessa, was sweet enough to take Ella to the park for a couple of hours to allow us to get a jump on things. We thought it best to do the major sawing while Ella was gone, so we used the table saw to rip our 2x4’s into 1x4’s (a huge cost-saving measure, as redwood 1x4s are even more expensive that 2x4s), then began to dig our postholes. Ella came home from the park in one of those moods, and we got very little done the rest of the afternoon. All we were able to manage was bracing the posts on the north side before calling it a day.

Ella sacked out in the lawn chair after
a hard day of being completely impossible.

Saturday morning we hit it early to pour concrete in the postholes. Just as we were ready to mix concrete, we realized that we were short, oh, about a thousand pounds. Literally. One. Thousand. Pounds. Attach trailer to car and go back to Lowes. Again. Bring trailer home a thousand pounds heavier, and proceed with concrete mixing. (Thank goodness for that trailer.)

Cue Ella to completely FREAK OUT. She must have sensed we needed to get something accomplished because she was whining and crying and yelling, “Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!! MAAAAMMMAAAAAA!” all day long. Despite heavy protests, I forced the nap issue and although she didn’t sleep for long at all, she woke up much happier. We got all our posts set and stained all the ones on the north side.

Fence posts set on the north side of the yard.

Sean stayed out until dark mixing and pouring concrete into the postholes on the west side while Ella and I scrubbed the backyard off of ourselves and walked over to the great new Thai place on the corner for takeout.

Sean finishing up after a marathon post-setting
session on the west side of the yard.

My plan was to stain the posts on the west side of the yard early Sunday morning, because the weather forecast called for afternoon thundershowers. It was pouring rain when I woke up at 7:00 and didn’t stop for the rest of the day, so we stayed in and I made apple-cinnamon pancakes for our big Sunday breakfast. If you’d like to give them a try, just add one grated apple and 1 tsp cinnamon to your usual pancake recipe, and also use brown sugar instead of white sugar. After a couple of grocery runs, we spent most of the day drinking frozen cocktails, sewing, and cleaning the house.

Ella stomping in puddles in the rain with
her fun ladybug umbrella from Grandma Janet.

Late Sunday afternoon after the rain had subsided a bit, we tried to figure out what in the Sam-hell we were going to do to hang the 2x4’s between our posts. We first had to devise a clamping/bracing system, after nearly killing each other trying to drill pilot holes for our toe-nailed screws at wonky angles with nothing but a profanity-laden prayer holding the boards in place. This situation is a sure-fire recipe for a divorce. I saved our marriage and worked out a system by clamping a scrap piece of 2x4 behind the 4x4 posts and clamping our 2x4 rail to that. It held the board perfectly flush with the back of our posts and left our hands free to drill pilot holes and drive screws. By the time we figured all of this out, and between Ella having total meltdowns, we had exactly ONE 2x4 rail hung when our only 7/64” drill bit, which was far too short anyway, snapped in half. Cue Dana’s total freak out.

2x4 rail hung on 4x4 post, using toenailed screws
so hardware won't show on opposite side. Bamboo
panels are hung on this face of the 2x4 rail, then
sandwiched between this 2x4 and a 1x4 on the
facing side.

Finally, we arrived at Monday morning and I calmly informed Sean that if we didn’t have bamboo hung on the north side by the end of the day, I was moving. We started the day, as all our others, at Lowes buying more drill bits and two more 2x4’s, because I still can’t count. After hanging three 2x4 rails across the bottom of our fence, I arrived at the unfortunate conclusion that our yard slopes even more than I thought it did and had to remove all the rails and reposition them. After hanging three more rails across the top of the fence, I came to the equally unfortunate conclusion that due to the slope of the yard, the top of the 4x4 corner post, which is attached to our neighbor’s fence, was about 4 inches too short. We now have a new post on that corner, and were only set back an hour.

Ella having a great time going back and forth
to "Fritz's yard" through the peeled-back
chainlink fence on the south side of
our yard. Fritz is our neighbor's dog.

Before we could hang the bamboo panels, all of the 2x4 rails had to be stained, as did the posts on the west side of the yard so we can hang the rails on that side in the next few days. I hung the bamboo panels using my awesome nail gun (thanks, Sean!) before calling it quits to grill a much-deserved steak for Sean and portabella for me. It took seemingly forever to get to this point, but my goodness, is it ever gorgeous. It’s turning out even more beautiful than I had imagined. The backyard I’ve been dreaming about for the last 5 years is finally materializing.

Staining the top 2x4 rails before hanging
the bamboo panels.

First bamboo panel hung! This photo is taken
from our side of the fence, and the 1x4 facing
at the top & bottom of the panel is not yet attached.

Fence as seen from our neighbors' yard
(north side). Posts will be cut flush with the
top rails and a 2x6 cap will cover the top of the
fence, but otherwise this side looks nearly complete.

A closer look at the fence from Dennis & Richard's side.

A Return to the Blog and the Garden!

After a bit of a blogging hiatus, I'm back. The past month was a flurry of out-of-town visitors, trips to Fillmore, yard work, and sewing, sewing, and more sewing. I really thought the Piddies orders would slow down as we get closer to summer, but apparently I was wrong. With lots of return customers and referrals from past customers, things in the Etsy shop are hopping. It's great news for our bank account, and bad news for the house & yard. Mainly just the house, because I'm dying to be outside, so that's where I spend every minute I'm not sewing.

The vegetable garden has been great fun this year, and we've been reaping a small harvest already of greens, radishes, and herbs. It's amazing what a few fresh herbs will do to wake up inspiration in the kitchen. The early part of spring was so cold that despite planting in early March, a lot of the plants are only now in full swing. This has thrown a wrench into what I thought were brilliant plans for planting the warm weather vegetables after the cool weather vegetables had been harvested, and I am now having to be a bit creative about where I plant things. Squashes and cucumbers are being nestled in amongst the radishes in anticipation of the radishes being harvested by the time the squash gets large enough to take up significant space. The peppers have been planted in the same bed as the tomatoes, which should work well considering the tomatoes are trained to grow on a trellis in the center of the bed, leaving the edges free for peppers. With any luck, it will still work out well and we'll have a nice variety of veggies this summer and fall.

Radishes, spinach, and lettuce in the closer bed;
herbs, strawberries, beets, and cabbage in the far bed.
Two other unseen beds hold tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and greens.

Young lettuce.

Ella and I planted our beans today. It proved to be so much fun for Ella that I found her repeatedly digging up the seeds we'd planted so she could plant them again...and again...and again. Sean's genius idea of giving her some small pebbles to "plant" worked like a charm, so hopefully the beans have been exhumed for the last time.

Planting (and replanting) Purple King beans around
the outer perimeter of the pea tower.

We planted two bean varieties today, both pole beans, and will plant the bush beans as soon as there is space in one of the beds - likely where the lettuces are now. My hope is that planting the Purple King pole beans around the outer perimeter of my pea tower will make double use of that space. The peas will have been harvested by the time the beans grow large enough to set fruit (I hope I hope). I also built two bean towers nestled in the spaces between my garden beds, using 6-foot poles, some small pieces of iron flower bed edging I haven't been using, and twine. They turned out quite lovely, and the ornamental Apricot Runner beans should be beautiful on them in a few weeks. The seeds for the Apricot Runners were some of the most gorgeous I've ever seen, and Ella had great fun playing with them before we planted them.

Seeds for the Apricot Runner beans.

Planting and laughing.


Peeking through the pea tower.

Ella so wanted to play inside the bean towers ("It's a HOUSE, Mama," she told me again and again as I was pulling her out from what looked to me like a twine prison) that I was inspired. What fun a little bean "teepee" would be for little ones! The bean towers I made on a bit larger scale would be great, and any quick-growing climbing vine would work well, provided it's not prone to cause skin irritation. Beans would actually be just about perfect, and probably a lot of fun to go inside the fort to harvest! I'm going to scout the yard tomorrow to see if I can find a good place to give it a try.

One of the bean towers, about 5 feet tall and
just under 2 feet in diameter.

An empty snail shell perched on the top of the bean tower,
head-on-a-stake style, in hopes that it will strike fear
into the hearts of those slimy bastards and make them
think twice about eating my tender bean shoots.

I'd love to hear from you about your own gardens! What are you growing, and how do you deal with limited space?

Potty Training Resumed

After being offered a little potty by a friend of mine in our playgroup, I decided to resume potty training in the hopes that it wouldn't end quite so dramatically as it did last time. I'm happy to say that Ella ROCKED it! She went all on her own all day long. The only caveat is that she had to be naked almost the entire time, because it seemed to feel like business as usual when I had her wearing underpants (plus she loves any excuse to be "nuuuuude! I want to be nuuuuude!"). I have been resisting getting the separate little potty and have thus far been trying to get her to use the regular toilet with a potty seat, but it hasn't been consistent because she can't get onto the tall toilet without help. Although I don't relish the thought of having to transition from the little potty to the regular toilet, I am thrilled that she actually likes using the little potty, which she calls the "Fairy Potty" because it has fairy stickers on it, courtesy of my friend's little girls.

The day was going swimmingly, Ella was using the potty and I was actually getting housework, laundry, and Piddies done. As I was packaging a pair of bunnies and a pair of mice to ship this afternoon, Naked Ella climbed up on a chair to see what I was doing. She wanted to help cut the packing tape, so I let her use the small scissors. She asked if she could cut her hair, and when I told her, "Of course not!" she responded with her usual, "Why?" I replied that she would look silly if she cut her hair and left it at that. She climbed down, seemingly satisfied, and went over to her little table where her crayons and crafting supplies are. I turned around just in time to catch her with her little pinking shears up against her head, cutting away. I got them away from her just in the nick of time, and when I asked her why she was cutting her hair, she said, "I want to look silly." Naturally.

A few minutes after the scissors incident, she was racing around the house laughing and giggling in that hilarious high-pitched toddler way, and I was chuckling listening to her while loading the dishwasher. I noticed on her third lap that she was in hot pursuit of the poor cat, and worse, that she had found one of our spray bottles full of water and was unleashing its full fury on poor Daisy. As I was trying to catch her to get the spray bottle away, Ella cornered Daisy and yelled, "ANY QUESTIONS!?" before spraying her in the face, like some kind of tiny, naked Dirty Harry.

We're excited for Easter, and Ella has been thoroughly enjoying the "pwizes" she has received in the mail from Wah Wah Janet, Grandma Betty, Aunt Marie ("Aunt Puh-mie"), and Uncle Denny (who totally outdid himself with the packaging this time - see photo). I'm planning to color Easter eggs with her on Friday at Wah Wah Jill's house, assuming I get my act together in time to actually *get* to Wah Wah Jill's house before Easter. I've got about 6 pairs of bunnies to cobble tonight, and tomorrow I have to go get the little "pwizes" for Ella's Easter basket. My insane belief that I can do about twice as much as I actually can strikes again.

Showing off the rather hefty box sent by Uncle Denny (and Uncle Richard by proxy).


Sporting some of her fun new Easter "pwizes".

Below is a video (or as Ella says, an "Ella bido-eo") of Ella at her finest: washing her hair with the handsoap at the bathroom sink, singing some songs, and performing several examples of her "picture smile". Enjoy!