Cerin Amroth

I posted some new pictures. If you look closely at the last few pictures, you can see Ella’s new haircut.

On Thursday, I was the parent helper in Ella’s classroom. This made her the coop kid. She lives for this opportunity because she likes having us there with her and likes the tasks she gets as coop kid for the day. As we were getting ready, she informed me that Peter [as in Pan] was going to be her parent helper. “But what about me?,” I said. She said that Peter was also her parent, so we were going to do it together.

The first task for the coop kid is setting out her classmates’ name tags for circle time. I was relieved to see when we got inside that there was only one “Parent Helper” name tag in the circle. After we sat down, Ella’s teacher asked her to introduce her parent helper. Without hesitating she said, “My parent helpers are my mom and Peter.” The other kids were befuddled. They all started asking who, where, and why questions about Peter. Ella explained that he was sitting next to me. She stated it so matter of factly, that the kids stopped asking questions and moved on to other distractions.

That was the only time Peter factored in to the day. After we got home, I asked Ella what Peter helped with at school. She said he played games with the kids … yes, that’s Peter getting credit for things I was doing. Where was Peter when we had to get the snack ready and clean up at the end of the day?!?!

She was very eager to participate in the sharing portion of her job as coop kid. She brought two things with her to school — a small hedgehog stuffed animal and her I Spy game. During sharing, she left the circle to get the items out of her cubby. The game was hard to carry, and she dropped it on the floor as she approached the circle. She played it off like she had meant to do it. She was very eager to answer her friends’ questions about her items. She stood in the middle of the circle and called on anyone who remotely looked as if their hand was in the air. When the kids discovered that the game had a bell, they were all leaving their circle spots to try to ring it and chaos ensued. Ella tried to restore order by offering to bring the bell to each person to let them ring it. She did the same thing with the hedgehog, so everyone could touch it. She seemed mildly upset about the chaos her friends were creating and eager to do what she could to restore order.

Ella and I went clothes shopping on Saturday. It’s a house rule to take at least one child with you during weekend errands, and Ella needed new pants, so I brought her along on my search for new jeans. She and I have done this before. Usually, she’s content to pretend that she’s trying something new on. In fact, it’s far better if I let her pretend than if I have to struggle with her to actually try something on.

At the store, I saw a sun dress with giraffes on it. To my amazement, she agreed to try it on. She refuses to wear dresses, but she really likes giraffes, so she was in a quandary. Actually, I think she didn’t realize it was a dress, so the giraffes were enough to entice her. When she asked what it was, we were already on the way to the dressing room, so I told her it was a long shirt.

The first few minutes were caught up in pretending to try on shoes and a coat. This allowed me to get through most of my pile. When she finally got her clothes off, I suggested she try the sun dress.  She stepped into it and immediately realized what she’d gotten herself in to. She took one look at the mirror and plainly stated, “It’s beautiful, and I don’t want to be beautiful.” I’m sure there was a “humph,” pout, and crossed arms at the end of that, as well. If only she knew how much like a super model she was behaving.

Don’t get me wrong, I love playing with Ella.  But she is a willful soul, and even if I am game for playing backgammon or reading books or doing a puzzle — her choice! — if she wants to play “camping” with her Playmobile motor home yet again, there is no earthly force that I can muster that will change her mind.  She has crossed a threshold, and now she comes up with her own ideas about how to do things, and considers the ideas of others with a default stance of skepticism.

Dominic, bless his heart, has not yet crossed that threshold.  This afternoon when he was getting a bit listless I leaned in toward him and said, “Dominic!  I have a wonderful idea of what we can do!  Let me go get something!”  And I headed for the toy shelf in the bedroom.

Immediately he started smiling and clapping his hands together as he followed after.  I took the box full of wooden blocks off the shelf, and though he didn’t know what was inside it yet, he could hardly contain his excitement.  Back in the living room I laid on a bit of drama as I was popping open the top, to the point where he literally shrieked with delight as I unveiled the blocks.

And they could have been anything.  A box full of paper clips and wet noodles would have garnered the same response.  The important thing was that Daddy was bringing forth something super duper cool, and that was enough for him.

One thing about the little ‘uns: they sure are easy on the ego.

He’s now moved beyond each of our names (Ella, Mama or Mom, and Daddy or Da) and is on to Done (I think I even heard All Done tonight at supper), Hi (which sounds more like Ha), More (Nate reports he now says this, instead of using the hand signal), and Yes. It’s so cute when he holds the cell phone — or anything that resembles a phone shape — to his ear and says Ha.

His other cute thing is his dancing move. He bends slightly at the waist, extends his straightened arms behind him, and turns around in circles. On Tuesday night, Symon was over while Nate and Symon’s mom went to a parent education night at the preschool. We got out Hulabaloo (a game Ella got to play at her birthday party). It has recorded music segments in it. Dominic was going crazy dancing and trying to make sounds louder than Ella and Symon combined. It was pretty crazy for a while.

And I’ve posted a few new pictures because I’m sure the grandparents are in withdrawal.