Cerin Amroth

As we were riding in the van this afternoon (she likes doing errands with Mama for a change of pace on the weekend), Ella was comparing the two different Peter Pan movies — the original Disney and Return to Neverland. She said that everyone got older in the second movie, except Peter Pan. “I wonder why not.” Then she said that a crocodile was chasing Captain Hook in the first movie, but it was an octopus in the second movie. “I wonder why they made that change.”

I can only hope that some day she’ll come up with a third — and much better — Peter Pan movie.

I also posted lots more pictures.

Ella has written her first work of fiction, and she’s dedicated it to me!  I’m very proud.

Granted, it is an adaptation.  And granted, it’s not exactly what you’d call legible.  Technically, it consists of around a dozen post-it pages, each covered in dense scribbles of blue ink.  But as she arrayed them out proudly before me she told me it was her Rapunzel story and that it was for me.

I started gathering the pages up — making sure with her that I was putting them in the right order — but it quickly became clear that despite the dedication, this was not a gift.  She demanded separate cash payment for each individual page.

So, I do have some doubts about her business model, but her creative drive cannot be denied.  In fact, she’s working on her second story as I write — titled, I just learned, “The Garden Who Wanted to Grow, and It Did Grow.”

Yesterday, Dominic watched intently as Ella went through all the steps of retrieving a DVD from the cupboard in the TV stand, putting it in the DVD player, turning on the TV and receiver, and pressing Play.

Today, he has made it his life’s work to duplicate this feat.  Taking DVDs out and spreading them all over the floor is de rigeur, but today he has been dedicating special attention to getting the actual discs out of their cases.  Thus far he lacks the strength to open your traditional snap-closed DVD case, but there are plenty of book-in-sleeve ones that proved easy for him.

Figuring out the proper sequence of actions to perform on the assortment of technological devices is proving far more difficult for him.  So many buttons!  He has not, thankfully, discovered “Eject,” though he did manage to change the sound settings so that NPR sounds like it’s being broadcast from a tinny speaker at the far end of a deserted coliseum.

His project was derailed by the alluring prospect of furniture to crawl on.   The other day he climbed on a dining room chair and from there onto the dining room table.

Suffice it to say that Big D will bear some additional surveillance, going forward.

When Ella and Symon ride to preschool together in the back of the minivan, there is an understanding that, if both of them have something to say, they take turns talking.  Today, though, that only served to shift the terms of the argument.  They were talking about various times they had visited the zoo and what they had seen there.  Ella was holding forth on the subject and, sensing that Symon wanted to chime in, started adding subclauses and tales-within-tales to her narrative in a way that would have made Shaharazad proud.  Symon took advantage of a slight gap in her stream of verbiage to slip in an extremely rapid rejoinder, which only led Ella to turn up the volume.

“I was talking!  It’s my turn!” said Symon, choosing, of course, to interpret his interjection as the legitimate beginning of His Turn.

“No, I was talking!” shouted Ella.  If this were a political campaign she would no doubt have any number of bloggers at the ready to point out that she had not officially ceased her turn and that Symon’s words were technically an interruption.  Bloggers on the other side would point out that Ella’s clear intention was to dominate the conversation by refusing to end her turn at all — the preschool equivalent of a filibuster.

They traded yells of “I was talking!” until they were both saying it as fast and as loud as they could, until the sheer pressure of it was too much and Ella burst into tears.  (Hey, it worked for Clinton.)  It took a few minutes to settle things down from the driver’s seat and get them back on a civil taking-turns tack.  And the really amazing thing about it?  They picked up their conversation exactly where they had left off:  on the question of why birds don’t wear shoes.

I’m not sure when it happened exactly, only that as of this morning Ella is well past this particular marker.  I am no longer the Guy Who Provides Initial Inspiration and Overarching Guidance for What We Are Building with Legos.  I am now the Guy On Call to Separate Pieces That Are Stuck Together, and am otherwise welcome only in an advisory capacity.

This morning, I took Ella and Big D to the library. It had been a while since I had gone with Big D to a library. The past few times, it’s been Ella and me, leaving Big D home with Nate. He had fallen asleep in the car while we were searching for a parking place, so I figured he was going to be pretty sedate during the trip. As it turned out, the sight of so many books gave him newfound energy.

He couldn’t believe his great fortune. Not only were there books to pull off shelves at every turn, but all the shelves in the children’s section were a perfect height for him. He couldn’t contain his excitement as he went from shelf to shelf, pulling off books. I’m sure his squeals could be heard throughout the building. I tried to contain the mess, but they do have those “Please don’t reshelve books” signs hanging everywhere.

Normally, he would at least stop to page through the first few pages of a book before moving on to the next, but he couldn’t be bothered with that. At one point, we discovered the board books section, and he had at least half the books on the floor. I had to reshelve that mess, but I didn’t feel bad about doing it because it was clear that they aren’t concerned about that section being in order on the shelves.

He’s taking a nap right now, and I’m sure he’s dreaming of shelves and shelves of books. And now I’m off to enjoy the quiet apartment and the blessing of coinciding naps on a Saturday afternoon!