Fun Lunches

Lately I've been excited about making cute lunches for Eliana, especially in the form of bento. She's been pretty excited about them, too, and yesterday I took a few pictures of her enjoying the cute lunch I'd prepared...

The bento.

Lunchtime!

Digging in!

I love the look on her face on this one!

Now... isn't that more fun than just a plain old sandwich?

I've blogged about bentos before on Train Up A Child, but lately they've been taking over that blog, so I decided it was time to start a new blog just for bentos. =D I don't make them every day, but when I do I now have a place to blog about them. Feel free to follow the cute food there if you'd like. Otherwise you can just hang out here and wait for more cute pictures of the girl. =D

Weight and Height

It's been a long time since I've recorded Eliana's weight and height. But she's been looking taller lately, so I got brave and decided to measure her and see just how tall she's gotten. Here are the newest stats (though her weight is from a visit to the Dr. a couple weeks ago)...

Weight: 33 lbs
Height: 37 inches

That means she's still at about the 90% mark for both weight and height.

Craziness.

Quote o' the Day

Ellie: "I would like another banana!"
Mommy: "Don't you think that will make you constipated?" (She's already had at least one banana this morning)
Ellie: "No.... Letters! Constipated isn't a word!"

Ha ha! I don't know where she comes up with these things, but they crack me up!

On the subject of bananas, Ellie has been eating one or two bananas every morning for breakfast. She gets up, pushes her stool up to the counter and climbs up to reach the bananas hanging from the cabinet. When she retrieves one she brings it to me so I can break the top open, and then she goes off, peels the banana, and eats it for breakfast. It's been going on for a couple weeks now and I have to say I am loving the independence!

Two Year Old: 3, Parent: 0

Ellie and I had a battle of wills the other night. I lost. She wanted to scream; as far as I can tell, she wanted to scream because she wanted to scream. She didn't want anything. I asked her to stop screaming. She kept screaming. And screaming. And screaming. Eventually she experienced hypoxia and couldn't scream any more. I thought I'd won. So I thanked her for stopping screaming. Then she said, "Don't say thank you!" and started screaming again. The cycle repeated. After the third time, I didn't thank her. She won.

It turns out, she wanted to win more than she wanted to breathe.

Afterward, she wanted to eat. I got her settled into her chair at the table. When I tried to talk to her she shouted, "Don't talk to me!" When I tried to rub her back to calm her down she shouted, "Don't touch me!" When I tried to leave to work on dishes, she whined "Don't go away."

I've heard tales of another member of my family saying something similar.

Butte, America

Tonight Leif and I went to see the Bozeman Premier of Butte, America, a film about, well, Butte! The first showing was in Butte, but Pamela Roberts is from Bozeman, so the film's second showing was here in town, at the Emerson. Tickets were free, and it was a packed house. By packed house, I mean that every seat in the theater was filled and they turned away quite a few people who were hoping for tickets. And after the lights went down, I saw a guy carry a folding chair waaaay up into the top of the balcony, I'm guessing because he'd gotten in, but hadn't gotten a seat.

The film was good. I wouldn't mind owning a copy of it. It definitely gave me a better understanding of the culture and history surrounding Butte. Living in a neighboring town, there were things that I never quite understood about Butte. I didn't understand the pride that people have in a mining town. I didn't understand how this once great town had fallen to where it is today. I didn't understand what happened to all its past glory because, well, I've driven through Butte and there isn't much of that past glory still standing. And I didn't understand "Our Lady of the Rockies."

The film answered a lot of these questions, but more than that, it put flesh on what had been a skeleton of historical fact. Rarely seen photographs and footage offered perspective about the mining town that I hadn't had before. Personal testimony from miners and their families brought the days and nights to life for those of us in the audience. The stories intertwined on a timeline not only of Butte's history, but the history of the world, painted a picture of what it was like when copper was king.

Butte, America will broadcast on PBS in the fall, and will be available for purchase on DVD at that time as well. Prior to its television and DVD release, I believe that the film will make its way around select cities in the U.S. If you have the opportunity to go see it, I highly recommend it. And if you don't happen to live in one of the cities where it is playing, don't worry... just come visit us after it comes out on DVD. We'll probably make you watch it. ;D (And then we'll all go on a field trip to see the Berkley Pit.)

A kind of fruit.

Just now Eliana and I were sitting here when she says to me...

"I would like a banana, Mommy." (short pause) "A banana is a fruit. A banana is a kind of fruit!"

That cracked me up! You can't argue with her, though... She is completely correct!

Misunderestimation

All three of us seem to have come down with something flu-like during the night. About 6 Ellie woke up with a scream. She walked into the bathroom by herself. I got up to check on her. She was dry heaving over the toilet. Shortly after I got in there, she let out a massive ejection of puke (based on what you figure could fit in a 30 pound kid's stomach). I started rubbing her back and telling her it would be OK and that she'd done quite well by throwing up into the toilet. She looked at me with a confused look and let loose with another equally massive eruption, aimed squarely at my chest.

It turns out, I underestimated the capacity of my two year old's stomach.