JUMP!! (Wordless Wednesday)

Ellie and Grandad at the River

These pictures were taken at the end of February when Leif's parents came to visit one afternoon.

Stalling Tactics

Eliana doesn't really like going to bed. A few days ago she was up to her usual stalling antics, and she went through the usual routine.

"I need you to snuggle with me."
"I need a drink."
"I need something to eat."
"I need to give you a kiss and a squeezy hug."
"I need to tell you, 'I love you; see you in the morning'."

After none of those stalling tactics worked and I left her in her darkened room, in bed, she ramped up her game. From the living room I could hear her calling...

"I forgot to tell you something!! I forgot to tell you something!!"

I went in to see what she was so desperate to tell me. She just started rambling about nothing in general, trying to keep me in her room with her.

"Goodnight, Eliana," I interrupted, "You can tell me your story in the morning. I love you."

And back to the living room I went. A few moments passed before her next idea hit her...

"Mommy! Mommy! Come quickly!"

I ignored her. She got more desperate.

"Mommy! Mommy! Come quickly! Come quickly! Ellie's afraid of her pajamas!!!"

She managed to say this with such desperation that if I hadn't known she was stalling I might have believed her. After a few more ignored pleas I was greeted by a little girl grinning in the living room, footie pajamas fully unzipped. I zipped up her pajamas, she got in trouble for getting out of bed, and I tucked her back in.

That was all I heard of her that evening, and she fell asleep just fine.

But really, when did her stalling tactics get so sophisticated? If she's doing this at 2, what do I have to look forward to when she's 7 and doesn't want to go to bed?

Drawing Letters...

Ellie loves to draw. I mean, she LOVES to draw. So yesterday morning she was drawing little squiggles, some of which looked like letters. She drew a "U" and a "D" and a "P". Then she told me,

"This one is a P. It's a P for Poppy!"

Out of curiosity, I asked her if she knew a word that started with M.

"Mommom!" she excitedly told me.

Then I asked if she knew a word that starts with E.

"Ellie Wickland is a word that starts with E." she told me.

Maybe she's getting the hang of letters and words after all.

Some of the Sights of Butte

I think I mentioned a while back that we took a little family trip to Butte on afternoon about a month ago. We took a few random pictures while we toured the sights of the old town, and it was kind of fun! Here are some of the things we saw...

This is the old M&M cafe. I guess it's been open 24 hours pretty much ever since the mining town was big. It's been around since 1890, and is a pretty good place to visit if you want a taste of Butte culture, or so we're told.

While there are lots of beautiful old brick buildings in Butte (it is very different from most Montana towns in that way), I'm not sure the sights we saw led us to believe there is that much culture left in the Copper City. Here is some of what we saw...

Remnants of the old mining town still looming...

Old businesses that look like they just stopped being (this is a law office, in case you can't read the sign above the door....)



And a church-turned-movie-theater. I can't say that I've ever seen this one before. I've seen plenty of grocery-stores-turned-church-building, but this I just stopped and gawked at for a while.

But there were some other cool sights about the town, too, and lots of old buildings that were fun to look at...

We wanted to take Ellie to go see the Berkley Pit, but it was closed for the season. We also wanted to go tour Our Lady of the Rockies, but I think it was closed because it was Sunday. The restaurant we were originally going to eat at was closed because it was Sunday, too. I think next time we will have to go on a weekday or a Saturday. Still, it was a pretty good afternoon. Pretty good indeed.

I am Ellie's friend.

Today I made Eliana take a nap because she was extremely grumpy. It took her quite a while to go to sleep, so I had to wake her up because I had to be someplace at 4. When I woke her up, she smiled at me and said, "I want to give you a kiss." Then she kissed my cheek and whispered, "You're my best friend." That's about the sweetest thing I've ever heard.

About an hour later we were at the community center setting up for a home-based-business show and Ellie was playing with two other little girls she'd met. They were exchanging names when I heard Ellie say to one of the girls, "And this is my good friend, Mommy."

I am Ellie's friend. =D

(As a side note, my daughter tells me that her name is NOT Eliana. It is just Ellie Wickland.)

Another Ellieism

"The biggest dinosaur in the whole world is the dinosaur rex!"

This is what Ellie told me this afternoon.

Ellie-isms

I'm sitting here listening to Ellie chatter to herself, and I am reminded of just how many cute things she says on a daily basis. Most of them don't even make it to the blog, but I figured I'd take a couple minutes and put some of them on the record:

Right now I'm listening to Ellie say to herself, "PBS kids dot org" over and over. (Perhaps she watches too much PBS in the morning?)

Any time Ellie wants to spell a word, she spells it the same way, and has for months. It's always "A-O-I-A-K". I don't know what it means or where it came from, but she will repeat that letter sequence over and over and over while she's playing or drawing.

I went to get Ellie dressed a couple weeks ago and I pulled out some green pants to wear with a green and pink flowered shirt. As soon as she saw the pants she threw herself on the ground in a fit and cried, "Nooooo! Those are BOYS' pants!!!" (Yet she had no problem with them when Leif pulled them out for her to wear a couple days later.)

That same week I tried to put Ellie in a pair of jeans and she cried, "But Mommy, I want to be BEAUTIFUL!!" when she rejected the jeans. *sigh*

If we tell Ellie a word, she can usually tell us what letter it starts with. For example, if we ask "What letter does 'Ellie' start with?" she will tell us "E!", or "What letter does 'purple' start with?" and she will tell us, "P!".

I tried to get creative with the above line of questioning by asking, "Ellie, what is a word that starts with H?" She stopped, thought about it, smiled, and answered with a resounding, "POTATO!" I think we need to work on that one a bit. =D

I told Ellie that we were going to her friend's house for dinner tonight and asked her to guess which friend. She was having trouble, so I tried to give her a hint by saying we were going to see, "Caaaaa...." to which she responded, "Mary Kay!!" Ha ha! We are going to Caedmon's house.

Ellie has had a bit of an attitude lately and hasn't wanted Leif to talk to her. When he'd try to talk with her she'd say, "Don't talk to me, Daddy!" After getting in trouble for saying that a few times she changed her tune and started saying instead, "Don't hear me, Daddy!"

I got my first real word clarification this morning. I told Ellie that she did something often and she looked at me quizzically and asked, "Often? What does 'often' mean?" I'm not sure I did a good job explaining what often means, but she seemed happy enough with my explanation.

Today in the car Ellie started to tell me something, and she started by saying, "Actually... "

Ellie pretty much talks non stop unless she's sleeping or in front of the television.

She also makes up silly songs.

Irony

About the same time that downtown Bozeman was blowing up, I was posting about how nice it is to live in a sleepy little town over on my blog.

An explosion on Main Street

This morning (less than 2 hours ago), one of the restaurants downtown blew up. As in BLEW UP. The restaurant was called Boodles and I've heard it was a very nice restaurant, though we'd never been there. Chances are, though, that if you've ever visited us here in Bozeman, we've taken you to The Pickle Barrel, which is a long standing favorite. It was right next door to Boodles. Here's what the scene looks like this morning:



The Pickle Barrel (and the Rockin' R bar) is the green building on the left edge of the picture. To see a comparison shot of what it looked like before, click here. While this is definitely devastating for Boodles, there are a lot of area businesses that have some sort of damage from the blast. That means a number of them will probably have to shut down for repairs, and even if insurance covers the bulk or all of the repair costs, that is still lost income for businesses that may be struggling in this economy anyway. I'm curious how they will all come out of this.

UPDATE: There are actually 3 storefronts that are completely gone in this picture. The first is Boodles, the next is Montana Trails Gallery, and the third is Lilly Lu. Lilly Lu is owned by a friend and faithful attendee of my scrapbooking classes, Sheryl. Another friend and scrapbook class attendee was also employed there, Lisa. My heart goes out to them as I consider the challenges this will bring them!

A new look

We went to Butte for an afternoon a couple weekends ago, and I think Ellie discovered a new look. Every time we tried to take a picture of her, this is the face she gave us...

Plunger Hat

I came home from Walmart yesterday with a plunger. Immediately, Eliana picked it up, put it on her head, and told me, "Look! This is like a hat!" She was very silly about it and wore it around for a few minutes. Then, something crazy happened - she actually posed for a picture. This picture:

It's not the best picture by any means, but she DID want her picture taken, and she DID stand still while I took it. Then she wanted to see it on the camera. She was very proud of her hat.

She was so proud of her hat, in fact, that she didn't want to take it off. She didn't want to put it away, especially after Daddy explained that once we put it away she could never play with it again. I listened to him explaining what a plunger is for and why she couldn't put it on her head and how sad her voice sounded that her hat was going away. It was a very funny conversation for a bystander, especially one who was glad not to be on the instructing end of the conversation.

And so, like any good mother, I just sat there and laughed. And laughed. And offered no helpful suggestion or words to back up what my little girl's Daddy was telling her, other than my muffled laughter. (And I just hope that laughter doesn't come back to get me one of these days when she tries to use the plunger and THEN remembers that it is her long lost hat...)

Hiking Ousel Falls

Yesterday we went for a little snow hike with our friends Ben, Cathy, and Lily. As you can tell from the picture above, we had a beautiful hike in the frozen woods - lots of snow, flocked trees, and frozen water falls!

We even got Cathy to take a few family pictures for us!

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.