29 November 2007

Ella logic #32

We paid a quick visit to Ella's papa today. I told Ella we had to go home so she could go to bed.

Ella: But I want to sleep here!
Me: You can't sleep here, papa's going to go out soon.
Ella: But I want to sleep here, I want to sleep in papa's bed.
Me: You can't sweetie, he's going out soon.
......[pensive pauze]
Ella: Is he going to take his bed with then?

More and more she forces me to analyse how I phrase things. There's no such thing as implied meaning when you are 3!

Similarly, when I showed her a visiting Belgian gipsy family's converted 4WD campervan and told her "Look, you can even sleep in this car", she took the 'you' in this sentence personally and wouldn't go close to the car because she presumably thought that we'd push her in and she'd have to sleep there.

26 November 2007

Surprises

I had a little mirconap afer we got home from work/daycare. And was being encouraged by Ella to do so, which was a bit suss.

When I woke up I found she'd put all the shopping away. What a nice surprise.

And she also left me this artwork on the kitchen wall:


So after a short stint in the naughty corner:


(I am glad I took a photo though, because I really did quite like it.)

Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone

When I picked Ella up from daycare yesterday she was tired to the point were she got unmanagably clumsy and her coping skills were reaching zero point. I had to send her to bed for a nap immediately when we got home at 4pm. She was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow and ended up sleeping for 2 solid hours.

It was a no win situation. By the time she woke up it was way past her dinner time so whatever energy she had gained from resting her body and mind was cancelled out by the low blood sugar levels. She went from waking up to major meltdown in 5 seconds flat. So I went into damage control mode and made a 5 mins dinner and allowed her to eat it sitting on my bed in front of the tele (a privilege normally reserved for Sunday nights only).

Before she'd even taken her first mouthful, I noticed a wet patch on the bedsheet. My supernatural calmness temporarily vanished as I chased child and dog off the bed, threw doonah and pillows on the floor and pulled the sheet off the bed.

A bit later, when Ella finally started to become human again as the blood sugar levels gradually rose, I told her:

"When you get very tired or hungry you cannot be good or brave. And then you get grumpy and you cry easily. And then mummy gets a bit grumpy. And when you do weewee on my bed, mummy gets a bit grumpy too, doesn't she?"

There wasn't any intended lesson in it really, I just needed to get it off my chest.

Ella nodded and then said:

Ella: You know what?
Me: No, what?
Ella: If you were a tiny little girl… Then you were a baby. And then you were grumpy. And then you did weewee on the bed too.
Me: [Uncontrollable laughter]

Point taken.

[Language note: 'if' and 'when' are interchangeable in Ella's dictionary.]

22 November 2007

Traffic solutions

This morning in the car I was muttering about the traffic congestion. This conversation followed.

Ella: Mum, what were you saying?
Me: I was just saying that we should have gone another way because it's so busy here. There's too many cars.
Ella: A bulldozer could push the cars away.

Her other suggestion to make us move through traffic faster was that someone should cut the traffic ligths off with a knife so we wouldn't have to stop.

All very helpful suggestions! I should get her to write to the traffic authority with this advice.

Also, between that first and second suggestion came a long monologue which I mostly missed because I was trying to cross 2 lanes in bumper to bumper traffic. I only caught the last sentence which was: "And I don't like fairy cars because I'm a fairy." Huh?

20 November 2007

Hide and seek

Ella: Mum, let's play hide and seek.
Me (somewhat reluctant to move from my comfortable seat): Er... ok.
Ella: You hide here, where I can find you.
Me: No problem!

She went out and then peered around the door post until I yelled "You found me!".

My kind of game...

I did try a real game after that, but she started sounding a bit distressed when she couldn't immediately find me so I had to give vocal cues. When it was her turn, she hid in exactly the same spot where I hid (while I was watching her) and when it was my turn again she tried to tell me where to hide. I remember this well from my babysitting years but it's still funny.

18 November 2007

But mama?

Ella: But mama?
Me: Yes Ella?
Ella: I am so your friend.

Ella: But mama?
Me: Yes Ella?
Ella: I so, so love you.

We had this conversation about 20 times on Saturday morning and she keeps repeating it regularly out of the blue. Very cute.

Also somewhat theatrical and I've noticed that she is turning into a real little actress. She thoroughly enjoys the dramatical effect of her sulking sessions for example. Even if her walking around with her head tilted and eyes cast down to pouting lips causes her to walk into things quite regularly.

12 November 2007

True colours

A book that has been one of Ella's favourites for a long time is Dr. Seuss' 'Go dog go'. The text has lots of references to different coloured dogs in it.

For some reason they used this old style colour scheme throughout the book. About a year ago I had to go through the book and on every page colour the dogs that appeared in pastel pink, but were referred to in the text as red with a red texter because Ella refused to identify them as red dogs and got visibly confused.

Yesterday we read the book again after a bit of a break from it and I discovered that I will now have to edit the book with a black texter because the so called black dogs are more a charcoal grey and my nitpicking child will not accept them being called black!

It is utterly useless to talk to a 3 year old about the downsides of being a perfectionist as they clearly all suffer of a form of obsessive compulsive disorder anyway at that age.

11 November 2007

Goanna man

I took Ella to an Indigenous heritage party in the park yesterday afternoon. We loved it. They had a free jumping castle, patting paddock, games, she did two dot paintings and painted a boomerang and they had performances.

One of the performances that I really enjoyed was an Aboriginal dance group. The 3rd dance they did was about a goanna. So this man with his whole body and face decorated with white paint crawled around like a lizard, very slowly but then he would suddenly run towards the kids on the first row on all fours and monster them threateningly. Presumably like a goanna would.

We were at the other end of the half circle on the lawn from where he started. I was getting my camera ready to take a shot of the dancer when he came closer, but Ella got increasingly worried about him coming towards us. She jumped up and went to stand behind me, but when he was staring at the group of kids next to us, she truly started panicking and started to try to climb onto my back! So there's me with my fragile camera in one hand, trying to steady Ella with my other. When the goanna man finally turned to us, Ella was pretty much sitting on my shoulders and started screaming!

It was an awkward moment. I had some tears in my eyes from laughing at her overreaction at first, but then I suddenly felt so sorry for her when she panicked like that and didn't quite know what to do to make her feel safe. The goanna man looked into my eyes and I felt quite ridiculous!

I never got the shot...

When I asked Ella afterwards why she'd been so scared of him, she insisted that she saw the man hurting the people. Poor thing! She now knows that he was just playing, but it wasn't what I had expected from her first exposure to Aboriginal dancing.

07 November 2007

More on friends

Today, as I walked across the courtyard at daycare to get Ella's bag, I overheard some of the toddlers having a conversation about friends.

A (to L) - Are you my friend?
L - No, because I'm B's friend.
A - I'm B's friend too!
B - No you're not!
A - Nobody is my friend! I have to have friends too!

So a bit later when I spotted A in the sandpit where I was waiting for Ella to finish making her birthday sandcake so we could go, I asked Ella if A was her friend. When she responded postively I asked her if she could go tell A she was her friend, because A was a bit sad.

So my little elf walks up to A, patiently waits till A has stopped talking loudly about someting else before she says softly but clearly, leaning towards A and tenderly touching her arm - "I am your friend, A".

A - You are not my friend! D is my friend.
Ella - Mum! She says I'm not her friend!
Me - That's ok sweetie, you have lots of other friends.

That is the first and the last time that I will get involved in preschool politics!

04 November 2007

Reproduction

We had this conversation after Ella had persuaded me to go and put the Dora the Explorer DVD on for her.

Ella - Dora has a baby.
Me - Does she?
Ella - Yeah, she has a baby in her tummy.
Me - No she hasn't.
Ella - Yes she has. I have a baby in my tummy too.
Me - How did the baby get in your tummy. [Holding my breath for the reply.]
Ella - I don't know. [Phew!] The baby's in my tummy and then he's going to come out. And he can't walk now. When he can walk he's going to come out.
Me - So when is he going to come out?
Ella - The baby's going to come out in TWO minutes! [Looks slightly puzzled at me cracking up laughing]
No, no, in THREE minutes. The baby's going to come out of my tummy in three more minutes. [Still puzzled at me laughing even harder]
He's so cute. I'm going to give him a kiss.
And then he can watch tv. I will put him on my lap and then he can watch tv.
He can sit on the couch and watch tv. He's going to stand up, but I will put him down and then he can sit and watch Dora.

Three minutes passed, but the baby wasn't mentioned again.

01 November 2007

Who's in and who's out.

Dinner table conversation:
Ella - Ewie said that I eat baby yoghurt and that I am a baby!
Me - What did you say?
Ella - I said I am a big girl!
Me - Of course you are.
Ella - But Ewie said no.
Me - That's not very nice of him, is it?
Ella - No. I'm not going to play with him anymore.
Me - So who are you going to play with then?
Ella - Maxie! Because he doesn’t say no.

I have no clue who Ewie is. I only know the names of a couple of the daycare kids. Another name of a kid I don't know that crops up very regularly these days is Ben. He seems to be Ella's benchmark at the moment. "Ben eats this yoghurt", "Ben wears these shoes". And if it's ok for Ben, it's ok for her. I am starting to feel like asking "If Ben jumped off a cliff, would you?!", but I am usually (still) able to surpress these urges to recite platitudes. At least Ben seems to have good taste.