I know that you know that we’re positively enamored with Taylor Swift. And by we, I mean Ella. We must have put that CD in fifty times and listened to Love Story and Breathe at least a thousand times. I pretty much let Ella do what she wants to do in the car, because come on, it’s the car. There aren’t exactly options on a five hour car trip and I can’t deal with the childish screaming while Josh uses the cruise control buttons instead of the gas/brake and I climb back and forth over the seats looking for Bunny. I should really just burn a CD that has those two songs and Chicken Fried on it. At least then my fingers wouldn’t cramp from pressing the skip button.
Most of the car ride home was filled with snoring and chocolate-consuming with a few memorable one-liners thrown about. She begged for the elevator a few more times, requested that we stop at camper dealerships to look at a few more campers, ate Reese’s Cups and beefed up her vocabulary.
I know you probably get tired of the daily recap of Kids Say the Darnedest Things, but I didn’t know they could be so funny. I never expected my two year old to both impress and confuse me daily. Josh tried to warn me that I was teaching her to talk too early, but if you know me in real life then maybe you understand. The prospect of living with another person who likes to talk as much as I do seemed like the unattainable dream, a mere myth. Then God gave me Ella and made my wildest dreams come true.
She loves to read and memorizes passages from books to use later, like: “See Dick run. Run Dick run.” Then she turns the page to further her drama. She says, while reading Fancy Nancy, “I love accessories” and “Ooh, La, La – My family is posh.” The she looks at you with this sparkle in her eye like she’s pulling one over on you. She even asked me Monday night if we were watching “‘Merican Idol” and tells us that AI is “Stupendous.” We spit tea in the floor and spew coke from our noses on a regular basis around here. Just in case you were asking.
I’ve taken to calling her the hall monitor because she is in charge of conversation and regulates the spoken word at our house. Frankly, she regulates the spoken word at every house provided that she’s present and awake. Gran has determined she has the foulest mouth around because Ella corrects her at the close of every sentence. She is the language nazi and even scolds the television for taking the Lord’s name in vain. I’m afraid any day now she’s going to correct someone in public who will really let me have it.
We laugh because she’ll occasionally run a word by us for approval before adding it to her rotation. She asked about gosh, golly and holy-moly before using them in conversation. But, it gets even better. Sometimes if she forgets we’ll have a conversation similar to this:
M: “What did you say?”
E: “God made the sky. He made everything.”
They’re crafty little creatures.
This week instead of asking for permission and/or clarification on “ugly” words, she began asking about words that had many syllables or that she didn’t fully understand. Among them: gracious, attitude, heavens and Valentine’s. “Do we say attitude? Is that ugly?” Don’t laugh if you see us in public and we’re spelling out benign words, talking in code or saying goodness gracious in place of harsher words. Unless you want it repeated to the best friend, the checkout clerk or the Sunday School teacher, we can’t say it around here!
