Effortless

Alice doesn’t take morning naps anymore.

Breaking her of the habit was easy: I stopped going downstairs to get her before 7am while Jerry was gone last week (mostly because Helen had been waking me up at 5am with nightmares every morning, so I was too groggy to be very responsive when I knew Alice didn’t really need me). And so she’d squawk and fuss and go back to sleep, and now her nighttime sleep and morning nap have fused together.

And Mommy is happy.

PizzaMonster Update

“Mommy, I’m not afraid of the PizzaMonster anymore.”
“Why not, Helen?”
“Because, he goes to school. He goes to high school.”
“Which high school does he go to?”
“The one by his house.”
“By his house? Does he walk there? Is it close enough to walk?”
“No, he doesn’t walk. He doesn’t have feet.”
“He doesn’t have feet? But how does he get to school?”
“He just drives.”
“How does he drive? Does he have arms?”
“Yes, like ME!”
“The PizzaMonster has arms like you?”
“Yes. And [indicates her face] this… And… and… hair! In pigtails!”
“Wow. The PizzaMonster has pigtails.”
“Yeah. Like ME!”
“The PizzaMonster is really a girl.”
“A girl, huh?”
“Yeah. And her name is Emily.”

To sum up: Helen is no longer afraid of the PizzaMonster, who has no feet, goes to high school by HER house, and drives there with her arms and face and pigtails, and her name is Emily.

Never mind what I said before. 😀

Three

In the car yesterday as we were coming back from the grocery store, Helen observed, “Mommy! That car doesn’t have a ROOF on it!”

Helen is three. Her sentence structure is pretty amazing, I think.

Another conversation from last night: “Daddy, the pizza monster was trying to eat the children. There were THREE children: Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen.” (She had been a little spooked by an episode of “Jimmy Neutron” on Saturday afternoon while we waited for Jerry to get home).

I love that she speaks so well. I’d love to also think that it was our doing, that by speaking to her as if she could understand every word we say, we have taught her to enunciate and speak very well for her age. However, I think it’s more realistic that she’s just wired to be extremely verbal, whereas Alice is wired to climb to the highest point in a room and then cry because she can’t figure out how to get down.