Cowgirl Princess vs. Monkey Dragon: False Dichotomy

You know life is pretty intense when you need to wear a hard hat to your backyard tea parties.




And you can't be too careful when it comes to eating breakfast cereal.



Ellie is pretty into accessories lately. She insisted on that bike helmet all day once. Sometimes I consider putting it on her at the playground because I know she would love to wear it and she is a bit of a daredevil.

Sometimes Brady and I watch this kid at play and just marvel at her little personality. Who would have guessed when we brought our little Elizabeth home over two and a half years ago, we'd end up with this funny, smart, drive-us-up-the-wall, amazing little Ellie Belly.

What has struck me lately is the full range her personality encompasses. She can be totally laid back and go with the flow, or a complete drama queen at times. One time she was getting into mischief, so, trying to give her a warning count to three for the pending time-out that was approaching, I offered a menacing, "ONE!" to which Ellie quickly responded, chanting, "2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 [then singing] pirate girls, pirate girls, PI-RATE GIRLS NINE!" (She's a big fan of They Might be Giants.) Apparently I don't do menacing very well. She is getting better at counting though, so that's a plus. Often when she asks for chips or crackers or something, she requests not a specific number, but "too many" as a set quantity.

Other times when discipline is in order, say when she has already had "too many" crackers and I put them away, she might completely lose it, melt into sobs and plead, "No, Mama, don't DO this. Please, Mama. Please!" The begging and the tears are fierce; you'd think she were auditioning for role of "neglected child whose mother never feeds her #3." She's good. She is getting better at controlling her emotions and working problem-solving more recently. A few days ago when she got into a bag of tortilla chips that got left out on the counter, rather than her usual melodrama when I closed it, she stayed calm and sweetly asked, "Um, Mama, you wanna go upstairs with Charlie and check if little Charlie wants a bottle upstairs Mama? Go upstairs, Mama?" (then innocently bats her eyelashes). Nice try, kiddo.

Sometimes Ellie is very interested in what she's wearing and how her hair looks. She will take a brush and move it in circular motions on top of her head (tangling her hair worse) and declare, "I'm pretty! I'm so pretty!"

(My sister Mindy took these pictures--it was Ellie's "pruple" outfit photo shoot. To get her to keep that bow in her hair I kept telling her, "Mimi wants it in, Mimi wants it in." That trick worked for about 2 weeks after Mindy left town. Apparently she has more authority with Ellie than I do. Now Ellie is all about wearing her flowers in her hair.)

Other times, she couldn't care less about staying neat and pretty and loves nothing more than to sit in and dig in the dirt. Going for walks is a slow process with Ellie because we have to stop and pick up every pine cone or rock that looks interesting. Mud is a fascination for her. We have to work constantly to keep her out of the garden when she's not supposed to be in there. A lot of the time she will go back there to sneak mint leaves. She loves them. But lately as the tomatoes have started to ripen, she is picking and eating all of them too. First it was just the cherry tomatoes. But now she will come walking out of the garden with a baseball-sized tomato, chomping it like she would an apple. None of us has a shot at a fresh garden tomato unless we keep Ellie penned up for a while.


Ellie has hit that almost inevitable stage for little girls of becoming enamored with princesses and fairies and the like. She hasn't gotten too invested in any particular character or mindset of what a princess is, exactly. Just that wrapping a blanket around herself apparently turns her into a princess sometimes. She does the same thing to be "married," except the blanket goes over her head. She saw some of our wedding pictures, so we told her about when we got married. We drove past the temple and told her that's where we got married. She stated matter-of-factly, "I gotta jump out and get all married berry quick." So now she plays married. She hunches over to keep the blanket on and talks in a creeky voice, "I'm maaaarried." Apparently marriage just turns you into an old woman.

I think a lot of what has kept Ellie so grounded from becoming completely obsessed with princesses (so far) is this crew.

This is Ellie's usual posse. She is very much one of the boys around here, surrounded by so many boy cousins to play with. She adores each and every one of them too. And she loves to play trains, cars, and any rough and tumble game they come up with. She's game for just about anything, and wants to try whatever the older boys are doing.

At the same time, she can be rather girly. One night when the cousins were getting ready to head home, Ellie was hiding in the storage ottoman. Just as they were going out the door, she jumped out and cooed, "Oh, boooyyys! Come back and kiss me!" I think we'll have to keep an eye on this one . . .

Well, sorry for the overly long post. I've had a backlog of pictures and stories that I needed to catch up on before the move and before we take too many more pictures. When Ellie was tiny everyone kept giving us the advice, "enjoy it now," I guess meaning that she won't stay little for long and to cherish the moments. It's pretty hard not to enjoy at least some part of a day with Ellie. She can stretch us and wear us out, but what she has to give, she gives in abundance. When I was having a rough day recently, she didn't know the words to use to comfort me, so just brought me a blanket and put it on my lap. And then another. And another. Then she piled pillows on top of that. It was what she knew how to do, and she wanted me to feel better. Then she climbed on top of the pile on my lap and asked, "You want a hug, Little Mama?" (sometimes she calls me that). About made me cry. Sometimes Ellie is just the best.