Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things InterstellarLass loves about Elle. My baby Elle’s 8th birthday is Saturday. There are a thousand million things I love about her. These are just a few. 1. Her nose. Elle has the cutest little button nose. When she smiles it scrunches up and gets little wrinkles on the side. I like to kiss her on her nose. 2. Her smile. She has a beautiful smile, and she uses it. I’m not talking about the goofy smiles kids smile for pictures when they’re this age, but the natural one that shines when she’s laughing and being silly. 3. Her energy! If I could harness her energy to power our house, our electric bill could go bye-bye. She goes at 100 mph while she’s awake. She doesn’t walk anywhere. It’s always a trot/run/skip motion. 4. Her sillies. She’s a silly, silly kid. She’s goofy, and she laughs at her own jokes. Later in life, this won’t be so funny. But she cracks herself up, and this cracks me up. 5. Her love for Zed. Brothers and sisters don’t always get along. Shocking, I know. But three times in the last couple of weeks she has come to me with tears. I miss my brother at school. She misses seeing him during the day. The way our schools are structured, they will never be in the same school again. This causes her some angst. 6. Her love for Pappy. Sometimes she calls Nick “Nick”, but she also calls him Pappy. They decided on this name together. Not me. Sometimes I feel a little left out, because she wants “Elle & Pappy time”. But, I realize this is a good thing. She loves and trusts Nick and this makes me happy. 7. Her appetite. Elle has always been a good eater. From the moment she was born until she was two months old, I did nothing but breastfeed her. Literally. It seemed that she was latched on all.the.time. And when she started eating solids, I had to carefully watch her. If you put six pieces of Cheerios on the high chair, all six pieces were going in her mouth at the same time. So she’s always been a good eater. And she’s not picky. She eats a variety of foods, and will typically try things at least once. And she loves black beans. 8. Her friendliness. She loves everyone. She’s never met a stranger. Introduce her to someone, and she’s best friends with them five minutes later. Within an hour of meeting Nick, she was holding his hand and sitting in his lap. 9. Her stick-up-for-herself-ness. She doesn’t take crap from anyone. And the person she especially doesn’t take crap from is my grandfather. He can be kind of a pain, and likes to tease. I don’t like this at all, and he and I had several conversations about it, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But Elle knew exactly how to deal with it. She would look at him, say Stop It!, and then completely ignore him like he wasn’t there. It was brilliant. He could continue to try to get her goat, and she completely shut him out. Then, we’d all laugh at him, which he didn’t like. 10. Her style. This is actually kind of frustrating for me right now, because I want her to be a little more girly. Right now, she’s into shorts/pants/t-shirts and tennies. Buying her a dress is hard. She actually threw a bit of a tantrum when we bought her the dress for the wedding back in January. She wanted to wear a split skirt. Pants that look like a skirt. But every now and then, the girly mood strikes her, and she puts on her play lipstick, fake costume jewelry and her crown and parades around the house. 11. Her love notes. She loves to write love notes. She hands me notes that are torn pieces of paper folded until you can fold them anymore. I open them up in front of her like they are the biggest surprise and I have no idea what’s inside. This tickles her and she giggles. They are usually some form of I love you mom or You are the best mom or I love you Mom and Nick or something. There’s a few drawn hearts thrown in for effect. 12. Her messes. Not really. But it’s part of who she is. She’s been a mess since she was little. There is no concept of “play with one toy then put it back”. Toys, of course, are meant to be played with all together. One of my favorite pictures of her is from when she was about two. She’s in a diaper, with one of her brother’s belts around her waist, his backpack full of books is on her back, and she’s astride her push-bike, ready to head out the door and go tackle the world. 13. Her mind. She’s a smart kid. She remembers everything. She’s actually better than a day planner. I tell her “Remind mommy that we need to do X after we finish Y”. Because I will forget. But she will remember. Sometimes this works to my disadvantage though. Because she will hear something I said, even if she wasn’t in the room, or you think she’s not paying attention. Be prepared! Saturday is her birthday. She has a soccer game Saturday, and then we are going with some of her teammates to the FC Dallas soccer game on Saturday night. It’ll be a ‘girls night’ as Nick and Zed are staying home. They don’t care for soccer. Sunday is her ‘friend’ party, and then later Sunday is her ‘family’ party. There will be LOTS of pictures of Elle for your viewing enjoyment. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Cindi 2. Nancy 3. Carmen 4. Surrender Dorothy 5. Gypsy 6. MommaK 7. Brony 8. You’re NEXT!

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