our little Jersey girl

Ever since Ada started talking she has been throwing some pretty crazy things our way. The latest is an accent, and not just any accent, and no, not a Canadian accent. Nope, she has a JERSEY accent. It isn't on everything she says, but it is definitely there on some of her most favorite catchy phrases, my personal favorite is "What you talkin' about goiys?"

I guess Jersey isn't that crazy considering most of Elliot's family has deep roots there. However, we rarely see that side of the family and really, I can't say that anyone in his family actually has an accent. So it makes me think there is some other source of influence.

I guess it might be time to start limiting the amount of mafia crime drama we let her watch.

pucker up

Ada has become VERY good at saying good-bye when we drop her off at school, saying good-night when we tuck her in, and basically really embracing her affectionate side.

The process goes like this... When I drop her off I say can I have a hug goodbye? Ada stops what she is doing and gives me a nice hug and then turns and puckers up and plants a kiss right there on my lips. Same sort of thing at night.

We find this cute and really we were just encouraging the hugs - the kisses she picked up from watching Elliot and I when we say goodbye to each other. In fact in the morning she will often DEMAND a kiss from Elliot after he bestows a quick peck on me.

For the most part this affection has been limited to our family and a few close friends. Until yesterday that is... When I picked her up from school, and finally convinced her to put her books away so we could leave, she ran over to her buddy Reese and said, "Reese I'm leaving, bye!" (this was new development #1) Reese responded with "Can I have a hug?" (new development #2) Ada obliged and I thought to myself, Ahhh how cute. But that is when new development #3 happened. After the cute classmate hug, Ada pulled back and puckered up and planted one right on Reese's lips.

Then Ada walked away and coughed. I think I now know how that day care crud is getting passed along.

well hello Dolly we are back..

After loads of self dumped guilt and a little hint and pull here and there from others I've finally decided to climb back on the horse. The reason for the absence of posts has nothing to do with a lack of Ada stories, in fact, if anything there have been way to many to accurately capture. So rather than try to go back and tell you how awesome Ada has been since I last posted.. I'm just going to jump back in with both feet. Pretend that little gap never happened...

We recently took a trip to Seattle for Thanksgiving. This was the first trip for our family in a few months (school tends to have that effect) and Ada was VERY excited to ride on the plane (or sleep on the plane) and excited to see Auntie Katie, Thea Dog, Tia Jackie, and Special Friend Tony. She knows they live in Seattle and tells us that often. What she didn't know is that 'big Grandma' (my Grandma) also lives near Seattle and we were going to get to see her as well.

I could go on and on about the trip and how fabulous it was, but I'm going to narrow it down to my top 8 moments from the trip.

**I was going to keep this to 5 items but as I started writing I kept thinking of other totally awesome things that happened**

(in no particular order)

1. Tony letting Ada take over his remote control Bart Simpson toy on Thanksgiving Day. This in itself was a grand gesture, but add the fact that Tony is a little protective of his new floors and freshly painted walls and Ada is a kamikaze remote control driver and this became a true expression of love. Or an unabashed attempt at sucking up. Either way it makes the top 5.

2. Ada finally getting over her shyness at my Grandma's house while she was in the midst of giving out kisses and hugs to everyone. Up to this point she has stolen a few glances of Grandma but wouldn't get close to her. However, during an impromptu round of hugs and kisses (directly planted on the lips), Ada (with a little suggestion from Elliot) headed over and bestowed hugs and kisses on Grandma. My heart melted a little bit at that point.

3. Ada walking down the sidewalk outside of Auntie Katie's apartment building with her fancy pink coat on, her new (hand knit) purple scarf wrapped around her neck, her pink Hello Kitty rain boots on, and pulling her Hello Kitty overnight bag as she made her way to Tony's car. Ada has been moving into fully Kid mode for awhile now but that night she looked so sophisticated and fancy. And she knew it.

4. Playing with Grandma. After breaking through her shyness layer Ada fully took over Grandma's house. She built a house (NOT a fort) with couch pillows and an afghan. She made Grandma play dolls with her - trading her ballerina barbie and Homer Simpson toys back and forth. Ada showed no hesitation in her ability to boss Grandma around. A true sign that Grandma was finally in Ada's inner circle. And the best part - Grandma played right along like she was a fellow 3 year old diva.

5. Ada's morning conversations with Auntie Katie. We woke up every morning to hear a little bit of Ada informing Katie about what was going to happen that day, or what she had dreamed, or what Thea Dog was doing RIGHT THEN. Ada loves conversation and story telling and these early morning bits were wonderful little nuggets.

6. Ada visiting Santa at Nordstroms. This was a spontaneous visit that took over 2 hours in line and lasted maybe 3 minutes. Ada was great. She sat on Santa's lap, gave him a cookie (her doing), and even talked to the big guy. We are officially in full Christmas mode in our house.

7. Ada (and Spiderman) leading Auntie Katie on a nice 1 mile sprint down to the marathon expo (and of course the 1 mile up hill sprint on the way back). Ada enhanced this experience by shouting 'AHHHHHH' at the top of her lungs THE WHOLE WAY - about 10 city blocks through downtown Seattle.

8. Arriving at Tony's house after Ada's overnight and seeing that Ada felt as comfortable there as she does at our house. She had a blast playing with her new toys and with Tia Jackie and SPF Tony, but she also moved about the house with an ease that showed she had experienced nothing but love and attention while she was away from Mommy and Daddy. Truly the greatest gift an auntie or SPF can grant to a parent.

Thanks to everyone who made our little adventure up North absolutely amazing.

big girl privileges

We have had quite a busy month (sorry for the lapse in posting), we had Ada's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and a visit out to see Eric (HI Eric). I had intended to post a great story with pictures about Ada's birthday but never really got around to downloading the pictures. Needless to say she had a great birthday with a party down at the beach with all of her favorite adult friends because that is how Ada rolls. As requested she got a purple bike, and a purple helmet, and purple gloves. She also got something we like to call 'Big Girl Privileges'.

Now that Ada is three we've decided that it is time to start teaching her that each action has a outcome and these outcomes can be good (Yay we like these actions) or bad (Boo we don't like these actions). To put it in Ada terms she can't scream and kick and throw a fit when she doesn't get her own way without some sort of punishment. What are these privileges you might be asking? Well given that Ada is truly our daughter there are things she likes a certain way: lights on and door open when she goes to bed, watching movies on mommy and daddy's bed, swinging on the swings after a long run, and basically anything that I see that she wants while she is misbehaving. And we aren't tyrants about taking away these privileges, she gets multiple warnings and explanations of what actions will result in losing her privileges, but in the end, if she purposely misbehaves, there are now officially consequences in our house.

We are only a few days into this experiment but so far it is going pretty well. She has pushed her limits a few times, as all three year olds should do, but she has also felt the harsh blow of consequences and learned her lesson. Of course as this is Ada and she is one smart little cookie I'm sure she will find a way to work the system in a few weeks to get around those pesky privileges. Until then I'm declaring victory.

maybe she is my daughter

I've often wondered out loud how Ada could possibly be my daughter, after all her love of all things pink and purple and fairy princess, and frilly doesn't really fit with the scrapped up knees tomboy youth I remember. Add to that her refusal to wear anything but long flowing, twirl worthy dresses, jelly shoes or high heel princess shoes and Ada really had more in common with my sister Julie than she did with me.

So image my surprise when all of a sudden this week she started rifling through her t-shirts and shorts to find the most athletic variations she could find! Yup, our little princess has insisted on wearing nothing but "running clothes" for the entire week.

Not sure if it was the weekend with the Evan's boys or her taking her little runs up the hill after her rocket ship (aka jogging stroller) rides more seriously, but finally the tomboy is starting to emerge. And I hate to admit it, but I love it. She isn't any less adorable in her running clothes and now maybe, just maybe, she might be interested in learning the best way to fall down to make it look like someone tripped you, or the secret to pulling someone down by their shirt without letting the ref see.. or maybe just the best way to scale up the side of the tree out back. All things I am an expert in.

Because let's face it - Ada already has me beat in the art of walking in heels, accessorizing, and picking out fashionable getups. Now we both have something to share.

priorities

While Ada had no qualms or hesitation about giving away lots and lots of her stuffed animals and toys it appears she isn't quite as giving in all areas of her possessions. Tonight we asked her to go through all of her books to pick out the ones that she wanted to keep and the ones she wanted to give away. Let's just say we aren't donating multiple bags of books to Goodwill - nope, she picked about 1/4 of her books, mostly ones she had never read (and a few of Elliot's) and that was IT. She guarded her keep pile like she was guarding the queen's jewels. She let me organize the keep books but she would not leave her books until each and every one of them was back on the shelf where they belonged.

At least she has her priorities right - books over toys any day!

charity

Saturday night Elliot, Ada and I went out to Souplantation for dinner. Ada was in a particularly good mood and was quite the little chatterbox. As we were wrapping things up Ada made it clear that she did not want to leave just yet, she was more in the mood to sit around and enjoy the ambiance a little bit. So we started a little conversation about how I was her Mommy and that my name was also Katie so that made me her Katie Mommy or Mommy Katie, and since Elliot was her Daddy and his name is Elliot he is her Daddy Elliot (he only gets it one direction). Then all of a sudden out of the blue Ada asked if some boys and girls do not have a Mommy and a Daddy (no idea where this came from). So we started explaining different reasons why yes, some boys and girls do not have a Mommy or a Daddy. This was a probably the most adult conversation we have had with Ada to date and I was not sure if Ada was getting it 100%. I shouldn't have doubted a thing.

Fast forward to later in the evening when we dug in to tackle what we thought was going to be a difficult task - getting Ada to filter through all of her stuffed animals to pick which ones she wanted to keep and which ones she wanted to donate to Goodwill. As we started in on this task we saw an opportunity to connect to our previous conversation and told Ada that she was going to go through her animals and pick out the few she wanted to keep and the rest were going to go to the boys and girls who weren't as lucky as her, you know the ones that don't have a Mommy AND a Daddy. We bent the truth a little bit but I was trying to put it into a context she would understand. After I explained that this didn't mean she had to give up purple Dora or Dumbo or Elmo she was Ok.

I put this heavy activity in Elliot's hands and went off to clean up the kitchen. After noticing that there was no screaming or whining coming from Ada's room I decided to pop my head in to see if the carnage had begun or if Elliot was chickening out, and to my surprise, Ada was busily putting almost ALL of her stuffed animals into the donate bag! Including ELMO! She did have a pile of animals and toys she was keeping, but she really took the charity idea to heart and was even more brutal (and swift) than Elliot and I would have been.

After it was all was said and done Ada filled up three bags of stuffed animals and toys, and one bag about half full of clothes (mostly pants - Ada hates pants). When we went to drop off the bags on Sunday we told Ada what we were doing and she didn't care, in her mind those toys were already gone and she was happy to help out boys and girls who didn't have both parents.

Ada is almost three and up until recently I didn't think this birthday meant anything more than the fact that another year had passed. But as it approaches, I am beginning to think that I will always look back on three as the age when Ada really started forming the basis for who she will become as teenager and adult. If this weekend is any indication we will all be fortunate to be part of her life.

I promise to remember this when she comes home with an unexplained piercing, strange boyfriend, or 20 minutes past curfew. I promise.