chicken dance elmo

Ada received a chicken dance elmo (CDE) from Eric, Monique, Maia and Eric for Christmas. Now, Ada loves Elmo. There is an Elmo at her daycare that sings the alphabet when you hug it, and this is sometimes the only reason why Ada does not melt down when we leave the room. So when she opened up the CDE, I thought, wonderful - she LOVES Elmo. I think the chicken suit on the Elmo threw her for a little bit of a loop. Either that or she just had so many other toys that it took her awhile to remember that she had received the CDE. Whatever the case, she has recently taken to playing with her new CDE. Like most toys, she isn't obsessive about playing with Elmo all the time, but she will occasionally pull it out and has even figured out how to get Elmo to dance and sing. I even tried to hide the CDE among all of her other mounds and mounds of toys, but when she decided she wanted to play with CDE she spied him peaking out behind Lily the singing frog.


So the other morning, as Elliot and I were trying to recover from waking up at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning, Ada decides that that moment is THE moment she needs to start playing with CDE. Anyone who has ever seen CDE knows that probably the last thing a mom or dad want to hear on minutes of sleep is "Elmo wants to be a chicken, Elmo wants to be a duck. Quack Quack Quack Quack" over and over again. So as Ada dug through her massive pile of toys we could feel each other hoping that she would miss the bright yellow chicken suit up against the bright red Elmo fur. Alas, we were not that lucky. So the next thought through both of our minds was, please don't let this be the moment that Ada suddenly turns into an Elmo drone. So we watched. Ada pulled out CDE. She gently set him down. She carefully sat herself down in front of CDE and carefully looked him over. And then she reached out and touched the button on CDE's foot that starts the lovely chicken dance melody. You could see Elliot's and my chests puff out as we collectively held our breath hoping against hope that she would not reach out and push that button again. And at that moment, Ada sat there, looked CDE over, shrugged her shoulders, pointed her finger at CDE and let out a a sardonic "Hammmpp". And that was it. She saw the humor in CDE and his little song, but only needed to hear it once. And she was off to run her fingernails down the nearest chalkboard.