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.

ps

I totally forgot one of the most hilarious moments in her 30 minutes of practice. As Ada was standing perfectly balanced on her skates and trying to convince us that she needed help, she raised her hands in the air and with every ounce of perfectly toned sympathy said, "I can't balance!"

Yes dear, and the sky is not blue, and the Earth is not round, and your name is not Ada...

She is already able to amble along in her skates as if she is wearing sneakers. The ice is not far from our future.

skates

Elliot and I have been looking for ice skates for Ada since she turned two but up until recently we were unable to find anything that would fit on her tiny little feet. Elliot being the ever vigilant father kept checking for skates every month or so and finally, earlier this month, while picking out his birthday present (skates) he finally found a pair of skates in Ada's size. The only problem is that they were blue and since Ada does her best impression of a chemical burn victim every time she is forced to wear anything in a color other than pink we weren't sure she'd even want to put them on.

Well the skates arrived yesterday and apparently Ada's desire and excitement over wearing skates and having her OWN skates overrode the color preference. Although she did point out that they were blue, but since they also had snowflakes on them she seemed to be able to talk herself past the lack of pink.

After we squeezed the skates on her feet Ada stood up to walk. She was a little like a baby deer as she wobbled and eventually fell down. She did get back up but insisted on having help as she walked back and forth on the carpet. We did this for a little bit and eventually settled back on the couch. I was thinking Ok, that was a good start, we'll do a little more each day and eventually she won't need help and once that happens we'll move to the ice. But Ada was thinking, sweet, I finally have my own skates, let's get in the car and drive to the ice rink RIGHT NOW!! She refused to take the skates off. Finally Elliot and I told her that if she wanted to go on the ice she needed to practice on the carpet. So Ada jumped off the couch and started her hobbled walk around the coffee table. She struggled a little bit, sitting down at one point and telling us she fell down, but Elliot calmly talked her through getting back up on her feet.

This continued for the next 30 minutes!! After 30 minutes Elliot and I tried to coax Ada into taking off her skates so we could go for a quick run. Instead she insisted on being carried to the jogging stroller so she could wear her skates in the stroller. She kept the skates on the whole run and was still refusing to take them off. In fact the only way we could get the skates off her feet was to tell her we were going to polish the skates. This seemed to make sense to her so she and Elliot started taking off her skates while I went to find something to polish them with. As I walked back into the living room I overheard Ada telling Elliot that they were going to polish her skates PINK!

Of course.

speller

The other night Ada and I were hanging out on the bed chatting, Elliot was busying himself around the house coming in and out of the room and after one of his departures Ada turned to me and asked, "How is his name?" Thinking she was asking what his name was I told her that she calls him Daddy but I call him Elliot. She looked at me a little funny and said, "No, E..R..I..C".

While she was totally wrong, going with Eric in our family makes you right more times than not. I credit her spelling with her obsession with Big Eric (her uncle) and Little Eric (her cousin) when we sing the name song where we spell out different people's names. But as her MOM, I had a little proud moment, she actually spelled something, on her own, and it has been months since we sang the name song so this was TOTALLY huge!

Diva

One of Ada's new fascinations is learning people's names, or as Ada would say it, "what is him/her called?"

Last night as we were watching the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance Ada kept asking what each dancers name was, and after a few of the names she asked me what their last name was. I was thrown a little bit because to this point Ada hasn't shown any sign that she actually knows what a last name is let alone an iota of care about what a person's last name might be. And I certainly have no idea what Randi's last name is and while I normally might have come up with something witty I was tired and uncreative so I just told her that Randi didn't have a last name - she was just Randi.

Ada seemed to take that at face value and stopped her inquisition for a moment, long enough for me to ask her what her last name was... She turned to me and said, my name is just ADA, I don't have a last name. When I tried to convince her that she did indeed have a last name, even repeating it several times, and drawing it out slowly she stuck to her original statement. NOPE, no last name, she was definitely just ADA.

Our little Diva!