Moments

Eden: "I want to get my princess dress and play with the light on in my room"
me: "You can get your princess dress and play in here in the sunroom."
Eden: (throwing a fit) "I don't wanna play in the sunroom!!"
me: "You can play in your room if you want to, but be kind to Arielle"

A few minutes later Arielle comes back into the sunroom, whining, trying to get away from Eden with Eden following close behind.  Arielle finds a spot to sit and enjoy the toys she's brought with her and Eden starts to hover.

me: "Please leave Arielle alone and let her play while you go back in your room to play princess."
Eden: (throwing a fit) "I wanna stay in the SUNROOM!!"
me: "Not to long ago, you stood right over there and threw a fit saying you did not want to play in the sunroom."  I re-enact her moment from earlier.
"Now, you are sitting right there throwing a fit to stay in the sunroom"  I re-enact the recent fit.
Eden: (covering her ears) "You are too loud, Mommy!  I don't like that."
me: "Oh, really? 'cause I'm just being Eden.  Look at me, I'm Eden."  I start whining again.
Eden smiles slightly.

Unfortunately, although I thought this was a bit of a breakthrough moment. The same ol' plague of desiring only the opposite of what I request and desiring only what the sibling is playing with has continued throughout the morning and I think it's time to break the cycle by going somewhere.

More fun than a Polaroid.

Eden's favorite face from the last set of pictures we took.

and below, her favorite from the pics we took today.

There's that squinty-eyed face again!

Here are a couple from the day we took the video in the last post.  Eden was waiting through the whole video for a chance to take pictures.

aaaaaaand the squinty-eyes make an appearance again.  hahaha!

My two little hams.

Twinkle and Say Cheese!

Christmas in July

I was lamenting to Chuck the difficulty all the "Christmas in July" sales and ads have made for me.
"Try explaining to a three-year old." I said, "why there is a huge Christmas tree in Hobby Lobby and pictures of Christmas ornaments and stuff in stores all over town when it's not Christmas time."

It's been a repetitious couple of weeks telling her it's tooooooo early. I tried to explain the stores having sales so that people could start getting their presents etc. etc.

Chuck decides to take a crack at it over dinner and says to Eden, "Three things need to happen before it's even close to Christmas. We need to go to DC for a month, Arielle needs to have a birthday and it needs to get cold."
He looked over at me and, somewhat jokingly, said, "I think I made an impression."
After about a minute, he turned to her again and asked, "Eden, what three things need to happen before it's close to Christmas?"

She replied, "Um, something about decorating. And a Christmas tree!!"

He made quite an impression.

Where is Everybody?

Arielle's vocabulary is expanding by leaps and bounds. Her little brain is going all the time and she asks questions to keep tabs on everybody.
Over the weekend, Chuck got up with the girls and I stayed in bed. Arielle asked, "Mommy seeping?" Cute, right?
She will also ask, "Daddy work?" on most days.
The other day, Eden napped longer than usual in the afternoon and while Arielle was having her snack, she asked, "Eden work?" I had a good chuckle and then told her that Eden was still sleeping.
She responded "Oh, Eden seeping. Shhhhhh."

Director of Photography

Computers add such an interesting new dimension to life than our grandparents had, don't they? Eden was pretending to take pictures of me... telling me exactly how to pose, then letting me "look" at them. I decided to pull up Photo Booth on my Mac so we could really look at what she was asking me to do. She was thrilled and wanted to get some pictures of both of us together. She directed the poses in every shot below. I just did what she asked. :)

Can I Help You?

We were in Charming Charlie's yesterday just killing some time.  If you don't know what Charming Charlie's is, it's a shop full of accessories, hats, bags, shoes, jewelry, sunglasses and clothes too.  We were waiting for a table at a nearby restaurant.  Upon entering the shop, we, or rather Eden, was greeted very enthusiastically by an employee.  She told Eden she was such a pretty shopper and gave her a wire basket.  She also told her that if she needed any help, to just ask.
We walked around a bit, trying on sunglasses and hats and looking at shoes and jewelry.  Eden was mumbling something about asking the employee lady for help and soon got to the point where she was stopping every time I paused to look at something, plunking her basket down on the ground and sitting down with a big sigh as if we'd been doing this for hours.  I thought that might be the signal to leave, so I told her we were done and should head back outside and entertain ourselves out there while we waited for our buzzer to go off.  She didn't want me to put the basket away (even with all that plunking) and I explained that we couldn't take it with us and it had to be returned to the stack for another shopper to use.  She relinquished it begrudgingly, but still wouldn't go out the door.  I tried to coax her, finding it strange that she wouldn't want to leave when she seemed so bored only moments ago.

She explained, "I have to ask the lady for help!"

I chuckled and asked what she needed help with.

"I need help with... (something unintelligible)"

"We don't need help with anything because we don't want to buy anything.  Let's leave the sales person alone and go outside."

She reiterated that she was not leaving until she had asked for help and, not knowing quite what to do, I just stood silently.  After about 15 seconds of scowling, she gave up and walked outside with me.
We spent the rest of the time until our buzzer called us balancing and collecting leaves to feed the ants.  We had a nice lunch and when we were walking back to the van, she suddenly stopped and said,
"I forgot to ask the lady for help!"

As we continued walking, I asked her what she would have asked the lady to help with.  That didn't work, so I asked what she wanted the lady to bring her.

"Chocolate," she answered matter-of-factly.

"Eden, they don't have any chocolate in that store."

"Then WHAT am I supposed to ask her to help me with?!"

The mind of a chocolate-loving three-year-old...