My Funny Daughters!

So, today Nels helped me clean out our garage! Since we moved in 3 months ago Nels has been so busy finishing the movie and I've been so pregnant that we haven't been able to get it done. All of our extra stuff ended up in the garage in the move and it was a disaster! (By the way, it's now all in our basement waiting to get sorted through before putting it in the storage closet because we had a birthday party to go to tonight - Big Improvement, eh?) So, after we got it to a point where I could sweep it out and park the van inside, Nels wanted to go to Pizza Hut as a reward-type dinner. While we were there I was talking to the girls about our new baby and how excited we are to have her come. I think more than anything I am just so excited to see how this little baby fits into our family - to see her little personality. Every child changes the dynamic in the family so much and I'm excited for her to come be a part of it!

So, while sitting in our booth I was asking Hazel what she thinks our new baby Elsie will be like. She sat there for a moment and then said, "I think, she will be like a Beautiful Smelling Onion." -------- LOL --------- This still makes me laugh so hard! I clarified with her that that's what she actually thought her new sister would be like and she said, "Yes, I think so." I really wish that I had been thinking clearly enough to ask her WHY she thought that, but I was laughing too hard. She cracks me up! Months and months ago when I found out that we were going to have a little girl, I was talking to Hazel in the car about what she thought we should name our new baby. My favorite and the one she stuck to for several months was "Fish". I think "baby sister" will be forever grateful that one day I decided to ask Hazel if she liked the name Elsie for our new baby. She had previously turned down all of my attempts at getting her to agree on another name, however, when I proposed Elsie, she took to it immediately and said, "Yes, I like Elsie.........I think maybe Elsie is a better name than Fish." Thank goodness Fish Chick will only be Elsie's "funny name" - as Hazel informed me.

Another funny thing that we have had a lot of in our house lately is sassing. --- Now, granted, I have two little talkers in this family and one very sassy husband, so that's not something really new, however since Spring of this year Lilie has taken it to a whole new level! When I would correct my little two-year-old or tell her something that she doesn't want to hear, she would hold up her pinkie and stop me mid-sentence saying, "Ssssss!" It was really quite hilarious for anyone detatched from the situation to see. "Lilie! I told you - 'Sssss!' - to stop - 'Ssssssssss!'" All with her pinkie in the air and her head turned away.
Granted, the situation sounds ridiculous and if you could see her, it really is quite cute, but being 'Sssssss'ed as by my two-year-old really isn't that funny! One day when she had done this to me quite a few times and I was trying to stop her from climbing up the cupboard or hitting Hazel or some such thing she did this to me over and over. I stopped and grabbed her arm and told her, "Hey! You don't Shush your mom!" She turned and looked at me with all the indifference her sassy little self could muster and said, "I didn't Shush. I said, 'Sssss.'" --- That's my girl. She has her own way of veiwing the world and getting what she wants.

I think that maybe some of the difference in my children is just birth order related. Recently my mom was up helping me out and I was talking to her about growing up in her house and the difference between the way that she and her older sister approached life. Rosemarie had a very head-on way of dealing with things. Very direct. Where my mom would take the stand of, "You can think whatever you want, and I can think whatever I want, and I don't have to tell you about it." So when it came to the "beatings" :) she didn't need to argue with her dad, she would just stand on the sidelines telling her sister to just shut up and don't tell him you don't agree with him. You can think whatever you want, just shut up. As she was talking about this, I could visualize much the same difference between my own two girls. Hazel is very in-your-face about what she thinks, she needs to let you know. She'll argue till she's (you're) blue in the face. You tell Lilie something that she doesn't like and she'll just out-right ignore you. At this point in the conversation, my mom said that she thinks that second-borns are just a bit smarter because they learn a lot from the first. I corrected her that second-borns just seem to be much more sneeky in the way they go about things. Lilie is much more subtle than her older, bolder sister. I can't wait for them to be teenagers! Can you imagine what I've got in store for me???!!! THREE teenage girls all at the same time! :)

Anyway, into this chaos that is our lives, I am so very excited to bring this new little baby! What a joy to see how they all interact and how different they all are! I love my girls and I love being a mom! There is nothing better in the world (and nothing harder) than this job. It is the most frustrating and humbling job...filled with more feelings of inadequacy and failure than anything that I've ever done...and at the same time so fulfilling and satisfying. Nothing in the world that I'd rather be doing that raising these sassy little beautiful girls - the Drama Queen, the Sass, and the Beautiful Smelling Onion!