Eugenious

You started the day with princess face paint...

...and you ended it with an impressive fat lip. Your mouth bled for two nights afterward, as you slept. And your nose is now bruised. It was some bar fight.

Dear Elena,

You are a tough little chickie. While your latest big injury—your fat lip, bleeding gum, bloody nose, and subsequent bruised nose—did leave you weepy for the rest of that evening, you never needed any pain medication, and your didn’t have any trouble eating the following day. We coached you to tell grown-ups that you’d been in a bar fight, which was more amusing than the I-fell-off-the-bathroom-stool-and-hit-my-face-on-the-sink explanation.

If you knew my Gramma Jo, you may have seen her in glasses like these—they probably would have been black, or maybe red, but she'd have appreciated the panache of the pink ones..

You have a very respectful sense of nighttime and morning. While you do wake us (read: Daddy) up in the middle of the night because you need water or you can’t find Bunny, when it’s nearly morning but still dark, you hole up in your room and talk to your various dolls and stuffed critters. Sometimes you sing, and sometimes you fall back to sleep. Then, when you notice light, you fling open your door and holler enthusiastically, “It’s morning!”

Elena and Grampa Tom with their Stuart Little-sized snowmen

You are currently an interesting and contradictory collection of characteristics and behaviors. Since you were born, you’ve been happy and smiling, and you still are. Life is exciting, and you sing your way through it. And you’re also very much THREE! Three is an age of strong opinions and hardheadedness, at least for children who live in this house. You feel your emotions so strongly, and sometimes you just lash out with your negative ones and they manifest as ear-piercing screaming, fake crying, real crying, hitting. or, excitingly, biting!

In the past couple of months, you’ve started doing some representational drawing, encouraged by your calm and inspirational teacher, Jen, at school. Largely you’ve been drawing people, but I’ve seen some animals too. You can now cut with scissors on a line very well—better than some adults I know, in fact. You often ask me to draw hearts, which you trace with marker, cut out, and decorate with shiny things. You like to paint, and you’ve recently been painting a piggy bank, rocks, and probably the couch cushions.

You counted to 23 the other day, when you were counting stickers on your sticker chart. I was dumbfounded, as I’d never heard you count above 13. Yesterday, you added “eleventeen” after nineteen. I smiled; Sylvan corrected you, because you have to be right if you’re the big sibling.

These last couple of photos attest to your fearless nature. I won’t be at all surprised when you join the IceAxemen at South Eugene High School and tell me that you’re climbing Middle Sister in January. I just hope you don’t mind too much if I foil your plans to kiss that cute sophomore by joining the trip as a chaperone.

Elena, I really appreciate your hugs and kisses. You never fail to be aware of other people’s feelings, and you know when mine are low. You wrap yourself around me like a baby monkey and don’t let go. Thank you.

I love you, Miss Thing.

Love,
Mommy

5/21/12 P.S. I forgot to mention your singing habit, at least more than in passing. Especially when your big brother’s annoying you with loud noises or copying your every word, you have started to sing a happy song to keep yourself smiling. It usually goes something like this: “Princesses like hearts. And fairies like hearts. And unicorns like hearts.” Repeat. It’s difficult for me not to smile when you sing it, so I can only assume that it works for you, too.

"Go, Mommy, go!" Here's you cheering for me at the marathon, mile 8. You look really old in this photo, thin and tall.