Napole-ana

Elliana is small--I like to call her "Small Human"--but don't tell her that. My little Muffin Cup--I like to call her, that, too--has a bit of a Napoleon complex, and likes to remind us all constantly that she is BIG! Often, this comes with a side note that "Sissy is SMALL." In fact, one way to bring an instant, slightly-evil grin to Ellie's face is to tell her, "Hey, Ells. You're biiiiig." And then lean in a little closer, and tell her in a conspiratorial whiper, "And Sissy is small." Oh, the joy on the face of that little sister when she hears those words!

Keira sometimes isn't too keen on being called small, especially since she just turned five and is, in her opinion, pretty much an adult now. She's gotten used to Ellie saying it, though, and now thinks it's kind of funny most of the time. Still, every day or two, we get to listen to the girls have the following argument:

Ellie: "I'm BIG! An' YER SMALL, Sissy!"
Keira: "I'm not small! I'm big and YOU'RE small!"
Ellie, folding her arms like Flavor Flav: "NnnnO! I'm not small! I'm BIG!"
Keira: "ELLS. I'm 5 and you're 2. That means I'm the biggest!"
Ellie: "No! I'm 5 and YER 2!"
Keira: "ELLS. I am big and you are small. We're not having this con-fur-sation anymore. THE END!"

(That whole "not having this conversation" thing? Yeah, that's taken straight out of my mouth. Kiwi loves to turn everything we say into a "Who's on First?" style argument, and that's what I usually end up saying after going six rounds with her over some nonsensical disagreement she's making up out of thin air.)

They launched into this argument in the car the other day, so I tried to videotape it as best I could from the front seat...while driving. I promise I kept my eyes on the road!




And as you can see above, Ellie has plenty of attitude lately, on account of a) being two and b) having a big sister who has plenty of her own attitude. Kiwi has actually been much better since we cracked down on her stomping and pouting, but Ellie picked right up where she left off!

(I also love that Ells has turned "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" into an animal rights rhyme: "Hippie hollers, 'Let him go!'")

This is another clip of her getting pretty emphatic with the arm-crossing. The car was stopped in the garage for this one, by the way.



All of us find this pretty cute and hilarious, and it's reeeeally hard not to crack up when she does it, but Bear and I know from experience with Keira that there's a point where being a little stinker stops being cute and becomes a bit of a problem. We're trying to stop the arm-crossing and the NO-shouting now, even though part of us wants to bask in the entertainment value of it a little longer! There's really nothing funnier than telling a 2-year-old to "Show Mommy a good attitude" and having her fling back, "NNNNNO! I wanna have a BAD ATTITUDE!" And then, of course, she crosses those arms, takes them back down, and crosses them back ever-more fiercely, just to punctuate her point.

Look out, world!