Elsie-isms

Today, Oscar is 20 months old. So, on that note, I'm going to talk about Elsie.

She has recently decided that she's afraid of the dark. I don't know where she learned that's an option. The child's not afraid of much (can't honestly think of anything off the top of my head). I mean, she would sit in the dark and sing, talk, carry on for hours with no problems.  A few times in the last couple of weeks, she's started screaming when we turn the lights off at bedtime.  The other night she told Eli that she was afraid of the dark.  Last night I went in there and rocked with her, talked about her memory verse from Sunday school ("When I am afraid, I will trust in [God]."  Psalm 56:3) and then we sang the Steve Green song of the same theme.  She calmed, and then went back to bed.  A little while later, she woke up screaming again, and this time Eli went in there, and I went to sleep.

This morning, I asked her why she was afraid of the dark, what she was afraid of.

"JE-sus!"

Huh?

"He's watching me!"

I had to laugh to myself, and then explain to her that when Jesus watches us, it is a good thing.

"He's watching me on the potty!"

Yeah.

And then tonight after bath time, I had Oscar in my lap in the rocking chair.  He is a willing recipient of the fingernail clipping.  Elsie came in and had this look of horror and pain on her face and started screaming at me to stop.  She was so funny--it was a very extreme fingernails-on-chalkboard reaction to such a benign behavior.  But she has never let me clip her "finger tails".  I had just been sneaking into her room about an hour after she went to sleep and clipping her fingernails while she slept.

After seeing Oscar get his nails clipped, she announced that she also wanted her finger tails clipped, and when she sat down on my lap, just squealed and pulled her hand away.  I tossed the clips over to Eli, and looked at her fingers.  They're all short.  She bites her nails.  My two-year-old bites her nails.  Not to the point of bleeding, but to the point of shortness.

I looked at her toenails and saw one that was longer, and tried to get a closer look, but she started screaming and crying and twisting.  So I let her go.  She sat on her bed and cried, then calmed, and then announced that she wanted to do that again.

She's so weird.  Love her.