Let your inner Barbra Streisand shine.

My Ella was born with a flair for the dramatic. For the first two hours after she came out of me she screamed her little head off (and scared the bejesus out of laboring mothers throughout the labor and delivery floor). At first, we didn't think it was going to end. When she was a baby, we called her the Crib Hornet, because she would get so mad... if her diaper wasn't changed correctly or if she didn't get her food promptly or if she didn't get to hear her music machine right away... that her face would turn bright red and she would just cry and cry. And as she grew into her toddler years, she would throw the most amazing temper tantrums if things didn't happen just so. Don't get me wrong, my Ella has always been a happy little love. She wasn't always angry, but when she got out of sorts, she acted like the world had come to an end. We, of course, felt sorry for her hurt feelings, but got quite a kick out of seeing such a small being get so pissed off. We used to call her Barbra Streisand for putting on such a show for everyone to see. She's a natural at getting into character.

 

And she's been a door-slammer since she was about 3. If she didn't get her way, she'd run to her room and slam the door. Not enough broccoli... in the bedroom, slam the door. A page torn out of her coloring book? Door slam. Summit touched her Barbies = door slam. (Granted, as soon as he didn't wear a diaper anymore, he didn't touch them appropriately, but whatever.) The door slam is usually accompanied with a flop on the bed and a wailing so loud that fire trucks can't hear their own sirens. She likes to do this right.beside.the.door just to make sure we can hear just how devastated she is. Now I know to tell Barbra to get away from the door if she's gonna bawl so flipping emphatically.

Since she's been old enough to play dress up, My Ella has been most excited with pretending to get married. At our house, we have tons of dress-up clothes to suit any of her fancies, but at my parents' house, they were a little slack on stocking up in the pretend clothes. Because of this, Ella has always rummaged in my mom's lingerie drawer (yeah, I know; it creeps me out, too) for the most divine and sparkly ensembles (ewww to the ewww, again). She doesn't do it so much anymore, but each time, she would put on something white and find my wedding shoes and veil and make my dad (Popi to her) "marry" her. Carrying a bouquet of fake roses, they would walk down the "aisle" in my parents' living room and vow to love each other always. (For Christmas when she turned 4, my dad got her a play wedding dress complete with a veil and white heels so that he didn't have to see her in my mom's own dress-up clothes anymore.)

When she learned that she loved to hear herself sing, she developed the sweetest voice for delivering a fierce bravado in all of her songs. She still does it, like she's channeling an opera singer that she may have been in a past life. And she loves music. Unfortunately for us, she digs Top 40 hits, and any time we get in the car, we have to listen to the popular musicians: Pink, Lady Gaga (don't judge), Kelly Clarkson, Natalie Imbruglia, Miley Cyrus... you catch my drift. At home, she'll put her Barbra Streisand personality on  and go into her bedroom, turn on 104.7, and sing along with her favorite girls with a ferocity that I didn't know existed in a child her age. Judging by the loudness of her voice, I doubt she knows that we can hear her. And she makes up her own songs. Most of them deal with love and life and love and friends and love and love. Yeah, at 6 years of age she's already in love with the idea of love. I would guess that she's one of those hopeless romantic types.

In school this year, her teacher, Mr. Schiesser, likes to put on readers' theater to get the kids to read with inflection and understand the meanings of the words that they read. Ella, of course, LOVES this, and she practices at home with the script whenever she gets a chance. She practices with her books that we read together each night before we go to bed, too. Right now, she's into a book from the library, Snow White: A Graphic Novel. It's a comic strip take on the Brother's Grimm classic, and she gets so excited to read the characters' lines in the different voices that she thinks they would use. And she's quite good at it. I'm impressed every single night. Because we've been reading it EVERY SINGLE NIGHT for a month. I'm sure it's due back at the library, but she refuses to relinquish it. She loves the dramatic nature of it. Barbra Streisand loves it.

Tonight at dinner, I made my Ella her favorite meal: my special homemade chili (it's the bomb, for sure, people), and she was raving about how good it was. "Ohhhh, Mommy, you make the best chili in the whole entire world. Ohhh, thank you so so so much. I can't believe how awesome it is!" And while I know it rocks, it's not that show-stopping, but her performance was, so I told her, "You know, you really should join the drama club some day, Ella. You really gotta let your inner Barbra Streisand shine." I'm pretty sure she's well on her way; she's been practicing for the past 6 and a half years.