Didi Pickles

Didila 'Didi' Kropotin-Pickles is the mother of Tommy and Dil, The wife of Stu Pickles, and Aunt of Angelica Pickles on Rugrats and All Grown Up!. The matriarch of the Pickles household is usually seen wearing a long red dress and a pearl necklace. Her most prevalent features are her wavy red hair and green round-frame eyeglasses. Without her eyeglasses, she can't see well and her eyes are small, black dots like Chuckie's. She is a teacher of Home Economics, but we mainly see her being a mother and housewife. Whenever her sons misbehave, she consults with various media published by her favorite child psychologist. She follows Lipshitz words by heart, she's a loving and doting mother. Didi loves both her children with all her heart. Alongside her husband and his father, she gives considerably more attention to Angelica than the other adults. Additionally, she and Stu discipline her more often than Drew or Charlotte.
== Summary ==
Didi is a big fan of Dr. Lipschitz and is obsessed with him. She often reads Lipschitz's books and tries to convince others to take his advice. When things go awry, she follows the words of Lipschitz by heart. She is a very loving mother and wife, taking a quite nontraditional route and working outside of the home, while her husband Stu usually works from home as an inventor and looks after their boys, though it is usually Grandpa Lou watching the kids.
== Description ==
Didi is a part-time teacher of home economics and is now a child psychologist in the All Grown Up! episode "Lost at Sea". She is mainly shown being a mother and housewife and Didi consults with various media published by her favorite child psychologist, Dr. Lipschitz. She follows Lipschitz's words by heart. Didi loves both her sons with all her heart. Didi and her husband, Stu (Didi especially), pay considerably more attention to their bratty niece, Angelica Pickles, and discipline her more often than most of the other adults on the show, including Angelica's own parents, Drew and Charlotte Pickles. To a certain extent, Stu and Didi are more like parents to their niece than her actual parents (even though it's been shown that Drew and Charlotte really do love Angelica). Didi comes from a Jewish family and is very proud of her heritage, but she and Stu, who's a Christian, follow both Judaism and Christianity with their sons, Tommy and Dil.
It's revealed in "Mother's Day" that Tommy's first memory of his mother is when he was born. He remembers being put in a "fish tank", and remembers seeing his mother for the first time, saying she was the only one who noticed him, and that she held his hand, saying "as long as I was there, she never let go". It can be assumed from this that Tommy was born prematurely. Also, judging by Didi and Stu's reactions when they first find out that she is pregnant with Dil, it's also quite possible that the two had trouble conceiving, which may be, in part, why they hold their children with such love and cherish them. Tommy being born premature, Didi seems to struggle with being a correct parent and follows Lipschitz child psychology (even though he is shown to not know a lot about children himself).
Didi admits to Betty in "Tommy's First Birthday" that she wants to be like the moms on TV, making her children happy. Didi tends to be optimistic and naive. Didi is the practical, realistic, and mature one in the family and the main disciplinary one. Didi is overprotective of Tommy and Dil, and, like Chuckie, is coulrophobic, or afraid of clowns. She doesn't approve of Reptar, thinking he is too scary (once banning Reptar from the house when she believed it was making Dil cry), but still allows Tommy and Dil to be around him. Didi only wants what's best for her sons. Early on in the series in "Weaning Tommy", she tries to get Tommy off bottles after a pediatric dentist tells her Tommy will have bad teeth when he's older. She tries very hard, but at the end of the episode is seen trying to sneak a bottle into Tommy's crib after he's fallen asleep (Grandpa and Stu were doing the same), saying she felt awful for trying to force Tommy off the bottle. Though she tries to stand firm on some of her ideas, she usually falls through, using her own intuitions as a mother to decide what is best.
== Looks ==
Didi has peach skin and a pair of small black eyes. She is often shown wearing a beautiful red long-sleeved calf-length dress, red ankle-high socks, sensible brown shoes, orange bracelets, a yellow-orange pearl necklace, and round green eyeglasses, which she is unable to see very well without them. The character has wavy red hair and wears a golden pearl necklace. In All Grown Up!, her hair is cut shorter. She also has a gray-strip, showing signs of now being in her mid to late '40s. Later in the show, the gray-strip is gone, and her hair color is darker. She wears a light pink blouse with a dark pink skirt, white socks, sensible brown shoes with heel gold triangular-shaped earrings with matching a necklace and bracelet. Her glasses now are still green but D-Shaped.
== Appearances ==
Didi has appeared in most episodes of Rugrats and All Grown Up!. Her first appearance was in the pilot episode, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing".
== Trivia ==
* Didi is based on Arlene Klasky, one of the creators of the Rugrats franchise. Klasky was a big proponent of child psychology books such as the ones that Didi frequently consults.
* Didi and her husband Stu both have the very first line of the series which is: Happy Birthday Tommy
** Oddly enough Chuckie's last line was Happy Birthday Kimi.
* Didi is the second youngest mother, with Kira the first, Betty the third, Charlotte the fourth, and Lucy the oldest. Melinda was actually the second oldest mother, but she's deceased.
* Didi is more practical than Stu.
* Didi was 31 years old when she gave birth to Tommy, and 32 when Dil was born. That makes her 41 in "All Growed Up" and 42 in All Grown Up!. (or 41, since Tommy mentions being 10 in All Grown Up!, and Chuckie is said to be 11)
* Didi and Stu celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, which means that they got married back in 1986 when they were 28 (Stu) and 27 (Didi).
* In the first and second season, a stock recording of Melanie's voice was used for whenever Didi was stressed/upset. It was a simple "Awh!", she makes that noise four times in "Mirrorland".
* Didi's hair somewhat resembles Krusty the Clown & Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons, Klasky Csupo's previous project.
* In the episode "Chuckie's a Lefty", Didi states that she cannot drive a stick shift. Stu's car is a 1970s Citroen DS. These cars were imported to the United States in limited numbers, but automatic transmission models were never officially available. It can only be assumed that Stu's car was a gray market foreign-spec model with an automatic transmission imported into the United States.
* In 1991-1997, the Pickles family vehicles seem to alternate between a green 1980s Volvo 240 station wagon and a red 1991 Toyota Previa minivan (the original series takes place in 1991, and the Toyota Previa was first offered for in the United States in 1990 as a 1991 model, so it's safe to assume it's 1991). Didi is mostly seen driving the green Volvo and occasionally Stu's blue Citroen.
* Didi never seems to find Tommy's screwdriver, even when changing his diaper.
* Didi's favorite breed of dog is a Poodle.
* Didi believes that Dr. Lipschitz's ways are correct, even after he is shown to be a quack in "A Visit From Lipschitz".
* Similarly, to Chuckie, it is shown that Didi has coulrophobia or fear of clowns, in the episode "Reptar's Revenge", though she didn't seem scared of them in "Circus Angelicus".
* She is shown to be a teacher at a High School in "Little Dude".
* In "Reptar on Ice", she says she isn't fond of Reptar being a dinosaur, preferring him to be a panda or teddy bear.
* She is one of the only female characters with ears being unseen, as they are covered by her hair. The other female character with ears being unseen is Charlotte, which only happens during the original series.
* The only incarnation of the franchise where she doesn't appear is Rugrats Pre-School Daze.
* Though she is Jewish, and her husband Stu is Christian, neither of them seem to be very observant, as their children have never been to Sunday school, and Tommy did not begin to go to Hebrew school until he reached his preteen years. This was probably an intentional choice to hold up the stability of their interfaith relationship.
* Didi, Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, Susie, Angelica, Dil, Kimi, Harold, Stu, Drew, Lou, Charlotte, Betty, Howard, Kira, Chas, Boris, Minka, Randy, Lucy, Edwin, Buster, Alyssa, Fluffy, Spike, Fifi, Spiffy, Reptar and Cynthia are the only characters to appear in All Grown Up.
* A Rugrats Kwanzaa, Angelica for a Day, Angelica the Magnificent, Angelica's Assistant, Angelica's Ballet, Angelica's Birthday, Angelica's Last Stand, Angelicon,Babysitting Fluffy (1991), Bestest of Show, Big Babies, Bigger Than Life, Bug Off, Chuckie Collects, Chuckie Grows, Chuckie Loses His Glasses, Chuckie's Bachelor Pad,Clown Around, Cool Hand Angelica, Cuffed, Cynthia Comes Alive, Driving Miss Angelica, Fugitive Tommy, Ghost Story, Heat Wave, Hiccups, Home Sweet Home, Hurricane Alice, Ice Cream Mountain, In the Dreamtime, In The Family's Way, In the Naval, Incredible Shrinking Babies, Joke's on You, Jonathan Babysits, Journey to the Center of the Basement, Lil's Phil of Trash, Mommy's Little Assets, Mr. Chuckie, Mutt's in a Name, New Kid In Town, Okey Dokey Jones and the Ring of the Sunbeans, Pickles vs. Pickles, Piece of Cake, Piggy's Pizza Palace, Preschool Daze, Princess Angelica, Project Chuckie, Quiet Please, Runaway Reptar, Showdown at Teeter Totter Gulch, Silent Angelica, Spike's Nightscare, Starstruck, Tell-Tale Cell Phone, The 'Lympics, The Alien, The Baby Rewards, The Big Score, The Big Sneeze, The Blizzard, The Carwash, The Case of the Missing Rugrat, The Inside Story, The Last Babysitter, The Seven Voyages of Cynthia, The Sky is Falling, The Slide, The War Room, The Way More Things Work, The Wild, Wild West, Tooth or Dare, Toy Palace, Trading Phil, Trading Places, Tricycle Thief, Turtle Recall, The Unfair Pair, Visiting Aunt Miriam, What's Your Line, Wouldn't it be Nice? and Zoo Story are the only episodes where she doesn't appear.
** Super Hero Worship, Susie Goes Bad Lite, It's Karma, Dude!, Bad Kimi, A DeVille House Divided, All Broke Up, Chuckie's in Love, Coup DeVille, Fear of Falling, Ladies Man, Memoirs of a Finster, Miss Nose it All, Rats Race, River Rats, Susie Sings the Blues, TP+KF, What's Love Got To Do With It? and Yu-Gotta-Go are the only episodes of All Grown Up where she doesn't appear.