"RIGHT NOW!" says Baby Bear

A day in the life of a stay-at-home mom: After lunch today I found myself waving silk flowers in the air with a red scarf tied to my belt for my "tail" and wearing a pink-striped bib. I had to think to myself, "Is this why I got a master's degree?" Olivia seems to think that if she adds the words "right now" to her demands it means she's going to get her way. For example, the other day she told me she wanted eggs for breakfast. While I was cooking the scrambled eggs, in her two-year-old way of thinking, she said, "NO EGGS! NO EGGS, RIGHT NOW!" I calmly told her that it's not okay to yell at me, and that behavior will earn her a time out. I also told her that her eggs were done and they're on the table, if she decides she's hungry. About 30 seconds later, she was sitting at the table, gobbling up her eggs. I don't think I'll ever completely understand the thought process of a two-year-old. Olivia went through a long stage after Sophia was born of pretending she was a baby. She would tell us exactly what she wanted us to say to her to play along with the game. "Read books, baby. Baby's going to take a bath. Baby is very very hungry." This has recently changed to Olivia requiring us to end every sentence we say to her with "Baby Bear". For example, "It's time for dinner, Baby Bear." We recently checked out a book from the library about a baby bear getting a new baby brother and sister. I guess she could relate to this bear's experience. Or maybe she just thought the bear was cute. Sophia is really getting into taking baths. She absolutely loves to splash. If she's laying on her back, she's bucking and kicking, trying to make the biggest waves possible. If she's sitting, she's waving her arms trying to splash her sister and me. She loves the water so much, she cries when I take her out of the tub. Sophia's favoirite toy these days is a set of metal measuring spoons. She gets really excited, squealing and squirming, if you hold them up so she can see them. Usually Sophia is so enthralled with Olivia that she'll let her sister yank any old toy out of her hands. This does not apply to the measuring spoons. I can be at the opposite end of the house and know when Olivia has taken her sister's treasured spoons.

No Screamy Scream

Miss Sophia is busier than ever. She is ready to be moving around. She rolls several feet across the floor, and will change directions multiple times. She's got to be the squirmiest baby I've ever encountered, especially when it comes to giving her a bottle and changing her diaper. She's so wiggly during diaper changes that poop ends up everywhere; in between her toes, all over my clothes, on her legs. It's pretty gross. Yale and I have both given up trying to hold while feeding her a bottle. We have to lay her on a pillow or on the floor to give her room to roll and flail. Needless to say, milk ends up all over her face, but it's far easier than trying to hold her still on our laps. Sophia has started babbling. She says "bababa" and "mamama". I'm pretty surprised about the "ma" sounds because I thought that usually came later in the babbling stage. Maybe Sophia will say "mama" before she says "dada". I would kind of like that because it took Olivia forever to say "mama". Lately, Olivia especially enjoys pretending that we're riding in a car. She's driving and I'm sitting in the backseat in her car seat. She likes it when I scream and throw a fit about being strapped in the car seat. It's pretty funny to see how she reacts. Sometimes she tells me I have to be strapped in because, "It's kinda cold." If I really throw a fit, she'll wag her finger at me saying, "No screamy scream!" Every time Grandma Golter comes over, Olivia asks if they can go sit in her car. Sometimes they're out there for almost an hour pretending to drive around. I don't know who gets a bigger kick out it, Olivia or Grandma. Yale and I have been really surprised at how well Olivia knows and can identify letters. I would guess she knows about 80% of the alphabet. Now that's with her magnetic letter set. It's probably lower with letters in print, but she's knows quite a few of those. Yale and I were recently talking and wondering if this is a typical age to learn the letters. I know when I was a Reading Specialist, there were often Kindergartners who coudln't identify all of the alphabet, but I don't think this is the norm. Of course, as proud parents, we think she must be a genius. :)

6 Month Check Up

Sophia recently had her 6 month check up. She weighs 15 pounds and 5 ounces, which puts her in the 45th percentile. I'm kind of surprised that she is below the average weight because she seems pretty chunky to me, but I think that is partly because Olivia was pretty tiny at this stage. Sophia is in the 50th percentile for height, and is 25 and 3/8 inches long. She did pretty well this time with all of the shots, however it seemed to take a few days before she was completely back to normal. Sophia is now easily rolling over both ways, but definitely prefers to be on her stomach. Trying to get a diaper on her has become very challenging because of this. She's had an awful diaper rash the past several days. She gotten several huge blisters. It looks terribly painful. I mix Balmex and Mylanta to use as a diaper cream, which works quite well. It's pretty runny and messy, especially when you're trying to put it on a squirming, determined baby that refuses to stay on her back. I've been trying to leave her diaper off a couple of times a day to help the rash. I expect her to pee every once in awhile, which is okay because it's not hard to clean up. But the other day while I left the room for about 3 minutes, she managed to poop, roll through it, and poop again and roll through it. It was a disgusting mess. Poop was everywhere! It was between Sophia's toes, all over the floor of course, on toys, on her clothes, and all over her legs. Olivia came in while I was cleaning it up, and decided to leave the room and shut the door on the way out. I thought that was a pretty smart move. I've been surprised at how much Sophia eats. Introducing her to solid food has been a breeze. She gobbles up everything we've fed her so far. Her menu choices currently includes carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears and apples. I'm happy to report that since we've started feeding her solid food twice a day, she's been sleeping 7-9 hours. Whoopee! That makes a mama happy. We seem to have gotten our delightful daughter,Olivia, back. The worst of the Terrible Twos have subsided for now, which is a huge relief. We've been experimenting with some Love and Logic strategies, which seems to have made a big difference. This is a parenting approach that focuses on empathy and consequences rather than anger and discipline. For example, we went out to eat a couple of weeks ago and Olivia started screaming and throwing ravioli. Rather than getting mad at her, I scooped her up and quietly said, "Oh how sad for you. Instead of getting to eat dinner in this fun restaurant, you have to go sit in your car seat. What a bummer!" I stood out in the rain while she was strapped in her car seat, and we waited for Yale to pay the bill and get our food boxed up. I made sure Olivia could see me so she wouldn't think that I'd abandoned her, but I also didn't want to sit in the car and listen to her scream. Instead of letting her know that we were disappointed that we didn't get to stay and enjoy our dinner, we focused on how sad it was for her to have to leave. We've haven't attempted to eat out again to know how well this worked, but this approach has made a big difference in other daily events, such as eating, getting dressed, putting on her coat, etc. Sure, she still has the occasional tantrum, but it's happening once every 3 days instead of 3 before 9 a.m. Olivia's funny word of the week: Ovendare (this is what she says for underwear)