Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 31: 7 Months Old and Getting Cuter by the Second!

Arwyn continues to prove that she is one tough cookie! She had her second of two flu shots this week, and when the needle went in, she didn't even flinch. No instant tears, no delayed tears, no tears at all; it was like it never even happened! Go girl! She was playing with her crinkly newspaper at the time, so clearly the distraction helped too (Thank you Auntie Jen!). She also continues to be such a happy girl, and now she doesn't just smile, but she actually laughs now too. It is so cute to see her laugh! Leia also likes Arwyn's smiles and laughs, and if she isn't smiling (which pretty much only happens in the morning when we are driving to school and she's tired and ready for her nap already), Leia is always saying, "Smile Arwyn! Smile! Mommy, Arwyn's not smiling." It's what we expect from her, so clearly disturbing to Leia when she's not.

As usual, Leia impresses us with her intelligence and logic, but now she's even starting to display a little reason...both logic and reason type, as well as the "being more reasonable" about day to day negotiations type. The other day she was able to reason that love means you do things for others: "Daddy, you love me so you have to sing!" (That was also the first time she's used love as an excuse for something she wants!) She also made me laugh with another one of her morning monitor call outs when she wanted to get up: "Mommy, Daddy, everybody wake up now!" She finally acknowledged and reasoned that we might actually be sleeping when we aren't just coming to get her right away! I also took her out skiing again this week, and despite the fact that we weren't able to go until nap time so she was clearly already tired, she did fantastic. She skied down by herself a bunch, she agreed to let me pull her by hanging onto the ski pole finally, and she even walked onto the magic carpet all by herself! She was definitely wanting to do a lot of things "by herself," including getting on the chairlift and skiing down the steep part of the run. I didn't let it go that far. It was fun to watch her make choices about whether we would go on the Magic Carpet or the chairlift next. But the funniest part was when she was skating over to the lift, she hit a slight incline, and stopped being able to make forward progress. In the true ski racer spirit, even at the ripe age of two, she instantly blamed her faulty equipment rather than acknowledging that it might be her skills! (See video below.)