Katharine Lange: Leia Week 98: Mother's Day Miracle!

Leia's bout with the word "Yesss" was short lived; she's moved on to "aaahh huhh." Still very cute, but not as sophisticated sounding. Also, the testing of the "rules" is in full effect (and has been for a few weeks here). She knows that she only gets one cup of milk before naps and bed, yet every time now, she's asking for more. And more books, and more songs, and this that or the other. It's absolutely maddening. And of course we try to say no, but then she starts whining and crying and tantruming. So now we've started saying, "If you stop crying and say please and use your nice voice, you can have what you are asking for." And she totally complies. Now she's even figured out that it's probably better if she calmly asks "please" and doesn't tantrum at all. How can I say no to that, especially for something as harmless as milk?? So tough for me to give her everything she wants just because she's being polite, and yet, everything she's been wanting is really not that big a deal and I can hardly justify NOT giving it to her. Hopefully we aren't creating a monster! She sure is smart though...we are really in big trouble!!

Mother's Day was this Sunday. I was a little bummed in the days before because Josh had a stomach flu and was totally incapacitated, and Leia had some pretty bad bowel issues (but didn't act sick at all), and I wasn't feeling so hot myself. Didn't seem like much celebrating would happen. But then we had a Mother's Day Miracle! Josh recovered enough to give me my only wish for the day...so sleep in! He got up for the early shift with Leia, but then in the end, she decided to snooze and sing and play quietly in bed. So when I got downstairs around 7:20 (couldn't actually sleep in since I got woken up anyway when she and Josh first got up at 6:30), she was still in bed and he was relaxing on the couch..lucky son of a gun! But the miracle went on from there. My little princess was a total angel child all day...she didn't tantrum, she didn't test our boundaries, and when I felt sick and had to lie on the couch, she actually let me without trying to drag me up to play. We also had a fun family afternoon busting out the new paint set to paint pictures out on the deck. And when we were painting, Leia looked up at me and said in a quiet little voice, "Happy Mommy Day." It was so sweet, I was in total shock! And later I got my very first "Mommy, I love you!" Another heart stopper. Josh had actually got the very first "Daddy, I love you!" on Wednesday, which was so special for him and made me happy, and so it was sort of funny that I got mine four days later on Mother's Day. Seriously, she's so advanced! Plus, my awesome husband cooked all the meals, did a lot of cleaning, and did the brunt of the childcare for Leia for the day! So even though I felt pretty miserable all day, it was actually a fantastic day...Love those two! We finished the day off with a very nice dinner with Nana and Poppy courtesy of Josh.

The last thing I'll add for this week is the fact that we have ourselves quite the little actress! I've talked about it before with her "heavy routine," but Leia the little drama queen was at it again this week! We got the best little video of her pretending to be scared of the ants and spiders she found in our bedroom. The facial expressions, the hands over the mouth, the fake screams of distress when she's clearly not really distressed at all...it's absolutely hilarious!

Ok, I lied, a few more things... She totally impressed us the other day singing along to the alphabet song; we had no idea she knew all those letters already! And she's been doing this for a little while now, but she can count up to 8 (although sometimes she does get lazy and skips a bunch in the middle, but I have heard her do all of those numbers in the right order)! It's so cool! And when I was taking her to school one day this week, she totally shocked me by being insanely cooperative! I always give her her glasses in the car because the sun is in her eyes, and this day she had her "telephone," and none of these things are allowed to go to school with her, but normally I have to hope she gets distracted and just tosses them (which usually happens), or sometimes I have to fight her a little for them. But this day, when we parked and I put my glasses away, I turned around and asked her if she wanted me to put her glasses away, and she said "put glasses away" and handed them right over. She didn't want to give up the phone so easily, so I told her she could carry it to school but then I would have to take it away. We walked through the parking lot to school, stopping to check out all the tractors (her favorite thing!), and before we got moving again, she stopped, handed me the phone, and said "mommy, take it away." I about fell over in my tracks!