Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 38: A Mid-Winter Swim

Arwyn has always loved standing up, but she's taken her love to a whole new level. Now that she can get up on her own, that's all she wants to do, and when we hold her up and help to learn to take steps, you can see the excitement in her eyes, and she actually gets angry and upset when you let her go and stop helping her! She just wants to be up and walking! I even found her standing up in her bed after waking up for the very first time! And right on cue, with all this new physical development, came what I think might be the 8 month sleep regression; she simply could not calm down, get comfortable, or fall asleep. Several nights in a row I was up several times a night for two whole hours trying to get her to go back to sleep. Oh so exhausting! Luckily she got herself back to normal after only a few nights. She's also just starting to figure out "creeping," or as Josh and I prefer to call it, "bouldering." She was able to step around 3 of the for sides of her music table. She's still pretty slow and calculated, so at the moment, creeping is a more accurate description. Arwyn's other love is giving me raspberries and kisses on my cheek. It is so cute to see her look at you after she does it; clearly she loves it so much when I do it to her, so she wants to do it to me and make me happy. She just gets a huge grin and watches for your reaction. Not to mention how proud she is that she's figured out how to do it herself. I also took Arwyn swimming in a big pool for the first time. She's been in our hot tub a few times, but not in quite a few months, so she had probably forgotten a little. Anyway, she absolutely loved it. She was playing with balls, kicking her legs, going after Leia, and having a grand old time. Finally, we did have success with our new squeezies; she seems to be happy to eat all the stuff I put in them and actually has a small smile on her face while eating and leans in to have more bites. Yay, success!

Leia had a pretty tough week, and as a result, I did as well. We stepped up our potty training efforts and went no diaper for 2 days in a row. She was very motivated to do it, and when I warned her she needed to try to remember she needed to use the potty, she kept insisting "don't worry Mommy, I won't pee!" Well, she did pee, and all over the place. The frustrating part was that I would ask her to sit on the potty since she hasn't gone in awhile, but she would just refuse, continuing to insist that she wouldn't pee. It was like she thought she could avoid both diapers and potties by just not ever peeing, but unfortunately her body didn't cooperate. Anyway, the whole thing put quite a bit of stress on both of us, which caused her to transfer her stress into very bad behavior. Constantly testing her limits and kicking and hitting when she didn't get her way. Plus Josh was out of town at some races so I didn't have any help or support. Not a fun week. I know it's partially related to the potty training, but I'm also ready to reevaluate our behavior management plan, be more consistent, and earn a little respect! Before Josh left, he did get her to help him chop potatoes and cook up a yummy stew, and we had some fun with creative attempts at getting her to eat new foods.

A dry-haired version of her new favorite mermaid hairdo...nice improvising Mommy!

She looks so cute when she actually lets us brush or put up her hair!

Came home from school to a fancy candlelight dinner with Daddy!

Heart-shaped rice pilaf face and "Leia" spelled out in broccoli...it was a valiant attempt, but she still wouldn't eat the rice. She did insist on candlelight meals for the rest of the week though!