Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 68: Arwyn Likes Snow

Arwyn had her very first retaliation against Leia this week. Leia was in a bad mood and grumpy about something, so she took it out on Arwyn, kicking or hitting her for no real reason except that Arwyn was trying to show her something. All of a sudden, Arwyn just looked at Leia like "I'm not ok with that," and she proceeded to walk right over and give Leia's hair a good hard yank! Go Arwyn! While I don't want to start a bunch of cat fights, maybe a few more of these situations will help Leia start learning not to take her feelings out on her innocent sister. Arwyn is enjoying playing with Leia more and more, but they seem to be little conniving trouble makers when they are together. On the one hand we're happy that they are together and quiet, on the other hand, why is it so quiet, what's going on over there?? Arwyn did finally play along as Leia's little baby, and she even cooperated when Leia "put her to sleep" under a blanket on the living room floor. Arwyn lay there, playing along, for quite some time...so cool! Arwyn has also started trying to put on her own sunscreen. She fusses until I give her the bottle and open it for her, then she tries to squeeze it out and rub her face. It makes her so happy even though she's not actually getting any sunscreen on at all. But of course she still screams bloody murder when I do it for her, go figure. I have been trying to ween off the breastfeeding, but Arwyn is making it very difficult by still waking up unpredictably in the middle of the night. It's not every night, but at least once a week, and so far I can't get her back down without milk. Josh was finally successful one night, so looks like it's a new job for Daddy to break her of this night milk addiction. Arwyn had a really bad day at school this week on Thursday; her teachers said she was crying and fussy most of the day. She even took an extra nap, not waking up until 5:40 pm! I was worried it would ruin her bedtime, but after I picked her up from school, she proceeded to cry and scream the rest of the evening, even when I was holding her. We finally gave her some tylenol and put her to bed at her normal time, and she went right down. The next day she woke up happy as a clam, and low and behold: 2 new teeth! They are on the top, on either side of the center ones. She's up to 6 teeth now (at age 15 months), and I guess these teeth are really bothering her, poor thing!

Leia was a crack-up this week. We decided to go on a hike to see the little bit of fall foliage that Tahoe has, and Leia got really excited to take pictures of the trees on her iPhone camera. She's getting a bit better at figuring out how to use more and more of the features, so once she figured out about the camera, she was unstoppable. I think she took over a hundred pictures that afternoon, mostly the same ones over and over, and rather than taking picture of the fall colors, she was interested in just about any random tree that she saw. She was just so excited to have a purpose to follow through on: pictures of pretty trees. After the hike we headed to Squaw to watch the Spartan Challenge, which Josh had shown her videos of ahead of time to get her interested. So she wouldn't stop talking about how she wanted to "go see the Spor-tans" (with an 'o'). Over and over we would say "Spartans," and over and over she would insist on saying "Spor-tans." It was so funny. She's driving me crazy by insisting that she "needs" every pair of shoes or pretty dress that she sees on other people, in books, or in movies. This week (in addition to the ballet shoes) she wanted the Chinese suit and boots that the unicycle acrobats were wearing in the circus video we watched. She does belong in the circus doing those tricks, but until she gets there, I'm not buying her every cool outfit she sees! Leia is clearly starting to feel more and more like a "big girl" because she is starting to rebel against wearing diapers to bed. She throws a big tantrum right before bed, which is just no fun, but the answer is still no. She hasn't woken up from a whole night of sleep with a dry diaper a single time, and the one time we let her go without one, she of course wet the bed. Plus, it does seem to have motivated her to give up her bedtime/storytime milk most nights (my suggestion for how to have a less full bladder and a dry diaper), but she still won't use the potty when I tell her before bed. Oh well, she'll figure it out eventually. We've also given up fighting her about going to bed at bedtime. We tell her it's time, and try to get her to lie down, but if she won't, we just leave her, and she goes down eventually. Unfortunately, she's figured out that nothing will get us back in the room, so this is a good time to do naughty things. One day she moved everything that was blocking it and went into the closet where I keep a bunch of household stuff (photo albums, camping equipment, etc.) and found the box of clothes and shoes that I was storing until she grows into them. She also found the two ballet leotards that I was hiding from her. I was going to give them to her anyway, but she sure was proud of her mischievous "big find". At least she now has something to wear besides those silly baby ballet tights! And just in time because she got to attend her very first ballet class at school. She said it was great, and it gave her all sorts of new ballet moves to practice, which really made her happy. But the funny thing is, she doesn't seem to want to go back to the class, but instead just wants to do her own pretend ballet classes at home. Well, that's a relief to me since I didn't really want her in ballet full time anyway, but also so perplexing considering how much she seems to like it. Leia's most impressive event of the week was when she decided that she would read her bedtime books to me (rather than me reading to her) because she was the Mommy and I was the daughter. She read me a book called "Schwatsit!" and my jaw just about dropped to the floor because she literally told the story exactly how the words read on each page. Some pages didn't even have a picture of each important word, but she still remembered them. And this is a new book that we haven't read very much. It was really cool.

The following pictures were taken by Leia with her own camera.

A Day Through the Eyes of Leia

Daddy's beautiful garden outside Leia's front door.

Baby Arwyn sitting next to her in the back seat of the car.

Mommy driving up front.

Leia's lap.

Leia's view out the car window.

Pretty trees on the hike.

Same pretty trees, another shot with finger.

Leia's idea of a pretty bush, dog poop and shirt sleeve included.

We were supposed to be photographing fall colors, but Leia was infatuated with all the regular bushes.

The photographer in action.

Leia and the dog pooping culprits who ruined her perfect nature picture.

Daddy was able to get us girls with the glowing fall colors.

Now Leia found the pretty trees; still got the sleeve though.

It's no New England, but it sure is fun to see those trees glow.

One more nature shot from Leia.

Arwyn was enjoying her second row seating of all this great entertainment.

Watching the tired "Spor-tans" climb up some ladders.

Leia is doing so well at painting inside the lines!

Another example of Leia's brilliant multimedia art...used all the little pinhole cutouts from the stuffed crab sewing art project to make a cool valentines project with her glue stick.