Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 82: Weathering The Storm

Arwyn gave us a bit of a run for our money this week. She's definitely no longer our sweet little Arwyn a hundred percent of the time, which makes it that much harder, because we rely on her to be the easy one, and if she's not easy, it feels like all is lost! She's still on her spree of letting Leia know that she's not always happy with her. We were playing with play dough one day, and they each had their own stash with plenty of play dough in different colors, but Arwyn kept trying to go and take Leia's play dough "beans" that she was making, and Leia of course was pissed and kept yelling at Arwyn to stop. Arwyn did not like being yelled at and did not like that she wasn't allowed to take what she wanted, and if looks could kill, that's how she looked at Leia right before she walked around the table to bite her and pull her hair out of her head! Then another day we were trying to build our new train tracks, and even though Arwyn had her very own set to build and play with, she kept kept smashing Leia's tracks as soon as I would get it built. It was a total Incredible Hulk move, again with a wicked smile on her face. She's trouble these days I tell you! On the other hand, she's been a huge help to me this week. She stood on her stool and "helped" me wash dishes and make lunches, totally entertained and causing no fusses, which allowed me to get so much stuff done for a change. And we had a little family dance party in her room the other day, and it's so funny to watch her when we put music on. As soon as she hears the beat, she really starts moving to the rhythm and likes to get her groove on. I think we need to play music more often and let her dance more, because she's so fun to watch. The big news of the week was the HUGE snow storm and power outage that we had. We got so much snow that it's hard to get down to our back yard right now. And our power went out at 10 pm on Tuesday night, and luckily we got it back by about 2:00 on Wednesday afternoon, but all the reports we were hearing indicated that it could have been off for several days (and in some places it was), so we got really lucky. We discovered that we were very unprepared to deal with it, which wouldn't have been a big deal if we didn't have kids. But we learned that having small children adds a whole new level of difficulty when dealing with the elements. Arwyn was a crying and needed to be held by me virtually the entire time, which really made it difficult to function and problem solve. Plus, we figured out that in a power outage we have no sources of heat available to us, so with two little kids, it didn't seem possible to stay at the house. Luckily we only had to spend one day at Nana and Poppy's in front of their fire. Clearly we have some work to do before the next time...

Leia was pretty funny this week. She was so excited one day when I said that we were going to bring Audra home from school with us, and she instantly started acting like a much older, mature girl talking to the two littler girls like adults do. She was bending over and asking them how their days were and telling them to get their stuff ready. Then she pulled a full on Tom Sawyer, getting Audra to carry her artwork out to the car so that she could help carry the extra lunch bags. "Be very careful Audra, it's really special to me." Then she picked up the lunch bags, decided they were too heavy and pawned them back on me, and ended up being the only one NOT carrying anything to the car! Little trickster! We had a pretty miserable rainy weekend of indoor time, which meant lots of movie watching. Leia insisted on taking a nap with me one day, not sure why, but it seems to have been an isolated incident, so I guess there's nothing to worry about there. She did have her first nighttime waking and calling for Mommy in a long time, which was weird. I actually don't even know what the problem was because Josh took care of it, and again, it seems to have been an isolated incident. Leia was very excited about the power outage, and went up to pack her own suitcase the second she found out we might be leaving. She actually did a good job too; she got all the essentials into one small backpack she could carry herself. I thought this might be a good sign of future cooperation, but no, she got restless, needy, and all up in Arwyn's business (causing Arwyn to scream), so between the two of them, it was quite a nightmare.

Stocking up on groceries for her new kitchen!

Tutu and snow boots...now she's ready for anything!

We made another Gingerbread House (well, train this time) since Santa keeps coming to eat our other one!

Password = Leia

Leia's Christmas Tree Ballet from Katharine Transue on Vimeo.

Leia was putting on beautiful ballet shows for us in Nana's Pit...maybe she'll be a dance composer because I think she just makes all this stuff up but clearly it's legit!

Two Mermaid Princesses with their mermaid tails...Thanks Uncle Cody!

I love it when these two snuggle!

Who knew mermaids could ski? Does that make her a ski mermaid instead of a ski bunny?? But seriously, she's been wanting to dress up with a mermaid tail for so long, and finally it's a dream come true!!