Hodge Podge

As usual, I am woefully behind on my blog posting. However, I am happy to report that my laundry is (mostly) caught up, the house is clean, the children have been fed and watered, and in general things are pretty quiet!

As some of you may recall, we went through a difficult period with Bella when Abby was born. (I've taken to referring to it privately as The Slough of Despond) Anyhoo, we have recently had a recurrence of "the uglies". We had several bad episodes and a couple of very diffucult bedtimes. One meltdown occured smack in the middle of the Johnson City Mall. I had never experienced the uglies in public before and let me tell you, I never want to again! We got a lot of stares, some sympathetic and some not, as I pulled a screeching daughter through the mall by her hand. I found the best thing to do was just smile at everyone like nothing was wrong. It was so bad a one point, a sweet little grandmother saw fit to intervene on my behalf. Now, normally this would annoy me to no end, but at the time I thought, "Lady, if you can do something with her, be my guest!" She walked up to Bella and said something to the effect of, "You're an awfully pretty little girl to be acting like that. I'd take you home with me, but I don't let little girls who act ugly come to my house." It actually worked for about 3.5 minutes, then the uglies reared their heads again.

I'm happy to report that the past few days have been much, much better. We have learned to intervene when we see the uglies coming, and steer her attention in a different direction. We went to visit friends with a new baby just yesterday, and the new baby's grandma actually complimented Bella for being so polite. I just smiled sweetly and thought, "Lady, if you coulda seen her ten days ago...

As for Abbigail, she is 15 months old now, which I can hardly believe. She is not incredibly verbose at this time, but she definately gets her point across nonetheless. She says " mama", "dada", "Bye bye", and "bite". She also can point to her hair, tummy, toes, nose, etc. She also screeches ,"neeneeneenee" whenever I am doing something she doesn't like, such as washing her face. She started walking at just over 10 months, so by now she has graduated to bigger and better things, like climbing on top of the kitchen table. I'm so proud.

I really love this age, because her personality is really coming out. But she is still my baby. My favorite time of day is after bath time. I lay her on her changing table and smother her in baby lotion, then the games begin. She has learned how to unfasten her diaper, so as soon as i get one side on she will start giggling and wiggling and kicking and trying to take her diaper back off. This game ends only when I have managed to corral her into her jammies.

Is there anything better?