Our morning

5:00 am: My alarm starts beeping. And beeping. And beeping.

5:04 am: I finally snooze the alarm.

5:19 am: My alarm starts beeping. Again. And gets snoozed. Again. And again and again.

5:57 am: I'm poked by Tom and told that it's time to get up or we'll be late, so I literally roll out of bed and hobble over to plug in the iron before hopping in the shower.

6:10 am: My shower is finished, the iron is ready for steaming, and I'm ready to crawl back in bed. Instead I make the bed, pick out my clothes, and brush my teeth.

6:20 am: The ironing of the clothes begins. I iron a shirt and pair of pants for Tom and then whatever I plan on wearing for the day, which is usually either a dress or a skirt and shirt during the summer. Tom shaves and finishes getting ready for the day while I'm ironing.

6:30 am: I throw my gym clothes together while Tom pads down the hall to start the Stasa wake up process, which involves opening her curtains and blinds, turning on her bedroom light, and turning on the playroom television. She manages to recover her entire self with her quilt and promptly goes back to sleep.

6:32 am: Tom goes downstairs to pack our bags and breakfast and lunch. I go in to wake up the Lexifer. If she’s already awake, she’s usually sitting her crib and talking to her baby. If not, she wakes up pretty easily and stretches, yawns and raises her arms to be picked up. I let her run around for a bit before getting her changed and dressed for the day. Plus she usually runs straight to Stasa’s room and climbs into bed with her and that always gets Stasa up and out of bed.

6:35 am: I start brushing out my hair, which almost always gets thrown into a messy bun or slicked back into a ponytail. Then it’s on to makeup and by then one or both of the girls are standing with me and rifling through my stuff.

6:45 am: I finally start the process of getting the girls ready. Lexi’s easy – I just pick out an outfit, change her diaper and throw her clothes on. She either gets pigtails or one giant ponytail on top of her head. Stasa’s a bit harder. She’s quite opinionated about what she wears each day. I pick out her outfit and get her dressed while she’s watching tv.

6:50 am: Stasa takes off all of her clothes and declares that she CAN’T WEAR THIS TO SCHOOL. She picks out a new outfit, which almost never matches, and gets dressed on her own.

6:53 am: Stasa takes off all of her clothes again, this time to go to the bathroom.

6:56 am: Stasa is finally dressed for good. The girls brush their teeth with Tom.

6:58 am: Tom and I both get dressed and start herding the girls to go downstairs.

7:00 am: The girls sit on the bottom stair to put on their socks and shoes.

7:02 am: Stasa starts throwing a fit because she doesn’t like her Spongebob socks and needs to wear her Hello Kitty socks. I explain that her kitty socks are dirty, but that we can wash them after school.

7:10 am: Stasa is now in time-out for refusing to listen. Lexi has migrated to the kitchen carrying a new pair of shoes and is struggling to change her shoes.

7:20 am: Stasa is still in time-out because she refuses to sit in the time-out spot and is spitting her tongue out at Tom. I help Lexi change her shoes while Tom calmly tells Stasa to sit in time-out.

7:34 am: Stasa is STILL in time-out, this time because she still won’t sit down AND she tried to hit Tom. Tom is still calmly talking to Stasa, though at this point her new princess figurines are also in time-out. Lexi is happily rifling through our shoes and brings me my flip flops.

7:45 am: Stasa is FINALLY out of time-out. Tom talks to her about why she was in time-out, we tell her that we love her and we need her to be a good listener.

7:50 am: We’re now all in the car and are finally on the way to daycare and work.

8:02 am: Both girls walk into daycare and both have immediate meltdowns. Lexi falls to the floor, kicking her legs and crying. Stasa clings to us and begs us not to leave. We calm Stasa down and get her in her seat for breakfast, give hugs and kisses and say goodbye.

8:05 am: Lexi has stopped her freak out and happily walks to her room. As soon as she gets to her morning room she takes off without looking back. Not even a hug, kiss or wave goodbye. It’s breakfast time and that girl takes her meal times seriously.

8:07 am: We walk back to Stasa’s room to give her an extra hug. She’s in tears and keeps saying “come back for me.” I explain that we’re going to work and that we’ll be back as soon as work is over. I also point out all of her friends who are there and ready to play. She doesn’t care and clings to me, repeating “come back for me” over and over. We finally kiss her and hug her and tell her goodbye and as we walk away she bursts into tears.

8:10 am: My heart breaks.

8:11 am: I wish I could skip work, scoop up my little girl and spend the day with her. I can’t so I hop in the car with Tom and we drive off to work. It’s just past 8:00 am and I’m already exhausted from the morning’s events.

The frustration of toddlerhood

Two and a half has been one of the most fun and frustrating ages at the same time. Every day seems to be a roller coaster of emotions with Stasa. She normally wakes up and is immediately happy, but if you don't put away her chew blanket fast enough, she notices.

::swing:: <---------(that's the pendulum of emotions swinging toward crazytown)

She's chewed on blankets for the longest time. We used to let her chew on them whenever she wanted, but recently we've put some rules in place and only let her have them at nap and bed time. So when she wakes up in the morning, we get her to put her blanket away, but if we don't do that at just the right moment, she melts down. In a major way.

::swing::

Then she's all of a sudden happy again and chatting up a storm with Lexi. ::swing:: Now upset because she DOESN'T WANT ANY PANTS. WANT BUNNY DRESS AND PINK SOCKS. ::swing::

And it goes on and on like that until she's dropped off at daycare and then we pick up where we left off the minute I pick her up after work. Then there are those days when we're just coloring or building castles and she looks over at me and says "wuv you mommy." Of course there are also those days when we've spent too many of our precious evening minutes in time out. See what I mean? Emotional roller coaster. And what kills me is SHE KNOWS IT. I'm certain of this. The kid *knows* exactly which buttons to push to frustrate me and then in the blink of an eye she's her sweet loving self again. WHAT GIVES TODDLERHOOD?

Enough complaining out of me because it's really not terrible. There are more moments of happiness, silliness, and sweetness than those frustrating moments. And even though I swear she knows how to push my buttons, she's not a malicious kid. She's got a heart of gold and is so surprisingly good when we least expect it.

She cleans up her toys when you ask her to.


She builds the best princess castles.


And she makes the best dinner and serves the tastiest tea.

And so it begins

She really wanted to "play makeups" tonight and I thought "why the hell not?" So play makeups we did. I gave her some eye shadow and mascara I didn't really care about and let her have at it. And don'tcha know she knew exactly where everything went. She even got her hot little hands on my bronzer and managed to get a few swipes on her cheeks before I put it away. I'm sure I've started a terrible thing because now I'll need to put my makeup on before she gets up in the morning lest she see me and insist that she do the same.

And speaking of Miss Stubborn. We've been having a terrible time lately with abuse. I'm pretty sure she's just testing us, but it's breaking us down a bit. Lately if she doesn't get her way, she hits us or sometimes bites us. The biting thing is totally new and somewhat unexpected. Let me rewind a bit to explain.

So last week Tom was giving Stas a bath and called me in to see a mark on her arm. Sure enough there was a bite mark there. It wasn't too bad, but we could tell it was definitely not her biting herself because of the placement of the bite. Stasa insisted that Karma bit her and that she bit Caley. Well, there is no kid in her class named Caley, so who knows what she's talking about. We told her that if anyone bites her again, she should tell the teacher right away. We even asked if she knew who her teachers were to be sure. I mentioned it to the teacher the next morning and figured that would settle it.

Well, that night there was another bite on her arm, this time it was bruised. I told the teacher about it again and showed her the bite and later that morning I called the director to make her aware, too. When I picked up that afternoon I was told that they had a talk about biting and in the future I should get an incident report if it happens again.

Now we think that since she doesn't say anything when she's getting bit at school that it's okay to bite others, particularly Tom. The other night he was trying to get her out of Lexi's room and she of course refused and then bit his leg. Hard. Through his jeans. And left a pretty bad mark. She was immediately put in time out and Tom showed her the mark and told her that biting hurts and that we don't bite, but I just don't think she's getting it because she's still hitting and occasionally biting. The hitting is mostly light swipes, but she's doing it out of anger and sometimes just to do it. Either way it's hitting and it gets a timeout.

Everything I've read has said to refrain from raising your voice when it happens (because they want that reaction and think it's hilarious), put the kid in timeout, don't ask for an explanation (because that implies that there are times when hitting/biting *is* okay), and have them apologize, even if it's a throw-away apology. It's so hard not to yell when she's laughing at us while in timeout. I'm not sure if there's anything else we can do. Hopefully she'll grow out of this terrible phase soon.

I don't want to end on a frustrating note, so here are some pictures of the girls from the past few days.
Saturday morning couch potatoes


Future librarian


FUNNY FACE!


Jumping around



She's so cute, when she wants to be.