She Who Must Be Obeyed

Oh Elly.  What are we going to do with this one?  So loud.  Happily whacks away at older brothers if they bug her.  Pulls the most incredible grumpy faces.

I have no idea what to do with her hair these days.  Those adorable pigtails are great, but its the front.  The wispy hair in her eyes is driving us both bananas.  I've resorted to the Pebbles look

And she just won't stop.  Morning, noon and night, this kid just goes.  And she thinks she's the same age as her brothers.  Thinks she can do the same thing as them.  Forget the highchair, she wants to eat in a chair just like the rest of us.  So what if she can't see her food.  Its all going in her hair and her lap anyway, what does it matter?  I'm kind of proud of her go get 'em attitude, but its also tiring to chase her constantly.  And if I don't chase her?  If I just let her go?  Well, I do that too, but that's usually when I discover her up the playstructure ladder or investigating the toilet bowl water (the boys never did that!  Why is she doing that?!).  She is our fearless leader, no doubt about it.

And at night, well...she doesn't stop then either.  And she doesn't get any quieter.   It used to be that she would cry for us to come-and-get-me-right-this-instant-or-the-wrath-of-Elly-shall-be-known-unto-you at about midnight, sometimes even 2am, and I would stumble out of bed and bring her back to our room.  But since coming home from the cottage, we've gotten rid of her crib (she was Houdini-ing her way out of it) and placed her on a twin bed on the floor.  She goes to bed nicely most nights, but she's teething her eye teeth (those little sharp ones on the sides) and they hurt and make her restless, so she's started waking up earlier and earlier and crying louder and louder. Two nights in a row Mark didn't get upstairs fast enough and she came storming out of her room crying for us, angry little feet pounding the floor, blonde hair all askew.  It was kind of funny actually, the door slamming against the wall, the angry face.  So much drama for such a little person!  But then she wouldn't go back to sleep until we brought her into our bed, so the funny kind of ended there.

Last night I managed to get her back to sleep at 10pm and we went to bed without her smugly snuggled between us for a change.  I woke up sometime around 2:30am to a door slamming against a wall and angry little feet stomping in the dark.  A blonde halo of fuzz went past the foot of the bed and then she was pulling herself up into bed next to me, crawling over me and finally flopping down between us.  She slept soundly for a change and so did we.  But the fact that she's now quite happy to stomp her way to us in the middle of the night is...interesting.  I mean, on the one hand, are we ever going to have our bed to ourselves again?  Are we going to have this child lying horizontally across our pillows until she goes to university?  And on the other hand...she can get there herself!  I don't have to drag my sorry self into her room and get her anymore!

I'm choosing to be a glass half full kind of person and see this as a victory. 

Here she is in all her loud, gorgeous, smiley glory.