Must Be Something in the Air . . .

Both of my little girls have been little stinkers this weekend. Annie's stems completely from a lack of sleep. We had dinner over at a neighbors house on Friday night, and had fun playing games until late, letting Annie stay up and play with their three year old daughter. Meaning our two year old wasn't in bed 'til almost 11PM. We all had so much fun though, that it was well worth it. Even the next two days, when she was grumpy and unreasonable in only a way a tired two year old can be!

On Sunday, Annie had to be taken out of Sacrament Meeting, not once, but twice, for acting up and freaking out. Twice! Maybe for a lot of two year olds, this wouldn't be a big deal. But for as long as I can remember (once we passed the infant stage), we have never had to take Annie out of Sacrament Meeting. Not once. So to have multiple foyer-time-outs was unprecedented. But before I completely lost it with her, she would do something adorably cute, like when she sat there with paper and crayons and made a long line of 'peaks and valley' kinda writing (almost like looking at an EKG readout), and said, "Look Mom! I spelled Mommy! M-O-M-M-Y! That's you!" She's been trying so hard to write letters, but her two year old coordination makes a lot of them impossible still . . . she's getting there though. And has found that she can now consistently write an 'H'. Which is cool for me, because she'll draw a picture and then write a big 'H' next to it and bring it to me and say, "Look Mom! An "H", for Hilary! This one is for you! H!" We'd bought Annie a 50 cent package of clearance Dora Valentine's Cards and stickers to play with. The other day she ran to me with about 6 or 7 of the Dora Cards she'd just finished coloring on, and turned one over to proudly show me the large 'H' that fills the 'To: and From:' portion of the card. "These are for you Mommy! H is for Hilary!" Never have I been so happy to have my name start with 'H'. I mean, 'G' is way trickier! I'm gonna be getting these little love notes long before Greg is reaping her writing rewards!

Annie gets frustrated that she can't write all the letters she wants to though. She'll scribble all over a page, and then show me all the letters she accidentally created . . . often 'M', 'W', 'S', 'T', 'I', 'A', and 'X'. We actually bought her a workbook that has the letters to trace, and while tracing she's been able to do every letter up to 'F' so far (that's as far as we've gotten in the workbook), but as soon as she's done all the dotted line examples, she's lost. I can't believe how quickly she's getting this though. I can't wait 'til her fine motor skills more closely match up with the things she wants to draw! For now though, she's getting frustrated, often asking me to color in something or write a word for her, that she won't even attempt, because she says, "I non't know how," or "You do it, I can't." The other day we were doing little mazes, preschool level
draw a line from start to finish' kinda things you'd see in a "Highlights" magazine. She'd done several, remarkably well, when she suddenly decided this game was out of her league. I just kept encouraging her to just try it, and of course, she refused. That's when we call Grandma, who tells Annie, "Can you try it? Then if you can't do it, Mom can help you," to which Annie of course instantly tries and succeeds (or at least attempts it, which I consider a success!)

Ellie, in the meantime, would go to nobody but Mommy all weekend, basically freaking out like someone was sawing off a limb with a dull knife if anyone dared reach for her. Good times. She just seemed easily overwhelmed this weekend . . . when around just my sister Star, she would actually go to her for awhile without many problems, but as soon as more people showed up, Ellie freaked out and had to have Mom again.

After Ellie's initial 'Crawl Fest 2009' we got so excited about yesterday, she's pretty much wigged out anytime we've set her down on the floor again. I guess I may have a few more days to finish baby proofing our floors (like finding all of the bobby pins Annie randomly yanks out of her hair and drops on the floor) before she gives mobility another go.

I'm hoping now that we're through the amoxicillan for Ellie, and through the weekend of whacked schedules for both of them, that things will settle back to normal and we can go back to my normal only-mildly-high-maintenance-and-high-strung little girls!

Oh, and speaking of amoxicillan, Annie this morning, after I informed Ellie that she had just taken her last dose, exclaimed, "Holy cow Ellie! You take lots of medicines! For ten days! TEN days!! Good job."