Little O's 365ish Project - Update One
Beautiful girl, in your birthday dress, just relaxing. Suspiciously.
On this afternoon, we dashed out for some fresh air between the showers and found this little glade in a corner of our little village. Gently sloping grass and tall, tall trees. We were grateful for the tall, tall trees when the rain came down again. We talked about leaf canopies as we sheltered. Little R found a long twig and pulled me out of the sea. You sat in the tree and giggled, and ran between them, exploring. It was such a lovely half hour or so. We didn't even mind getting wet walking home.
I'm not sure what you were eating, or what you were so happy about, but I love how your smile lights up your entire face.
You got this little bassinet for Baby Wilbur for your birthday. Currently, you prefer to tuck yourself into bed though. So Cute. You love wrapping your shoulders with fabric, and covering your legs, then wiggling them.
Open, shut, open, shut. Little fingers mastering the hinge on this train.
No, I don't know why you are crying. I seldom do, to be honest. Our days have become a bit of a battle, trying to cope with your crying. Because you are a girl of extremes.
When happy, you are the life of the party. You giggle, tickle, snuggle, cuddle, race about cackling wildly, dance, clap, and play so exuberantly that we just have to join in. Little R and you make each other laugh so much, which I love to watch.
Unfortunately, in the last few weeks, I feel like we've only seen Happy Miss O for about 40% of the time. The rest of the time Grumpy O turns up and she is no fun. You wail, roar and scream. You follow me around, literally trying to climb up my legs and shrieking wildly when I can't, or won't, pick you up IMMEDIATELY.
You eat about two bites of any meal or snack I prepare for you, push it away and demand to breastfeed instead. Then, within the hour, you're hungry again. So you wail. The pattern repeats. All day. Today I prepared you ready break, toast, pancakes, bread sticks, slices pear and melon and then Rachel made you pasta for dinner. The only things you ate much of were the pancakes and pasta. And even then, not much. I wouldn't mind you eating like a bird if you didn't demand "diddy" (your word for milk) every 20 blinking minutes. You are not a newborn anymore!
You need help to get out of the lounge and garage doors. You get yourself in fine, then stand on the doorstep asking for help to step down. Which is fine, except the way you "ask" is to shout in an increasingly angry, ear shattering voice until someone comes. I'm demonstrating "help me, Mummy", with the sign time and time again, but you prefer the shriek. The shriek also comes out of you are not permitted to play with a perfectly appropriate toy like a pair of scissors, a tenon saw, a bread knife, a glass or a sharp screwdriver. We're so unreasonable. And if the shriek doesn't make your point articulately enough, you throw yourself on the floor for a proper knock-en-down-drag-em-out tantrum. Nice. Not at all tiresome. Fifteen times a day.
That's not what you're doing here though. This is a Happy Miss O relaxing and giggling in the little patch of sunlight we enjoy around midday in our lounge. See? Happy girl!
Busy girl, exploring some "goo" we got you for Christmas. You warmed up to it very slowly and we spent most of the time arguing about whether you should eat the goo or not. I thought no. You thought emphatically yes. Your determination is admirable, but frustrating at moments like this.
You LOVE balls. You shout "baw!" every time you spot one, or even something vaguely spherical. You love our foam skittles and were determined to carry both of them simultaneously. You determination is a great strength at moments like this. I see you working and working at new skills until you master them and that is something I'm delighted to see.
Tummy! You love revealing and tickling your own tummy. You giggle, which makes me think maybe your tummy isn't ticklish at all and you just know that when you tickle your tummy you're supposed to giggle. Either that, or you are able to tickle yourself.
I love the necklace phase.
Oh dear. Another not good moment of Mummying. On Fridays now, Little R goes to nursery all day. A friend recently asked how I liked having the day to myself. Ha ruddy ha ha. I get less done on Fridays than on any other day, because without Little R to distract you, you are harder work. On this particular Friday I literally got nothing done, because you wouldn't even NAP in your COT. I tried and tried to settle you and lay you down but you went rigid and screamed in fury. I was trapped, sitting on the edge of the bed while you slept. It sucked. You were miserable. I was miserable. Only once Little R was home did I manage to frantically paint some 3.6 metre lengths of timber. (More about the garden LATER!!!)
Sometimes you quietly amuse yourself independently for a while. It's nice to see you concentrating on a puzzle. When it's not a climbing-on-a-stool-over-a-tiled-floor-in-great-danger-of-falling-off puzzle. Or an eating-toilet-paper puzzle.
Ah-ha! A garden spoiler. You totally understand "processes" now, like washing up, running a bath, picking strawberries (we have a dozen totally unripe strawberries sitting on the kitchen windowsill right now - you just need to perfect the "judging ripeness" part of that process) and screwing up screws. Yup, that handle is well on.
Ta-da!!! So SO happy to see this playhouse/hobbit hole completed at the weekend. It's been a long time coming. The other side of the garden is coming along nicely too. I'll show you that later. I'm planning a grand reveal post once the whole garden is done. Very exciting!
The next day - peekaboo with your big brother.
And today. After a fairly cheerful couple of days, Grumpy Miss O reappeared. Sigh. I wish I knew how to make you happy. Well, a method that doesn't involve breastfeeding you non-stop all day.
Baby, I love you, but this year is proving to be such hard work. Not physically. Sleep deprivation I can cope with. Washing up, laundry - I'm a pro! It's the psychological torture of listening to crying for so much of every damn day. Add that to Little R's non-stop narrating, play demands and "why?" questions, and you have the perfect storm of demands, which today led me to bellow "Put the hose OUTSIDE!!!!" at the top of my lungs, then retreat upstairs to do meditative breathing with my fingers rammed in my ears to block out all the crying (Rachel was downstairs with you, I wasn't completely abandoning you). It wasn't even the hose that was bothering me that much. It was Miss O's screaming combined with the fact that Little R had point blank refused to remove the offending hose to accept that it was not yet time to water the plants THREE times in the row.
Sheesh.