Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth

Little Miss Daisy is getting quite a temper.

According to most sources online, temper tantrums usually start around 15 months through 2 years (aka: "the terrible twos") but, as we're learning, Daisy forgot to read the developmental manual and is on her own timeline.

When Daisy doesn't get want she wants, when she wants it (or is forced to do something she doesn't want to do, when we want her to do it), she has now developed the delightful skill of stamping her feet, marching on the spot, turning beet-red and screaming as if she was just side-swiped by that killer whale.

Ok, so, in reality she's not that different from me on a good day but still, she got there a lot faster than I expected.

So far her pink-fits are short-lived and she is easily distracted, which has made it easy to find her draaaama quite entertaining. However, the act of putting on a diaper these days requires the wrangling skills of Crocodile Dundee and the body padding of a ice-hockey goalee. (If you're a guy, you may also want to add one of those nifty baseball cups.) Legs kick, backs arch, arms flail, and tears stream. I have been kicked in the nose, Hubby's crown jewels have been threatened more than once, and poor Aunty Brandy has concluded that she has the legs of a future soccer star.

Getting this kid to lay on her back long enough to get the diaper off is a feat in itself but trying to get the diaper to stay put under her constantly writhing body while you attempt to stick the little tabs, is all-but impossible some days. If you see us in Target and it looks like she has a lopsided ass, you can safely conclude that we just went through a tough diaper change.

This week we took her to a pediatrician check-up for her ear infection (which is now clear), and Daisy threw one of her tantrums with the doctor, making it all but impossible for her to see . inside Daisy's ear. It took all three of us - Hubby, doc, and moi - to hold her down on the table, and for the doc to be able to see down her ear canal with the little ear-torch thing. We tried many other, less restrictive postures first, but all to no avail - it was brute force or the white flag. With the amount of screaming going on, you would have thought we were murdering her! She got so mad and went soooo red that her skin was blotchy for a good thirty minutes after we left.

Of course, Hubby and I felt terrible that it was so hard for the pediatrician to do such a simple check-up but the doctor simply said that it was just a "typical toddler tantrum" and to expect it through age two or three at every doctor's visit from hereon out. Honestly, I think we were less miffed by the prospect of every doctor's visit being a repeat performance, than were by the fact that she referred to Daisy as a "toddler". After that word hung in the air, there was a moment of silence as Hubby and I digested. To us she is still a baby. I guess she always will be.

This early start has got me wondering whether we're going to get this whole "terrible" stage over and done with early OR whether we've just got longer to build to a higher state of terribleness. Of course, I fool myself daily that it's the former but, in reality, I realize I am both powerless to stop it and unable to control it. The best I can do is not to feed into it and hope for the best. Fortunately, pretty much every person who takes care of her is on the same page regarding what to do when she's throwing one of her wobblies - ignore her and at all costs do not give her what she wants - so we've at least got consistency on our side.

All this said, she is still a mostly happy, funny little girl. She's an awful lot of fun to hang out with: super inquisitive, a learning sponge, and full of gusto. It could be worse. I hope it doesn't get so.

Snow Bunny

Yesterday we took Daisy up to Tahoe and the snow for the first time. It was also a first time visit for my Dad and, with the beautiful spring-like weather we've had this weekend, it was THE PERFECT Valentines day with our new family together for the first time.

Daisy had a blast walking around the village at Heavenly, getting particularly interested in the pigeons and the gondola that takes you to the top. The line for the ride was pretty long with skiiers this time of year and we didn't really want to chance two women with hip problems in the snow, so we didn't make the trip ourselves, but we'll surely come back in the summer when all we'll have to contend with is grass.


Charting her own path around Heavenly Village. She is quite the little attention getter, let me tell you. Nobody can believe she is so small and such an accomplished walker!


Gondola watching with Daddy

After a spot of lunch and people-watching we started our way back home, stopping at a small snow park on the side of the road, to give Daisy her first taste (quite literally) of snow.





As with anything new, Daisy jumped right into this whole snow thing, smiling, laughing, and squealing with delight. She grabbed a handful of snow from her Daddy and promptly began eating it. Although we didn't have a snow-suit for her, she sat down and happily got soaked-through to her diaper as she looked around and sized-up the whole situation, providing her mummy with some great photo ops!



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At the end of our snow adventure, we had to strip Daisy down to her onesie before we could put her back in her car seat and head home. And, although she had only one 50 minute nap all day, she yabbered and squealed with happiness all the way home, and then again throughout the evening, until she fell into bed just before 8pm; one happy little snow bunny!

It was possibly one of THE BEST days I've had as a mom yet. She is so much fun to be around and I love watching her experience things for the first time. What a GREAT Valentines Day!

Head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears (ouch), mouth, nose, arf, no!

Now that she has got this walking thing down (down being the operative word, judging by the number of falls she has), Miss Daisy has been moving on to fine-tuning other new skills.

Body Parts
Daisy now knows her head, ears, mouth, tongue, and feet.

My mother spent an ungodly amount of money on a learn to read system that I was originally resistant to but, I have to hold my hands up and say that Daisy not only loves it but it has definitely helped her learn a number of words, objects, and actions. The books in the system have peekaboo windows with pictures and words so, not only do babies get to see the letters and the object, but there is a fun 'reveal' that they can get excited about.

Ask Daisy to touch her ears or head, or stick out her tongue and she will (mostly) comply. She gets so excited when she gets it right that she claps herself. It's super cute to see.

Animal Sounds
"Arf arf!" is a dog
"Mmmmmmmm" is a cat
"Muuu muuu" is a cow
"Brrrrrrrrrr" is a sheep
"OhhhOhhh" is a monkey (as in "ooooo oooo aahhh ahhh")
... you get the picture.

Again, cute.

Yes. No.
Thanks to my Dad, who dramatically shakes his head when he's telling Daisy "noooooooo!" for something or other, when you now say "no" to her, she will respond with frenetic head shaking. (And a cheeky smile, of course.) Not only does she understand that "No" equals head-shake but she has also begun to apply the head shake to things she wants to say no to. So, for instance, when she doesn't want to take her antibiotics for her current ear infection.

It has started a debate in our house about why "no" came before "yes". So, I started trying to say "yes" more, placing an emphasis on the head nodding, and found that... well, we don't really say "yes" much. There's lots of "good jobbing" and "clever girling" but the word "yes" doesn't often appear in our daily vocabulary. Is this a problem? Are we negative people? We're trying to decide...

Bang!
We've moved on from just picking up and walking objects around the house to picking them up and throwing them ceremoniously. In watching her I've figured out that she is trying to understand why the objects make different sounds landing and move/scatter differently when landing on differently textured surfaces. A baby's developing brain is fascinating!

Daisy also now loves kicking her ball-pit balls around the living room. Her new favorite activity is for us to place all of them in the middle of the room in a big sea of red, orange, green, and blue, and for her to then walk through the middle of them, kicking and scattering them all over the place. She loves to carve a path through the middle of the balls and then see how far and in how many (hard to reach) places she can kick them!



We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo




The rain cleared this past Sunday and so we grabbed our stroller, threw Daisy in the car, and then picked-up Nan and Grandad for our first ever trip to the Sacramento Zoo. None of us has ever been to that particular zoo before, so it was an adventure for all of us.

Not only was it great to show Daisy the live and in-person version of her favorite animals but it was also an opportunity to test her walking skills outside of the house. Up until now, we have kept her in the stroller or in her arms when we're out and about - walking has been reserved for the predictable surfaces of our home. But this weekend we decided to experiment a bit and have Daisy walk around with us. It was fun to have her hold my hand (despite resistence) and walk beside me but she is just so small and unstable that it's hard work bending down, leading her around, and holding her up. Plus, there's this thing that she's used to going where she wants to go (in circles) rather than where we want her to go. Put both of those elements together and it's quite comical to watch.



Until next time...