It's the Age

Along with some of the charming aspects of toddlerhood Bree has now reached a few, ahem, rather un-charming phases. At least, they're not fun in my opinion.

For example...she is now doing this thing where food has to sit out all day. She'll ask for a waffle for breakfast, eat 4 bites of it and then there it will sit, all sticky and syrupy and getting seriously glued onto the plate as the syrup hardens. So, after 2 hours of this, after she's off playing in her room or whatever, I finally figure she's not going to eat it. I scrape the plate clean into the trash (or, eat it....what?! I'm pregnant, don't judge!). However, actually cleaning the plate seems to trigger an automatic response in Brianna. No matter where she is in the house she'll manage to sense I'm throwing away her old food from hours ago and then proceeds to fling herself into the kitchen while protesting loudly that she wasn't done with that food, she wanted to eat it, how mean of me, and etc. After going around like this I've actually had to toast a new waffle on a couple of occasions. And guess what happens to that one? Yep, you guessed it! She eats 3 bites and wanders off to play, leaving me with a new dilemma. Alas, I've fallen for this trap several times this week which is kind of funny to me seeing as how even before I had kids I can remember my mom telling me "horror stories" about us kids doing just this thing. What's a poor parent supposed to do I ask you? Innocently trying to keep a clean house and suddenly accosted by a tiny irate messy person?

Bree's other new "charming" habit is that she's ousted naptime. She hasn't taken her afternoon nap for over a week now and I think it might be gone for good, much to my dismay. Of course, I'm in denial and have insisted we do our normal routine every day anyways. This usually results in Bree playing along and then, instead of sleeping, spending an hour or two playing in her room. I guess this is good since I still get a break and she has some so-called "quiet time." It's not naptime, er, I mean "quiet time" that's the problem however. It's the hours between 4 pm and 8 pm when she's majorly cranked out, crabby, rude, hard to handle and generally unpleasant that's the issue. I refuse to let her sleep after 4 because then she wouldn't go to bed until 10 pm...which is just not an option. So we're just stuck with her for several hair-raising hours before bedtime within which her fuse is even shorter than normal. And here I thought there could be no shorter emotional fuse than that of a toddler...but there is, and it's that of a "giving-up-her-only-nap" transitional toddler. Hooray, just in time for the new baby to arrive the old one won't sleep during the day!! I'm coming to the realization that I'm never going to feel fully rested ever again am I??