The Terrific Twos

So I was really trying to be optimistic about the behavior of my two year old, but despite my best efforts Selena has been a bit more difficult. I feel like such a smart parent when I am able to trick her into doing what I want, but it has been harder to do lately. I'm not sure if its the stage she is in, or if its just that I'm tired and trying to do too many things at once. But sometimes I just want her to do what I ask without having to think about how to phrase the request in a way that will conform to her two-year-old whims. The biggest problem, again, is the running away. She had been doing really well and we had made multiple library visits and did not have any running away, but since Allie has arrived she once again is taking off. It is really frustrating.

Sleep has also been a problem, or actually is the root of a lot of her behavior challenges. She has always been difficult to get to sleep, and that hasn't gotten any worse but she has been waking up early and refusing naps, or only taking a short one. Occasionally refusing naps isn't new either, but she usually would only do that when she had slept in that day. But now she is waking up early and refusing a nap and trying to live off of 8 - 10 hours of sleep a day, which is not enough for her and she is very whiny and obstinate on those days. And since she is so hard to get to go to sleep I really don't know what to do when she wakes up early. Her behavior is so much better the days she does gets enough sleep. However I am partly to blame because we did try a week of skipping naps because then she would go to bed earlier and faster. My hope was that she would still wake up at the same time and thus get the same number of hours of sleep for the day, but she foiled my plans by getting up early and being super grumpy by the end of the day. So now we're back to naps and I've been trying to stay consistent on nap and bed times but she is so resistant to a schedule.

On a positive note potty training is going pretty well. She had three days in a row where she had hardly any accidents and I was tentatively excited that we were done with diapers, but then the next day she had a lot of accidents. Since then we've had some really good days and some not so good days. I'm hoping that she'll have it all worked out in a month. Once again sleep has been affecting the potty training. On the days where she hasn't slept she doesn't do well making it to the potty. But we've been keeping her in undies pretty much all the time except for at night. We've been using Gerber training pants with a pull on diaper cover over them when we go out or for naps. She's had some accidents when we go to the neighborhood park, but hasn't had any when we are in a public place.

She has learned to open doors which is a pretty inconvenient milestone. I am blaming this on part of the sleep problem. I think she wakes up during her nap and when normally she might whine a bit and go back to sleep, now she sees the doorknob and decides to leave her bedroom. She has also managed to let Dyna out in the front yard.

After doing really well with her new sister, she went through a couple weeks of pretty strong jealously. She would tell me not to feed Allie, to put her down, that she wanted to snuggle mom without Allie, etc, etc. But she seems to be doing a little better now and when she is in a good mood she is very helpful in trying to entertain Allie to keep her from crying. She does this by dancing, reading her a book, giving her toys, or a binky. It is really cute. However she does have a very inconvenient desire to wake Allie every time she is sleeping. I try to explain to her that if Allie is sleeping then I can play with her more easily, but if she wakes Allie up then I'm going to have to pick Allie up and won't be able to play with her, but she doesn't seem to get it.

She is addicted to swings. A nice neighbor friend gave me a key to the private park just outside our cul-de-sac so we've been making daily trips to the park to swing on the swing. This has been very nice. I've always been so annoyed that we couldn't visit the park and that it was very rude to lock people out of it. We also made a trip to a spray park, but Selena only went in the water for about 5 minutes then headed off to the playground to swing on the swings for an hour.

Drawing is cool again. She is back to making her stick people and she draws pictures for everyone in the family. She has little stories for the pictures. It is really cute.

We didn't do much for the 4th of July. We went over to some friends for a bbq. We got a kids pack of fireworks and set them off for Selena. She liked the smoke bombs, but then hid in the car for the rest of them.