She strikes again...

I went to pick up Meredith from daycare yesterday and found out that she bit a little girl :(
Apparently this girl had a doll Meredith wanted and the little girl didn't just let her have it (imagine that!?), so Meredith dealt with it by biting her. I was in such shock when I found out that I almost started crying, especially after I saw the teeth marks on the other girl...on her upper cheek :(
I know this is very common at this age and it could very easily be reversed and she could be the one being bit, but I feel completely terrible about it. This is the same girl she has had issues with before. They are almost exactly the same age and Meredith is much bigger that she is, so maybe they are similar developmentally, but since Meredith is physically bigger she thinks she can push her around and be in charge. Maybe a little power struggle at 1 1/2?

Chris had gotten a free ticket to the Def Leppard concert last night, so he wasn't around to vent to (he said it was a great show). So, I called my mom last night mostly to hear a reassuring voice (Thanks Mom!!) and she did just that, reassured me that it's not my parenting or my fault. It's still hard not to feel responsible though. So, I'm saying a lot of prayers today that she behaves and we don't get another bad report. How can this sweet girl be such a bully? I also pray that her words start coming soon so that she can communicate more easily, which I think is also part of her problem.

At least this is a short week for her at daycare. We leave for Arizona on Thursday and Chris' mom and step-dad are coming in to keep Meredith while we're gone.

On another much better note, we had a fabulous weekend. We went to a first birthday party for Reagan (Drake & Lisa's little girl) and had lots of fun. Ironically, Meredith played beautifully with all of the little kids that were there. Then later that afternoon we had Kelly, Pat, Heather, David and their kiddos Keira, Jamie & Reese over to our house and overall, Meredith did great with them too (she did try to tackle Reese a few times and she stole Jamie's sippy cup non stop, but no bad stuff). Had a really nice time catching up with Heather & Kelly while the boys drank beer outside most of the time. Mom, Papa and Allison came over for Sunday dinner too. Nice weekend!

August fun

So, the book thing was just a temporary fluke....we're back to getting through maybe 2 pages before she is wiggling to get down and get into something else.

She hates getting her teeth brushed. She doesn't even really care about eating the toothpaste anymore, so I basically wrestle her every night to see if I can get one or two good brushes.

I don't want to make my sweet girl out to be some devil, but there are certainly challenges with her. She really is a good girl most of the time. She has recently started to really like one particular doll. She wraps it in a blanket and carries it around then lays it on the floor, covers it up and says 'nigh nigh' and pats/hits the baby on the back.

She is also completely enthralled with buckles, i.e. the one for her high chair, the buckle on the shopping cart strap, restaurant high chairs etc. She actually is really good at snapping them together, but then she gets super mad when she can't get them apart. As you can imagine, there are times when you really want to keep them buckled, like in the middle of the grocery store when she does not want it buckled anymore and wants to stand in the seat...so, once we determine that she is NOT sitting back down in that seat, she either ends up in the basket part of the cart or pushing the cart. Shopping is loads of fun now too :)

My 31st birthday was on Saturday and it was quite a lovely day! I went to Skin Sense and used a gift certificate Chris got me like a year ago for a massage and hydrotherapy(just a fancy bath) and it was a wonderful morning of pampering. Then I met Mom, Hillary, Allison and Barbara(Allison's roommate and another adopted sister) for lunch at Michael Deans. Chris cooked dinner for my whole family and invited a few of my Meredith friends over as well. It was a really nice night (it was finally nice enough to sit outside in the evening without sweating!) and a great birthday overall (other than the turning 31 part).

This is a pretty rambling post, so thanks for sticking throuhg it!

Books!

This may sounds like a small feat, but I am thrilled to report that my child has let me read her an entire book two nights in a row! Now, mind you, these are not the longest books in the world, but they are more than a board book with two words per page. We actually have a ton of great hardback books because a lot of Chris's co-teachers gave us books. Teachers always give the best books :) I have to admit that I haven't read most of them, but now we can read them together. It's really cool because she actually lets me turn the page (most often in the right direction) and she has great responses to pictures. Last night the book had pictures of a mommy and baby and she kept pointing at it saying something resembling baby. I just have to express how excited I am about this because there was a point when I was sure that she would never sit still for anything. Friends have told me that 18 months is a magical age, but I wasn't so sure. We are making progress people!

I have to mention that it was 104 degrees today and my brilliant husband and his friends played golf today...tee time was at noon...he said he only felt like he was going to pass out twice...nice. Men will do anything for free golf at a country club.

(oh and p.s., she has done much better at the babysitter lately!)

My sweet bully

Well, I was kinda waiting to get the report and it finally happened....I picked Meredith up from the babysitter yesterday and she told me that she was being 'rough' with another little girl. This little girl is only one month younger than Meredith, but she is significantly smaller than Meredith and apparently Meredith doesn't want to share with her and she starts swatting at her when she doesn't get her way. In the words of my mother, she has the 'classic first child syndrome'...which I suppose she should know about since she has 4 children and 3 grandchildren! Meredith just doesn't play with a lot of other kids when she isn't at daycare and since she hasn't gone much this summer, I think she has forgotten how to share. Also, she doesn't know her own strength! She literally towers over this other little girl, so if she just even pushed her a little, the other girl would probably tumble over. No excuses though. We have to get better about not playing rough with her at home. I'm as guilty of wrestling with her as her daddy is, so I'll take part of the blame. She also just gets so excited that she doesn't know what to do with all of her energy. Sometimes she just looks like she's going to pop because she is so excited, so she ends up swatting at you or doing something semi-aggressive to get rid of that energy. Once the words start coming more, I'm hoping that will improve because she'll be able to use words to express herself instead of her fist!


She went again today and the babysitter said that she did much better and even gave her little friend a hug even though she was kindof afraid of Meredith!


We had a great weekend. I got off early on Friday for our summer hours (work an extra hour Mon-Thurs and then work half day on Friday) and went to pick her up from Mom's house. Then we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant up at Greystone and had lunch....well, we traded Meredith back and forth and walked with her around the restaurant and then took most of our food home with us, but it was still nice. Then we had my grad school friends over for dinner. Jennifer graduated in May and Meredith finishes this week, so we were celebrating being finished! We just had a cookout at our house, but it was a lot of fun.


I met my good friends Kelly & Heather for coffee on Saturday morning and ended up at a park for Kelly's kids to play. We didn't stay too long, but it was good to have a quick catch up session with my old buddies from Big Blue.


Saturday was the big fence day....we are attempting to put up a white vinyl fence in our back yard by ourselves because the labor is so crazy expensive. Well, Saturday morning Chris rented an auger to drill all of the holes in the backyard and we had a stream of people in and out all afternoon helping, supervising, pouring the next pitcher of beer etc. Chris's friend Mark helped a lot and we also broke in Allison's new boyfriend Matt...he was quite willing to help out and he seems to be a really really nice guy and he and Allison seem to be getting pretty serious pretty quickly, so stay tuned... Also, my friend Jennifer had left a set of keys at our house Friday night and when she and her hubby Brad came by to pick them up, they ended up sticking around for awhile and helping out too! Mom and Papa came later and brought pizza for dinner, which was much appreciated! Then, we pawned our daughter off on Nana & Papa for the evening so that we could go to the concert downtown with Night Ranger (yes, the only song I knew was 'Sister Christian', but it was still a lot of fun) Then, we even went out after the concert and met back up with Allison and Matt and a few others at Blinco's. I haven't done that much in one day in a long time! It was just a really fun weekend :)
Btw, as of last night we had only gotten about 3 panels of the fence up and I was feeling pretty worried about how in the world we were going to get this thing up in under a year, but as I look out my back door, I am seeing almost an entire side of the yard fenced in!! Our neighbor's son has helped Chris a lot today and we have fence!! There is a reason why having professionals install a fence costs so much! Sweat equity baby :)
( I just re-read this post and apparently I have forgotten how to use punctuation, so all you english majors out there, please forgive my terrible run-ons and general lack of grammar!)