Battle of Wills

With Evie staying at home with Seth and me, and Cristal in the mornings while I work, I'm afraid she's growing a little bit bored.  We have tons of toys, books, games, and crafts.  Cristal creates new fun with Evie, going outside to blow bubbles, running around the house, playing hide and seek, having tea parties, even taking her and Baby Nathan to the park, the zoo, and the children's museum.  But still, I think Evie needs even more stimulation, or at least a more frequent change of environment.  She's kinda making her own fun by purposefully doing what we ask her not to and then going to her room "upset" when she gets into trouble for it.  In her defense, I'm sure she inherited a little flair for the dramatic from her mother, and so we try to just let her have the time she needs to calm down and come out on her own.  But it is frustrating that she can let one instance of being told "no" to stop a whole fun activity.  We're also expecting more of her, of course, because that's just what you do with kids.  So while we keep raising the bar a little bit in terms of our expectations of her behavior and cooperation, we're meeting some resistance.

She goes back to school after next week, and as much as I am not super excited about the particular school she is going to for the next two months, I think a change of scenery and some new activities will do her a world of good.  She's pretty curious and inquisitive and she doesn't really act out if she has something new and challenging to do.  This is why I'm really looking forward to her going to Montessori school in August - because their approach will help keep Evie challenged by letting her go at her own pace.

I'm not at all saying that this past week has been nothing but breakdowns.  We've had some really sweet moments too.  Evie has enjoyed dancing around the house with the new sound system we got.  She's taken on full responsibility of feeding the dogs - I mean, she'll be the one that notices when their bowl is empty and of her own doing she will open the food bin and pour them enough food to fill their bowl.  She and I have started going walking in the evenings and she is really enjoying that.  She's learning that we have to hold hands on the busy streets, but then I let her run a few steps in front of me on the side streets.  She knows to stop at the next street and wait for Mama, to look both ways for cars, and then hold hands as we cross.  She's a really good runner, by the way.  She's incredibly fast for someone with such little legs.  She and I have had fun reading just tons of books and coloring together.

She's also in this last week started stringing noticeably longer sentences together.  Her sounds are coming in better and other people are having an easier time understanding her.  I mentioned earlier that she always says, "What's x doing?"  Well now it's morphed into a constant follow up question.  She'll say, "What's the monkey doing?"  I'll say, "He's eating his banana."  She'll say, "What's eating his banana doing?"  So now I'm trying to just teach her to ask why, because I think that's what she's trying to get out.  So we're at the why phase now.

Here's Evie lying down on Herbie who has a good 10-15 lbs on her.

She loves to take the caps off the markers we're coloring with and turn them into "monster fingers"