Wind, Foo-foos and Molars

This past month has been quite challenging with Emma.  She has not been sleeping well at all, and her mood reflects this.  I went back through this blog the other night to see if what I had written about Lucy at 22 months could shed any light on Emma at 22 months.  I was surprised to read that Lucy had just finished getting her canine teeth and it would be months yet before she started working on her two-year molars.  Okay, I thought, maybe that explains the sour mood as Emma is getting her two-year molars a lot earlier than Lucy did.  I also read that Lucy was sleeping the best she had in her life at 22 months and I feel like Emma is sleeping almost as bad as she ever has.  I say almost, because it hasn't gotten to the point where we are having to sit upright with her in a chair because of her tummy, but she has been spending a lot of time in Will's and my bed which makes for some very tiring nights.  After getting up so many times to calm Emma down, I just give up and bring her to our bed.  Which is really no better than being awake in her room with her, but at least I get to lay down with blankets on me.  However, she spends the rest of the night kicking, head butting, pinching and rolling all over us.  This kid is like a bull in a china shop.  I woke up one morning with dried blood all over my lip and another morning with a bruise between my left eye and my eyebrow.  

Emma seems to have developed some night time fears, which is several months earlier than Lucy did too (again, according to this blog!).  Several weeks ago we had a very strong wind storm at night and a piece of aluminum siding outside Emma's bedroom window became loose and kept flapping loudly in the wind.  This was the start of the fears, and before the night was over a large branch hit the window which not only startled Emma, but her mama too!  Ever since that fateful night, she keeps talking about the wind being as loud as a truck and how she wants to sleep in mama and dada's bed.  The conversation goes something like this: "Wind, loud.  Truck, loud.  Mama Dada bed nigh-nigh."

To make matters worse, Emma has developed a fear of dogs.  She never liked dogs and cats, but now it is at extreme levels.  If we go to someones house where a dog or cat lives, she refuses to be set down and freaks out uncontrollably if I need to set her down to say, tie someones shoes.  After she discusses the wind as loud as a truck before bed, we move onto how she is afraid that dogs will bite her toes.  "Foo-foo (dog) toes no bite!" she repeats to me over and over again as I try to calm her down for sleep. With all that being said, I realize that the below pictures reflect nothing of the emotional distraught, exhausted little girl we have had to handle with special care this past month.  So, forget everything I just wrote and tell yourself that based on the below pictures, she was as sweet as can be this month.

Here she is below, hanging with me in the kitchen early one morning before the sun came up.  There gets to be a certain point in the night where I admit defeat and just call it an early morning.

Because of her little sleep, by the time dinner rolled around she was usually such a hot mess she refused to sit at the table for dinner.  We don't have too many rules at this house, but one of them is you have to eat at the table.  She missed several dinners because of this, and yup, you guessed it, got up even earlier the next morning because she was hungry.  It seems we just can't win.  Here she is below looking contrary to everything I've just described to you.

If Emma had it her way, she would eat sausage at every meal.  She will usually ask me for sausage and pancakes when she is hungry and if she is lucky enough to get sausage as part of her meal, you better eat yours first or she will beg you for yours and you will end up with nothing.  Just ask Lucy.

This little dear is starting to develop a love of rainbows just like her big sister.  She loves rainbows and can name most colors correctly now too.

When we bring the eggs in from the chickens for the day, she will ask to see the egg basket and name all the colors of the eggs.  "Blue egg, brown egg, geen egg.  White egg?" Our chickens don't lay the white eggs available at the store and depicted in every storybook.  Emma has noticed this, and always asks why there aren't any white eggs.  The light colored eggs in the picture below are actually blue and light green, even though they look kind of white.

Emma loves hanging with older kids.  Here she is below doing just fine with Lucy and her friend Grace playing a bean bag toss game.

 To get Emma outside has been an energy sap to say the least.  She refuses to put on gloves, hat, scarf or snow pants.  Fortunately she will put on her coat and boots but this isn't enough warmth to play in the snow or go for a walk when it is 20 degrees outside and the snow goes past her knees.  I usually have to wait until Will is home to get her outside.  Then and only then will she allow you to pin her down to get the snow gear on because she doesn't like the idea of Lucy and Will outside without her.  Here she is below showing her doll Polly the snow and telling her it is cold.

I know it's hard for you to believe that this sweet face could put up any resistance.

Most of the time she does have fun when she gets out there but still hates her snow pants. We have compromised on this, and just put a second pair of fleece pants over her first pair of pants.  Here she is below making a snow angel.

As long as winter outwear is involved, Emma prefers to play inside.  Here she is below diapering her babies.

 Playing in a box...

And using rolls of toilet paper as pom poms.

Here Emma is below wearing her sunglasses upside down and looking quite fierce.

 On another car trip I tried showing Emma how the sunglasses go right-side-up and realized that they actually stay better on her face the way she put them on - upside down.

Finally, Emma got her second haircut of her life this past month.  This time, we had the luxury of staying home and Will's cousin Shannon came and did the honors in our kitchen.  Once Emma saw that Lucy's haircut was painless, she couldn't wait to climb up in the chair.  Here is a before shot:

 And the after shots...

Thank you Shannon for cutting her bangs so it doesn't look like a boy haircut!

And if you can believe it, Emma has way more hair at 22 months than Lucy did.  What can I say, my kids seem to start out in the hair department slow and steady.

Let's hope next month Emma sleeps better, especially since we have some tough couple of days coming up.  Tomorrow is my dad's surgery to remove his cancer and the following day is Luke's 5th birthday.  Emotional and cranky doesn't even begin to describe me right now and I'm sure Emma's behavior this month is just the toddler version of me, combined with fears of the wind, foo-foos and those darn molars.