What Happened?!

Once, we had this little girl who, aside from being frequently grumpy and difficult to soothe, was really rather sweet.

All of the sudden, it seems that aliens have replaced her with an equally adorable replica, except they have emptied her contents and filled her with straight, undiluted angst. She is flying off the handle at every little thing. I feel like we are constantly teetering on the brink of a full-out fit. She just plops down where ever we may be- a public bathroom, the middle of a party- and starts screaming and writhing. Our protocol is: Step 1.) figure out what she wants. This part is really tough sometimes, as the tantrum may be over something as small as wanting more lemonade to grander, more serious issues, like dissatisfaction with how her shoes are fastened.... even if she has been perfectly fine with how they have been fastened for the past 5 hours. Step 2.) Determine if her want can be feasibly met. Can she be trusted after spilling 3 consecutive glasses of lemonade? Do I want my child walking around Walmart barefoot? Sometimes the answer is no. Just, no. Which leads to Step 3:) Walk away from screaming, melting child, hoping that by refusing to offer attention, the fuel to the fire will be squelched and she will busy herself with following to keep up. If in public, ignore the judgmental glares from people who don't have kids or who delude themselves into believing that their kids never misbehaved and welcome the sympathetic glances from those kindred spirits who have been there, done that. 

The past couple of day have been a bit hard- a lot of traveling, seeing new people and eating waaaayyyyyyyyy too much sugar. 

Micah's grandpa passed away this week, so we attended the viewing on Friday and the burial on Saturday, followed by a family lunch. Charlotte asked me to bring cookies for 30 people. So, naturally, I ended up making 4 dozen cookies, a loaf of lemon poppy seed bread, chocolate chip cookie bars and some monkey bread. I get carried away and take my responsibilities way too seriously when I get food assignments. I did this all in 2 hours on Saturday morning while Micah took Natalie out to play at the park.

Micah watched Natalie one night this week while I went to pick out fabrics for a nursing cover for my sister. I picked the following combinations. Guess which ones she picked?

#3! Which was my favorite, too. But it was Micah's least favorite. He insisted that the 2 patterns don't go together at all. I tried to show him an Uli dress from project runway and he still didn't get it. I guess some things you just have to see the final product.

And finally, here's Natalie, making her mommy very proud, checking out the grocery store ad: