Adventures with Anna

So Anna has been extra active lately. I feel like she’s reached an all new level of the terrible twos. Last Tuesday we met some friends from law school at the Market Street Grill in downtown SLC. Wow! it was an adventure and probably not the best place to take kids. We wondered if kids were even allowed, but they do have a children's menu. Still I think we were the only two couples in the restaurant with kids. I was sitting between Anna and Evie. Anna kept getting up out of her booster chair and lunging towards me so that she could better reach the tray of butter pats. At first she tried to spread some on her bread, but eventually she just started licking the butter off the wrapper. Nice. Meanwhile Evie was trying to grab anything that came within her reach. Sometimes she actually picked something up and several times in her attempts she knocked whatever it was to the floor. She managed to grab a butter knife and a piece of bread. I felt like every time I focused my attention on Anna to try and manage her, Evie knocked something off the table or was able to grab something I didn't want her to have. The server was great about bringing the kid's food out quickly, but Anna only ate about two bites of her grilled cheese before she went back to the butter. So she was bored before our food even made it to the table. But she got an ice cream sandwich so that made her happy. Needless to say, the adult conversation was limited, but it was fun to see our friends again.

This week Anna has been even more destructive than normal. On Tuesday, while I was trying to cook dinner, Anna was running towards Evie with a cup of water. She wanted to give Evie a drink and I was trying to stop her because Anna doesn't know how to give Evie sips. She just puts the cup to Evie's mouth and keeps pouring until Evie is drenched. Realizing that I was going to catch her and stop her, Anna decided to just fling the water at Evie. So maybe I should have just left her alone. Most of the water ended up on the floor and on Evie's high chair tray since that's where Evie was sitting.

Earlier that day, as we were leaving the library and I was putting Evie in her car seat, Anna was playing on the grass near the car. She then comes waddling towards me complaining about her diaper. I lift up her dress to see that she had tried to take it off. When I went to readjust it, little bits of poop, whopper size, fell out into the parking lot. At that point I was still fresh and full of patience, so I picked the poop up (using wipes of course) and then changed Anna's diaper. You might say that potty training has sort of plateaued and doesn't seem to be going well. I guess I just haven’t found the right motivation for her. I’ve tried to bribe her with fruit snacks, but she’s decided that rather than going on the potty to earn fruit snacks, she’d rather just whine. I don’t give in, but when I ask her these days if she wants to wear a diaper or panties or sit on the potty, she goes for the diaper and has no interest in the potty. I'm not worried. I'll just keep asking her and one day I'm sure she'll decide she's done with diapers. At least she's got the basic mechanics down even if she's not interested.

Let’s see, this week she also scribbled on the rug under my kitchen table with her sidewalk chalk. One morning she got my contacts case while I was in the shower and decided she wanted to try and wear them. They ended up ripped in half, but it was about time for me to get out new ones anyway. During her naptime yesterday she ripped all the pages out of one of her library books. When I told my mom about it, she asked, "Just one book?" So I guess it could be worse, but right now I feel like I've hit my threshold for entropy and distruction.

Yesterday I figured I’d try to spend some time with her so we made lemon poppy seed muffins. She loves to pour things into bowls and stir. So I was letting her stir as much as she wanted. Then I noticed that she had her hands in the bowl and was squeezing the batter. I wasn’t thrilled, but I figured she was just exploring the texture and really it wasn’t that big a deal. The next thing I knew, she was dipping her arms in the batter and had batter up to her elbows. I started focusing on my breathing, trying to take deep breaths, but it was hard not to freak out, especially when she started dripping batter all over the floor. Then today she dumped a bottle of infant ibuprofen into Evie’s sock drawer as I was trying to get out the door for a doctor’s appointment. I think she drank some too, but thanks to a similar incident a few months ago and a call to Poison Control, I now know that I'd really only need to seek professional help if she drank two full bottles of the stuff. And since I think she's working on getting in her molars, whatever she managed to swallow probably helped her feel better.