December 21

When Daisy nurses, she always reaches out to touch me. My face, my hair, my hand. Her favorite is to place her little hand on mine and gently stroke my wrist.

When I lay in bed and nurse her, all I can hear is the ceiling fan and the swish, swish, hmm of her swallowing and contented sighs.

She likes to wiggle her little toes against my thigh, or curl up into a fetal position and dig her feet into my stomach. I wrap my arm around her, breathe in the sweetness of her fresh-from-the-bath lotiony head, and thank God for the beauty of breastfeeding. It's really a pretty miraculous thing.

I prefer to think of this, rather than of our day today. Mostly it was good, but the bad was really bad.

I only have pictures of the good - that's a blessing, I suppose.

While Daisy napped this morning, Caleb and I made doggie treats. I found a mix/cookie cutter set at Target last night, and was itching to give it a try as a special gift to all of the doggies in our life. But then I realized - HEY! I could make this without  a mix! So we made another batch from scratch, using this recipe. (I tweaked it a bit - substituted flax meal for corn meal, added peanut butter...) I kneaded the dough and set out to roll it, but..

Caleb wanted to do the first rolling instead. So I let him. Why not? I'm thinking if we get the rolling thing down now, pretty soon he'll be making me pie crusts and sugar cookies with minimal supervision. All I do is eat it, right?

Yep. He's a rolling pro.

This goofy grin is in response to my question, "Who are we making cookies for?"

Caleb: "The doggies!" (with a giggle and the big smile)

"For Izzy and Coco and Mimi" (Aunt Grace's dogs - she even texted me photos of them so Caleb knew exactly who we were making cookies for).

Monogramming the cookies. Because why not?

Then Daisy woke up, and Caleb spazzed out. His new trick is pushing Daisy over. She'll be sitting on the floor, playing happily, and he'll come up and tip her over. Then he laughs.

It's bad, especially because she's often caught totally unaware and hits the ground hard. He's done it a few times over the past few days, and each time he gets a time out. Then we talk about what he did, why it was wrong, hug, and he gives Daisy an apology and a kiss. Today, he did it three times. The first time, we did the time-out thing. The second time, I gave him another time out, but I was so angry at him that I also took away his cars. I know it doesn't make sense, but I wanted to do something to show him how serious the offense was. So I went after what he held dearest - his cars. Apparently  that didn't work, because it happened a third time.

That's when I spanked him. Right in front of me, he pushed Daisy over. She started crying. I picked him up, gave him three light swats on his cloth diaper and jeans-covered bottom, and took him into the other room for a time-out. Three minutes later, he was done crying and done with the time-out. I talked to him about how pushing Daisy over is unkind and dangerous, gave him a hug, and sent him in to apologize and kiss Daisy.

Then I put him down for a nap.

Then I cried.

I've never spanked Caleb before. I've always been able to deal with situations with hugs and time-outs and other, gentler approaches. But I reached the point today where I didn't know what else to do. Because he is intentionally hurting his sister, and because he's doing it willfully and repeatedly, it seems appropriate to take a more aggressive approach in dealing with it. But I am not a spanker.

Luckily, I am blessed  with very loving and very smart friends. I posted on Facebook about it, and was immediately innundated with encouragement and suggestions and lots of love. I have a few books to read, and Chris and I are going to work together to develop a spanking-free game plan for serious offenses. (I am totally open to suggestions...)

But while Caleb napped, Daisy was really funny. I put a bib on her, put her in the high chair, and gave her a few veggie puffs to eat. I looked away, and when I looked back...

She had managed to turn the bib all the way around, until it was a cape!

I

This girl loves her organic spinach/kale/collard poofs!