April 18

The battle of bedtime continues. Last night was another nearly-three-hour epic battle; in the end, I went in and nursed Daisy and she went to sleep. I call that a draw, because my only goal was to drop the 1 am feeding. She didn't get fed at 1 am, and she screamed for the next three hours until she was due for another feeding. (We aren't letting her scream for three hours straight - don't worry. Chris went in regularly to check on her and offer comfort, but she was not willing to go to sleep.)

As I went through my photos tonight, it was another bedtime battle. I nursed Daisy before bed, like normal. Usually this calms her down, and I lay my groggy little baby in her crib and she goes to sleep. Not tonight. Tonight, she finished nursing and immediately started wiggling, squiggling, squirming, and kicking. I laid her in the crib, but she didn't want that either. I left the room for a few minutes, and when I came back she still wanted nothing to do with me. She screamed and fussed and clearly didn't need me, so I left. I checked again after 5 more minutes. Nope. 7 more minutes. Nope. 9 more minutes... asleep. So she screamed for thirty full minutes before she finally fell asleep. This girl is making us crazy!

She was sweet and funny all day, though. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of her funny sweetness.

Here's one of her looking out the dining room window, though. She scooted around while I worked on that flag bunting for her room. It's a little project I've been putting off for a long time; turns out it's really simple.

And this girl loves it! I can't wait to finish it and hang it in her room. When it's up, I'll post photos.

We ate dinner on the deck tonight, and Caleb discovered a fuzzy caterpillar crawling across the table. We watched him throughout our meal, and when everyone was finished Caleb got to look a little more closely.

He was fascinated!

After watching it for a while, Caleb determined that it was trying to "cross the street" and get off the table, onto the deck.

Caleb decided he would help it.

So he contemplated his options,

and verrryy gently,

he picked it up

and set it on the deck.

I cannot even begin to express how proud Caleb was! As soon as he set the caterpillar down, he said, "I'm so happy I helped the caterpillar!" What a sweet boy.

Another sweet thing? Yesterday, he asked me, "Mommy, what is 'ugly'?"

I replied, "Well, it's not a nice word. It means not pretty."

"But Mommy, YOU are pretty. You are pretty like Madonna!"

I think that's a compliment...