Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire! This feisty little girl is changing every day! Our gooseberry has a vocabulary of over 50 words and phrases and she adds to it every day. I simply cannot keep up with such a rapidly growing list. And while she used to respond to every question with, "yeah" her new favorite response is "no" of course. This has proven to be extremely funny as she frequently appears to argue with Emmett. Take the following conversation:
E: Bethany, is it gross to pick your nose?
B: No.
E: Yes, it is gross to pick your nose.
B: No.
E: Mom! Bethany said it's not gross to pick your nose! Bethany, should you pick your nose?
B: No.
E: That's right. Because it's gross to pick your nose.
B: No.
E: Yes, it is.
B: No...
You get the idea. It goes on forever, sometimes inducing tears when Emmett asks, "Bethany, do you love your Emmett?" and she of course responds "no". I then have to try and explain that she DOES indeed love him but just really likes to say "no" to everything right now.
Bethany has four cute little teeth which she proudly flashes at anyone who will look at her. She loves playing games with the people who sit behind us at church and happily provides many noisy disruptions during every meeting she attends. Our anticipation for sending her to nursery is growing each week, yet honestly I think a part of me will miss carrying around my performing clown.
Nights continue to be long and somewhat disastrous. Bethany still holds the record as being the lightest sleeper in the world, possibly the universe. Every time she rolls over in bed or twitches, she wakes herself up crying. I'm not kidding. Sometimes she goes back to sleep, but frequently she won't. We'll go into her room and give her a drink of water. We used to be able to leave a sippy cup in her room with her and she'd get a drink and put herself back to sleep. Well, those days ended when she learned how fun it is to gargle water and then spit it out so it dribbles down her chin and soaks her pajamas and crib sheets. She of course empties an entire sippy cup doing this and then cries because she is cold and wet. At 3am I have to go into her room and change a sopping wet baby and all her crib sheets. I don't know if anyone reading this remembers, but I am not a very cheerful person at 3am. Now when she wakes herself up crying because she rolled over in her sleep, we go into her room to change her and supervise while she takes a real drink so we can take her cup away when she begins to gargle. Then she gets angry with us when we leave because not only did we abandon her, but we separated her from her sippy/toy. On Friday night she screamed/baby-swore her displeasure from 2:30am until 4:30am.
Bethany loves to play with her big brother so long as it is on her terms. During general conference she was hilarious and made up a new game that both she and Emmett continue to play each day with gusto:
She also enjoys handing Emmett blocks so that he can build towers. Emmett loves including his sister in the game and shows remarkable patience with her when she accidentally knocks over all the blocks.
She loves to play with Emmett. Until she doesn't, of course, and then she starts screaming, swinging punches, and now even throws things at Emmett. There are times when Emmett is not able to even look in her direction without Bethany going into a full blown, raging toddler tantrum.
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| Bethany mastered the talent of tantrums quite early in life. By now, she is a seasoned pro. :) |
Bethany is also great at giving kisses. She leans forward and mashes her face against your cheek, then pulls away and exclaims, "OH!" because she knows how cute she is and that's what everyone says after they get one of her sweet kisses. Pulling books off of the shelves is of course a great favorite for her, but even better is pulling off the little round stickers that used to mark reading levels (for my classroom) and eating them. She also loves reading her picture books. One new favorite is Francis the Scaredy Cat because, well, there's a cat on every page. Bethany adores cats. Someday she'll grow up to be a crazy cat lady.
Our VERY tiny girl is falling farther and farther below the curve for how much she should weigh for her age group. The doctor told us that she's in about the 50th percentile for an 8 month old girl. The average weight for a child 15 months old is 23 lbs. Here's Bethany's official stats:
Weight: 17.4 lbs (0%)
Length: 29.53 in (21%)
We had to take her to children's primary to run some very uncomfortable tests and make sure nothing was wrong with her. In true Bethany style, she screamed like a banshee the entire hour and a half we were there. Nothing even hurt her except for the blood draw during our last two minutes. She did have to be restrained for about 5 minutes while they stimulated her sweat glands for the "sweat chloride" test and she didn't appreciate it much. The rest of the time we just kind of sat around and did nothing, but there was no consoling her. She was fairly convinced that her life was over. The doctor called that night, however, with the good news that the tests turned out perfect results and little Bethany is just genetically predisposed to being a petite shrimp of a child. We love her that way, too!
Of course, Bethany might not be so small if it weren't so difficult to get her to eat anything. I dread mealtimes every day. Emmett eats with the record setting speed of a sloth, but at least he eats. Bethany can be on the verge of starvation but will refuse everything except goldfish crackers. We make gourmet food for her that is loaded with butter and heavy whipping cream for extra calories. I've tasted her food and I'm jealous. Yet day after day we have to trick her into eating every bite. Emmett thinks it's great fun to help Bethany eat. He hides under the table and pops up again, and while she's looking for him she gets distracted enough to open her mouth for the spoon. It also sometimes works to ask her what different animals say, or to find different items in the room. She'll get so interested looking for an item that she'll actually open her mouth and eat. She might catch onto the trick and get angry or cry, but as long as we keep asking questions and Emmett keeps popping up and down by the table, she'll keep forgetting to block the spoon and let us feed her. Meals are noisy, energetic, exhausting, and incredibly frustrating.
Digging into laundry baskets and boxes is another favorite pastime for Bethany. She has a very meticulous nature and will unload every single item in the basket or box one at a time, and then throw each one back in until they are all picked up off the floor. Press repeat ten times and it's pretty easy to entertain her for a good half hour or more. Her meticulous side shows up as well in the way she empties books off the book shelf one at a time instead of all at once, and today in church she spent her time in relief society turning one page at a time through the hymn book. If she accidentally skipped a page or two ahead, she would flip back and try again.
One thing I adore about Bethany is that she does love people. She is shy for the first few minutes of meeting someone new, but warms up fairly quickly and readily makes friends with her big grin and high pitched, "HI!" as she waves to anyone who will look at her. She follows me around the house, grinning with those sweet four teeth. She loves to dance and shakes her bum back and forth and waves her arms around with any music we play during the day. And for all the time I spend pulling at my hair over her determined and furious personality, I laugh and smile a hundred times more over the cute, goofy, charming, and absolutely irresistible spirit that thrives inside that tiny body of hers.
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