our little angry girl.......

while casey might've been the happiest baby on the planet, i think molly's the polar opposite........not that she's a bad baby or anything (she does her fair share of crying, but not overly so), it's just that she seems angry, or at the very least annoyed, most of the time.......when she gets really angry her face kind of wrinkles up and she's got this sort of permanent "angry line" between her eyes that's there even when she's not angry at that moment......today was the first day that she looked at me without a look of "who are you" ingrained on her face - she looked up at me almost like she kind of liked me a little today........only took 3 weeks for her to kind of like me........not quite the smiley ham her big sister is.......you gotta earn this one's smile........

my little artist.......

so i think i finally got casey into coloring........i really pushed her a couple months ago to like crayons........she really didn't want anything to do with them, well other than eating them........but i persisted (guess it's the art major in me) and she has finally warmed up to them........we got her a little easel and some coloring books a while back which she regularly uses now, and i noticed today that when she colors, she colors just the faces of the people/animals in the pictures........weird, i hadn't noticed it before now, but i went back through the coloring books and nearly all of the ones she's colored on all have colored faces but no marks anywhere else really.......hmm, i'm sure that means something - like she's gonna be a politician/salesman someday......she definitely loves people so it doesn't surprise me........

whacker......

ok so while casey clearly loves her little sister, she's been trying our patience lately because she insists upon whacking molly at seemingly every turn........it's really like a jekyl and hyde kind of thing - one minute she's patting her gently and kissing her, and the next she's yanking whatever molly's laying on over and giving her a good solid whack to the head.......i've tried yelling, to which casey just giggles........i've tried time outs, which casey thinks is a game.......i've tried being patient and reminding her to be gentle, which lasts about 1 minute until she does it again........so i enlisted the help of every mom we know with multiple kids.......we got a lot of replies and some great ideas, so i'll be trying those out over the next few days and weeks........one we've been trying is to give her positive reinforcement when she is gentle with molly - giving her a kiss and hug and saying how good of a big sister she is and how proud of her we are........i still haven't figured out the best way to handle it when she isn't so gentle.......but hopefully it's a phase we (especially molly) will get through soon.......