No, no one is angry or upset. The one slamming doors at our house is Mireya. She has decided that every door in the house needs to be shut at all times. She shuts the office door, no biggie. She shuts the pantry door with me in it, a little annoying. I open the pantry door, so that I can continue to get my baking ingredients set out on the counter and when I step away for two seconds, BANG, she shuts it again. I made cookies last night and she shut the door in between every ingredient until I put my foot in the door. That was the end of the world apparently, because then she threw herself onto the ground and screamed and wailed for five minutes! Joy.

She also likes to shut our two cats in various closets and rooms around the house. I will realize that I haven’t seen one of them in a few hours, which is highly unusual. I’ll look around and lo and behold, they are in the coat closet shredding my scarves out of frustration, because they’ve been locked in there for who-knows-how-long. I have also seen my daughter close doors on the cats. Poor Sparty will probably have a brain injury by the time Mireya grows out of this phase if she keeps slamming the door on his head. She even closed the shoe box he was sleeping in yesterday and then she SAT on top of it! It caved in and when I pulled her off, she threw a huge tantrum. Peachy. I opened the box and poor Sparty looked at me like, “What the hell just happened!? Are you trying to kill me!?” He avoided Mireya and the shoebox for quite a while.

Mireya also enjoys shutting the door on me and Jason. She shut it after he stepped outside and locked him out in the snow. He was thrilled, I tell you! She shut it on my barefoot recently too. OUCH! Oh, and she shuts herself in places and then FREAKS OUT when she can’t open the door again. If we put those handy little door stoppers for toddlers on the hinges, she tries to slam the door only to have it rebound back into her. They aren’t exactly a good baby proofing item when they smack into your child’s nose and knock them on their butt.

When will this phase end? Seriously people! I don’t know if I can take anymore doors slamming. She also throws them open and we have dents in the walls where the handles hit. She has really mastered the art of SCREEAAAMMING when we try to prevent her from slamming the doors.

IT

IS

WONDERFUL…

and FREQUENT.

I enjoy the screaming sooooo much. Speaking of which, I hear her now….

Mireya has a built-in alarm that notifies her immediately if I’m doing something important and I need to be left alone. It must have gone off loud and clear for her, when I went into the office to do my schoolwork tonight, because the next thing I knew she was banging on the door saying, “MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” Umm… distracting much!?

She is so cute and I want nothing more than to snuggle her in the evenings, but I know for a fact that if I had been out there with her, she would have completely ignored me. The only reason she wanted me, was because I was busy. I know all children do this, but I fail to understand why.

Examples: If I go into the restroom, she’s banging on the door needing me immediately or the world is going to end. (My bladder has developed anxiety!) If I answer the phone, she wants to scream in my ear (and the ear of whoever I happen to be talking to) right up until I get off the phone, and then she gets busy playing quietly with her toys. When I try to start lunch and I need both hands, she is desperate to be held. NOW. Right NOW! If I need two seconds to do anything, she had ten things she needs that she didn’t need, well, two seconds ago.

I was doing my morning stretches, and Mireya was doing them with me. She also gave me a neck rub (she sees Daddy do it) and then climbed all over me like a mountain goat. After she accidentally kicked me in the nose, I pretended to be asleep all curled up on the floor. She stared at me for a second and then grabbed her blankets that she brought out from her crib this morning. She covered me up with the blankets and said, “Nice.” I then heard her run off down the hall saying, “Sara! Sara!” She wasn’t able to pull Sara out of her crib and then she shut the door to her room and couldn’t get out. I rescued her and Sara and then laid down in the living room again. She handed me all her blankets and Sara and I pretended to sleep. As soon as she was sure I wasn’t looking, she started to climb onto the coffee table, which she knows is a no-no! I told her to get down and she told me to nap. Everytime I pretended to nap, she would start to climb up onto the coffee table! What a naughty, and very clever, girl! What a cutie!

Sara

Sara is Mireya’s favorite! She has gone to sleep holding her tight every single night since she started sleeping in her crib. In fact, all hell would break loose if she couldn’t have Sara at night. Heaven forbid we ever lose her! {Side note: Sara used to have a teddy bear attached to one of her hands, but it fell off and I never sewed it back on… She also used to have a knot tied in her hat, but it came out in the wash and it’s 100% impossible to tie it back in. Thankfully, Mireya got past both issues. }

Sara Kisses

I forgot to post about Mireya’s traumatic afternoon on last Wednesday. It was awful! Jason was out of town and I was putting together a crock-pot dinner. Mireya was playing with some of her toys on the kitchen floor in front of the dishwasher. She was 2-3 feet from me and I was keeping a close eye on her. She was happy as a little clam and every once in awhile she would get up and get new toys and then bring them back to play again. One of those times, she went to get up and all of the sudden she screamed. I looked over and she was holding her ankle and crying, so I assumed that she hit it on the dishwasher or the cupboard.

She gets hurt all the time, you know, minor bumps and bruises because she’s always running around like a nut and she usually just says, “Ow!” After I kiss it better she’s fine. I knew from her cry that she wasn’t fine this time. I got her blanket and Violet, her stuffed bear that makes owies better and I was going to rock her in the rocking chair. I wanted to get a look at her ankle and I immediately saw blood and a long hole in the back of her sock where her achilles tendon is. I took her into the bathroom to rinse it off and I could see that it was really bad. I thought she might need stitches. I was just hoping that her tendon wasn’t nicked!

She must have cut it on the dishwasher. It’s stainless steel and it wraps underneath, but the edge that’s only a little off the floor, is very sharp. No one but a tiny person could possibly get cut on it, and get cut she did.

I realized that I had to find a way to cover it and stop the bleeding so that she couldn’t mess with it on the drive to the doctor. I wrapped it in sterile gauze and medical tape and rushed to the doctor. Honestly, from the time she got hurt to driving out of the driveway, it took maybe three minutes. It’s amazing how you can think fast and move quickly when your baby is hurt!

They examined her at the doctor and said that it was deep enough for stitches, but due to the angle of the cut and the fact that it was right where she was going to bend it all the time, they opted to glue it shut. They padded it really well and then wrapped it. It took several nurses to hold her still, plus me, and I sang lullabies the whole time. It was so sad! I hate it when she gets hurt, but this was a new one for me. In the end, she was totally fine after they gave her a popsicle, but I was honestly shaken. One of the nurses who has two small children gave me a mommy pep talk. She reminded me that I can’t prevent everything and that I did the right thing. It’s hard not to blame yourself as a parent, even when you know that there is nothing you could’ve differently and you can’t predict random accidents. I still feel bad though.

She’s almost completely recovered by now. It will probably scar, but it’s healing really well. She still complains that it hurts, but I think it’s more her remembering the pain now. The wrap is off and she just has a Tinkerbell bandaid. It’s so scary

Mireya was feeling alright by yesterday evening, so we put her in her adorable sea otter costume and we went trick-or-treating!!!!! IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! She went with a few of the neighborhood kids that she’s friends with and she really did have a blast! She was beyond cute running behind the kids, trying to keep up and fending off a neighborhood boy who is her age (he was fascinated by her!) Her little sea otter tail was dragging behind her and her little butt was wiggling. She was always the first one to run up to the door and greet whomever came. She would get her candy and then come running to show us. Her little face was so filled with excitement! I was smiling so big my cheeks hurt!

SHE IS SO CUTE!!!!

Here are some photos of her cuteness:

Halloween morning SURPRISE! Her trick-or-treating pail and a stuffed witch.

She LOVES the witch! XOXOXO

I LOVE her!!! XOXOXO

Ready to go, but we gotta play the drums first!

She wanted to trick-or-treat at our house first.

Heading out the door!

The first house!

Isn't that a cute tail?!

Checking out her candy haul!

Stuffing her mouth FULL of candy! YUM!

Here’s a video we took before we left:

Jason went out of town last week for business and one of the people who he works with showed up with a horrendous cold. WHY!? He even joked that they were all going to get sick and take it home to their wives and kids. Guess what jerk-wad!? Jason did! He’s been miserable for days and by tonight both Mireya and I are sick. Hence the, “NOOOOOOOO!!!!”

Tomorrow is Halloween and Mireya has the cutest costume! She was going to go trick-or-treating tomorrow as a sea otter. Now that she’s sick she isn’t going to be able to! It was going to be her very first year trick-or-treating!!! *sob sob sniffle*

Here’s what she would’ve looked like:

A little blurry, I know. You try getting a toddler to pose for a picture!

The Author of this post is Solomon Dejesus

When I got Security Choice my daughter was told she could get a dog since she’d been asking and I figured there was no better time than now since we were already kind of exposed out here on this farm. The lab she picked out was adorable if not flawed since he only had one eye and kind of walks with a limp. We named him Gimpy, of course, and now he is as big a part of our family as any of the people and we spend most of our days and conversations talking about him! He’s not exactly the most effective guard dog since he can barely see but he barks at pretty much anything and everything which is thankfully fine since we live out here all alone. He loves having all this farmland to run around on although with the limp he doesn’t do all that much running! Anyway, my daughter’s happy and if she is then so am I – I think it was the right decision to get a dog after all!

Mireya got to try candy corn for the first time today! We bought some autumn mix and I gave her some. She promptly ate all the white and yellow tips off of the regular candy corn, the brown off the chocolate kind, and the green stems off the pumpkins. She then handed me the sticky, sucked on orange pieces and asked for more. I have no idea why she refuses to eat the orange parts. Strange little monkey!

Mireya hates her diapers and her clothes! She wants to be naked all the time! As soon as you get her diaper off and her tooshie clean, she rolls over, gets up and dashes down the hallway before you can even blink. I have no idea how that little girl can move so fast, but she does. It has become the norm around here to see either me or Jason barreling after a half naked baby begging her to stop so we can at least put her diaper on. I thought we were in charge, but now I’m beginning to wonder! In fact, she’s now figured out how to take everything off all by herself. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

I turned around and saw this...

Dad isn't too happy.

The offending clothes. (Notice I'm holding them. Daddy is chasing Mireya.)

What Mom?

Dad found you naked baby!

Dad's putting her diaper on...

...and she is NOT happy about it!

I told you so.

1. She asks to do something and then says “yeah” before you can say anything. It’s usually accompanied by vigorous head nodding.
2. She “gets” you. She will chase you while she has her arms out and she’s wiggling her fingers until she catches you and then she screams softly while she tickles you. It ends with everyone in a fit of giggles. (I’ll get a video of this and post it asap.)
3. When you change her diaper, she says, “Bum bum! Bum bum!” The way she says it is just adorable.
4. She spins in circles until she gets so dizzy that she falls over laughing.
5. She runs as fast as she can. Watching her run like that always makes us laugh.
6. When she sings, she gets very shy, so she does it softly and it’s extremely sweet.
7. She tells everyone we meet that I’m her mama. I feel so special!
8. She tells you about something and she gestures and changes tone and everything, but it’s baby talk. (I miss the baby talk.)
9. She tells another child in a store, “pretty,” as she’s pointing at them. They always look so tickled and surprised!
10. When you ask her to do something, like throw something away or put dirty clothes in the laundry and she does it with tons of enthusiasm.

Truthfully I can think of a million more cute things that she does, but these are some of my current favorites.Mireya just gets cuter and sweeter every day. We have entered into the terrible twos, and those are the one thing that I can say with conviction are NOT cute. The tantrums are NOT cute. The hitting is NOT cute. The screaming and high pitched yelling that makes Jason’s hearing aid shut off, are NOT cute. Her little face is pretty cute even when it’s scrunched up all mad, but I still would prefer to see her smiling and not freaking out. Thankfully, she’s happy WAY more than upset. It is always over something she can’t have or something she can’t do. I can see how it would be frustrating.

I asked her to smile for the camera...