I hope this is an age-thing...

...and by this I mean the struggle we have with getting Sawyer to listen to us and realize that she is not in charge of the whole world.  On one hand, I like that she's spunky, has an opinion, and a strong personality.  She can be very sweet and is one smart cookie.  However, I don't so much like when that personality when it refuses to listen to the few things I ask her not to do.  This weekend we were struggling a bit.  I don't know if I'm just as stubborn as her, my tolerance for it is just at an all time low being a month out from baby #3, or I've just realized that I need to nip it in the bud so I don't have a spoiled little girl, but I've tried to be better about holding my ground.  In fairness, the things I'm holding my ground on are actually for Sawyer's own good, but man we are battling these days.  This girl has gotten spanked, yelled at, put in time out, and put in her room several times this weekend.  I'm not sure any of it works - maybe the closest thing is time in her room, though it takes me several tries to get her to stay and realize I will not let her out till she calms down...and gives me time to calm down!

It's almost like the tale of two different girls because sometimes we get this girl....

....and sometimes we don't.  This is a picture of Sawyer on her new bike.  We went out to potbelly's for lunch on Saturday and since both girls were being good, we walked down to the bike store.  While our intention was to just check the bikes out, we found a good one for her, and she was speeding around the store far better on this than the smaller red one we had at home.  So we packed this bad boy up and headed home with a happy girl.  She is digging her bike quite a bit and I think will enjoy riding it to the farmer's market and into town this summer.

So what is Sawyer doing that is so bad you ask?  Well, maybe it's only annoying to us but she likes to help herself to anything in the kitchen anytime she wants.  And I don't mean she's grabbing a banana like her sister would, she's grabbing the fruit snacks, oreos, any candy she can find...and I don't want her to keep these bad habits up, and often she won't eat her regular meal because of it.  It's one thing on the weekend, but pretty soon we'll be home every day together.  So we had some struggles with me limiting her treat intake, although I think I've solved it in the short-term - nearly every treat is hidden above the fridge, which requires even me to get a chair to get it down.  She doesn't know it's there, and so she finds empty cabinets when she climbs up to get stuff.  Eventually she'll figure out where they are, but she won't ever be able to reach them.  So now we just have to deal with the whining and pleading to give her what she wants.

She's also continued this notion that she can go anywhere she wants, anytime she wants.  Perhaps I'm just paranoid, but I don't want her to play outside in the front yard without Mark or I around.  She's pretty good about staying out of the street, but not always, and well I just think times are different than when I grew up.  I am fine with her going on her own in the backyard, but of course this is unacceptable.  Yesterday she just ran out and I found her three houses down.  When she saw me she ran away to the corner of a very busy intersection.  Luckily, she stopped before going to the street but it's not like I could run after her.  She had a several house lead on me, and would not listen at all when I said to stop or come back.  As a result, we cancelled our plan to go to the playground after dinner.  Girl was not happy, but hopefully she'll start realizing that there are consequences.  She says please about 20 times after we give her a punishment and tells us she is going to be good now, and sometimes we've given in in the past, but i'm determined to change that.

This morning was a frequent battle - clothes.  While she often argues with us about dresses, and usually we'll let her if it's not a "gym" day, today she thought she'd wear shorts to school.  All because I said she could wear a short sleeved shirt.  Mind you, as we dropped Mark off at the train I was pointing out to her that people still had hats and coats on...and she herself was wearing a winter coat.  Needless to say I had to treat her like a baby and wrestle the shorts off of her, and put her pants on like she was a kicking infant.  Was super fun, but I won that battle.  I don't care if she selects non-matching clothes so long as it's weather appropriate, but in this case it was not so I decided to hold my ground.  What's weird is she totally calmed down after.  Once I had her in the car she didn't say another word and was good the whole way to school, including dropping her off.

Needless to say, it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.  Isla is picking up some of her sister's bad habits, including increased use of the word "no" when we tell her to do something.  Usually if we tell her firmly 2-3 times she'll just say "ok" and do what she's supposed to, but I don't want it to flip the other way.  She decided Saturday she wasn't going to take a nap because Sawyer wasn't and walked herself right downstairs several times.  However, she then fell asleep on the couch at 6p and slept till 7am the next day.  A nap was required on Sunday.

And that is pretty much that.  While I love reading old posts about milestones, vacations, family time, and all the great pictures that come with it, I also want the blog to remind me of the hard things too, especially so that in 2 years if Isla is doing the same thing I will learn from my mistakes and will be able to have happy and healthy girls who are nice to each other MOST of the time.