I told you she was smart....

If you didnt want to take a nap when you were little you would just cry until you fell asleep.. Nothing you could really do about it, nap time means you are taking a nap. Mom has that off button which allows your crying to not affect her decision on the nap. A childs nap time is necessary.. It preserves the little bit of sanity we are trying so desperately to hold to.

My Taylor... Smart. Very smart. She cries, then she screams, then she rattles the bars on the crib like a prisoner in jail, then she kicks, the she calms, the calm before the storm.. This is when she knows I will have to take her out of the crib...

She screams, then throws everything out of the crib, flails her body around to the point where I am afraid she is going to crack her head open. Here's the point where she is smarter than me. She pushes the nipple in on her bottle & dumps the whole thing over her head. OVER HER HEAD.

She KNOWS this requires an immediate bath, followed by Mommy stripping her bed & washing down the crib.  Knowing this, she is very satisfied that she bought herself an extra 20 -30 minutes out of the crib.

After she is more than happy to lay down quietly & nap. I am left without the sanity I was trying to preserve.. scratching my head wondering how I was one upped by a 17 month old.

 Her nap time bottles have been changed to water, she hasn"t out smarted me yet..  I think I still have another few months before she does.

No Taylor....

NO TAYLOR..... OH TAYLOR NO

This must be the most commonly used phrase in my house lately. It is the reason for my lack of blogging. This beautiful, smart, cunning, sneaky little thing I call Taylor is in the process of taking total control over my house.

She runs this house. I find myself at least 3/4 of my day saying NO TAYLOR, STOP THAT TAYLOR, TAYLOR CAN YOU HEAR ME? NO NO NO....

Then she looks at me, smiles, comes over, and hugs me while she says Mom.... Like she is saying Oh Mom, you silly woman... Then goes right back to what she is NOT supposed to be doing.

Her lastest antics include.. Drawing on my cream colored couch 3 times in a week with a blue pen. Why do you let her have pens you ask... I dont. I hide them all, up high, in child locked drawers, rooms whose doors are always closed, I hide them so good I have a hard time finding one when I need it. But Taylor, she is smarter than your average 17 month old. Its not only pens, she is not biased, a crayon will work, a metal object that leaves marks on the walls.. Right now I have a beautiful mural of red, yellow & gray metal marks on my WHITE diningroom wall, yellow crayon on my front window, and a few doors which has been tastefully redecorated by my little monster.

In fact I just said No Taylor about 4 times & caught her with a pen as I wrote that little paragraph.

See I organzied her dresser the other day, to switch out the winter to the spring, get rid of stuff that didnt fit her anymore and so on.. So while I was in the bottom drawer, the sock & blankey drawer, her favorite to play in... I discovered under her socks & blankies PENS.  She had about 10 in there. Perfectly hidden underneath socks which she un-paired to hide them. See I told you....CUNNING.  Along with the pens were about 30 of her "sissy's" forbidden colored paperclips & post it pads,some bandaids.. still in the wrapper.. as well as most of my makeup brushes that I have been going crazy looking for, an oreo, not eaten but saved for later I guess.. and the biggest mystery of our house... the missing toothbrushes. It seems like I buy new toothbrushes every week. She had about 3 weeks worth.  I couldnt help but giggle to myself about find the stash of my little hoarder.

I am not sure if she has realized that I found her little hiding spot. But I keep checking to see what else she will put there.....Oh Taylor.