16 Months and Counting

My mom scanned in a pic of me and my dad when I was 16 months old, and I thought it would be cool to get Hannah and her dad for the 16-month comparison, but since he's not here, Hannah had to fly solo.  I actually took this photo of her two days ago when I took the last photo shoot, and since it was such a good face shot, I decided to save it for this comparison post. Like I said at the 15-month post, I don't have any pics of Eric at this age, but next month I've got 17-month pics of both of us in fuzzy yellow blanket sleepers.  I need to find one for Hannah before then!

Aside from the haircuts (obviously I am a better hair trimmer than my mom was), I think we are looking more similar in this photo shoot than we have in the past few. Our personalities are different though.  My mom tells me that I was always smiling, whereas Hannah is much more serious.  I mean, Hannah smiles a lot and can be very silly, but she's more often in a studious, observant state.  That is, when she isn't in state of fiery rebellion....

There has been very little of her fiery rebellion the past few days, and I've been successful at diffusing any situations that arose before they got out of hand, but this morning....This morning was rough.  She refused to let me dress her. I'd have left her naked, but it's Sunday, the day we go to the Farmer's Market, and we needed eggs.  At first I was patient and silly, trying to distract her with humor/diffuse the anger before it got out of control (this behavior has worked wonders recently).  Then I was firm and authoritarian, telling her very matter of factly that it was time to get dressed and to stop fighting.  In between, I held her and snuggled her for long periods of time, never moving away from the changing table but patiently waiting for her to be ready.  When I was close to losing it, I called my mom who said that when I was little and refused to get dressed, she just dressed me while I screamed. I let her know that were it just a matter of screaming, I'd have had Hannah dressed an hour ago.  Unfortunately, the problem is not noise related; it's strength related.  Every time I tried to dress her, she flailed and kicked and rolled around and squirmed away. And she is strong for a little girl.  So it's not the noise that prevented me from dressing her, it was the sheer physical impossibility of being able to both pin her down AND wiggle two legs kicking in opposite directions into one pair of pants.  I am not Shiva. I have only two arms, each of which have only two hands.  I tried a few more times after hanging up with my mom, and then I started calling the neighbors. I thought if I could just find someone to sit with her for 45 minutes while I ran down to the market, then this whole thing could be over and all parties would get what they wanted. Nobody answered. I tried again to dress her and then I lost it. She was on the bed in our room, and I turned toward my dresser and just started sobbing.  I try not to do that in front of her because it usually upsets her and makes matters worse, but I just couldn't help it.  The weird thing is, she didn't freak out. Instead she grew quiet, almost studious of me, as if, after processing my tears, she realized that she had pushed me too far.  After a minute or two I wiped my face, turned around, and sat down next to her on the bed.  I said, "Hannah, mommy is learning to pick her battles and not fight with you about everything, but you have to learn to pick your battles too. It's time to get dressed."  And she let me dress her.  It was so surreal........

The rest of the day was great, and I have tons of pics, but am too tired to edit them and post them. Tomorrow maybe!