How come...

...my plans usually fall through?

My nephew showed up today with a bunch of toys and the kids wanted to spend time with him playing, plus my niece has to be watched constantly because I don't want to ruin the recently painted walls with the baby gates. So, this morning, instead of my intended activities, I don't think I did any of them. I also forgot about my niece's nap and the conflict with library day--if we go to the library after lunch, she will fall asleep on the way there, only sleep about 10 minutes, then wake up once we get there and not get enough sleep. If we wait until she's done her nap, we won't have time to go to the library. I decided to go this morning, which cut back on our time to do things.

My niece played with playdough for quite a while, as did ds. But I had forgotten how much time she takes up and without the oldest kids here, I'm basically the one who's got to supervise her the whole time.

Some pluses for today: my niece drank from her little shot glass, she played with playdough, she helped clean up stuff, I let her walk in the mall instead of pushing her around in the stroller... Some good things.

Oh, a funny thing, too: she was going up and down the stairs, following one of the cats and had decided to walk forward down the stairs. She held my hand and took one step down, then held out her arms so that I would carry her down. A Montessori concept came to me, though, that children should only be helped as much as is needed. I knew she was perfectly capable of doing the rest but she was used to being carried everywhere. So, I just stood there with my two hands held out so that she could hold them to walk down. She gave me the funniest look when she realized I wasn't going to budge on it. Gave this little grimace and rolled her eyes up. Probably trying to figure out how she could convince me.

The cat then flew back upstairs so she was distracted and went back upstairs. When the cat went back downstairs, she held out her arms for a millisecond, then turned herself around to crawl down the stairs backwards. Another time going down, she held my hands and walked down forwards. Didn't attempt again to have me carry her down.

We did go to the park after lunch and I had hoped to let her walk the whole way there, but I swear it would have taken an hour to do so and the whole point was to get to the park so ds, dd and my nephew could play. So, she walked a bit, then I pushed her in the stroller until we were almost there and then let her go for it.

hehehe. She's making sympathy-seeking faces because I just told her booboo when she had put her fingers near the inside part of the door hinge. Now she's flat on the ground and licking her arm. Toddlers are strange creatures, I tell you!