Oooooh-EEE! UH! Look at My Maddie!

Only Eli and Maddux would appreciate that title.....silly little song I sing to her when I change her diaper. Now she tells me that she needs to have her diaper changed by touching her derriere and saying, "Oooh Eeee!!" Love it.

Poor girl...her canine (eye) teeth are moving in and she is in pain. Not quite bleeding gums, but they are crimson red and her mood is like fire. One of them broke through sometime last night, so hopefully the end of this phase is near. For the last four days or so, she has been ultra clingy. First to D, then to Daddy, and today to me. And she is not happy EVER. The main reason we knew something was wrong was her appetite. Maddux has not been eating much because of the amount of hysterical crying she does during meals. I can only imagine that it hurts to eat right now because of the pain in her mouth.

The scenario did offer a bit of a teaching moment today, however. When Maddux gets this way during meals at the house, I do my best to calm her down (while leaving her in her chair). I remind her to breath (demonstrating slow breathing), to get self-control, and I do not give in to her demand for me to hand feed her. Today she finally got it! During breakfast she was freaking out, even though I fixed oatmeal which is the easiest on her mouth right now. I gently held her hands as she got hysterical to the point of having ragged-type breathing. I showed her how to breathe in and out very slowly, all the while talking in a calm and kind voice to her. Eli sat and watched, soaking it all in. She finally locked eyes with me and tried to control her breath. I was jumping up and down inside: SUCCESS!! She still got upset a few more times, but quickly calmed herself using the tricks we've been working on. When she calmed down the first time, Eli said, "Mommy, she got self-control! She not crying anymore....she takes big breaths like I doo-s." (We also try to use the slow breathing technique with Eli when he starts to get frustrated and mad...before it gets out of hand.) Let's just say for as loud and stressful as breakfast was, it had a wonderful silver lining.

Speaking of My Maddie, she is talking more and more. Her vocab is expanding, though if you're not with her everyday, you might not recognize some of the words. She can say "hi" (sometimes it sounds like 'high-eeee'), "baahhl" (ball), "bah-bull" (bubble), and "bye" (again, 'bye-eeee'). My favorite is her constant roll call of the people in the room (or pictures of them). She loves to point at me and say, "Mahhh!!", then she points to Lehr and says, "Dah!!!", and she never forgets Eli, "Ee-I!" She'll even point to herself sometimes and say "Mah-de", but it doesn't sound quite like her name.