The Second Child Syndrome?

Uh...oh...I'm caught?! Run, run...hide...close my eyes. I can't be in trouble now!

Poor Little Bit simply looks pitiful in this picture! I snap pictures of my girls several times a week. The blog is great for holding me accountable to take pictures regularly. (Add that to the great reasons for blogging). Now, Little Bit is well taken care of, but she is a wild little monkey! She has no fear. She thinks she is as big and as tough as her big sister. She will climb anything. She makes the strongest willed child look like a piece of cake. She does everything with her whole heart. She loves her big sister like crazy. She copies her. She watches her. She adores her.

Little Bit sings songs...any song. She loves to dance. She skips or gallops rather than just walk. In fact, she rarely walks anywhere. She rarely goes in the direction you want her to go. You will often see me walking our neighborhood with my girls, yet Little Bit must be strapped in the stroller or attached to one of those kid leashes (at least it looks like a puppy backpack)! She loves to play with dolls as babies. She loves to dress up. She walks better in princess "high heels" than I do in my high heels. We are working on sharing because her current favorite word is...MINE. She loves M&Ms...I mean loves them. She loves her dogs...when they do not run away scared of her. She loves to swing. She loves the park. She walked really, reallly early...even though I did not encourage it...at all.

Little Bit is the second child. With LaLa, I made sure she never left the house without being dressed just perfectly. I always had the diaper bag packed. I had a stash of toys for restaurants. We planned our day around naps and days around her schedule. She never played with markers...or even art supplies for that matter without 100% supervision. Have you ever heard of Baby Wise? I lived and breathed that book with LaLa. If she spilled something on her clothes, I changed her immediately. Well, take another look at this particular picture and notice the arrows!

She is still so cute, but looking at this picture, it made me realize (once again) how I have changed as a parent. Do you see the arrows pointing at the spots on her shirt from lunch?! Did I change her? NOPE...we weren't going anywhere, and that would have been more laundry! Do you see the arrows around her little face? That is (once again) the result of a marker that she managed to snag from her big sister's stash. Fortunately, they are non-toxic because she colors on herself in her attempts to create her art! Despite the fact of the label declaring it is "washable". It is not. Markers on skin take several washes and a good day to get it off completely.

Do you notice her eyes are closed? Well, this is because I had just discovered the markers (with their tops off) in a trail straight to the culprit. Let me also mention that no matter how much I hide these stinkin' markers, she still FINDS them! What does she do when she knows she is in trouble? She finds a spot and closes her eyes. You see...in the mind of a one year old...or at least in the mind of my one year old...if she can't see YOU, she believes that YOU can't see HER! I continue to say, "I see you. Open your eyes. Did you get the markers out?" She never moves or opens her eyes. I give up and begin picking up the trail of markers and tops to hide them in an even more difficult hiding spot. She slowly opens her eyes and peeks to see if she is in the clear.

Oh well, choose your battles...yeah, she is definitely the second child!