She beats mommy up...

Some days I feel like I have gone a couple rounds in a boxing match...

Last night is a great example. It was time for bed. Get Julia all ready and sit in the rocking chair in her darkening room (I usually still rocker for for a few minutes before bed). She knows she is supposed to be relaxing and trying to go to sleep, but she just cannot help it, she wants to play with mommy. So she is constantly lifting her head off my shoulder and chest. I will tell her to lay her head back down, and she will flop her head down HARD. She thinks it is funny to flop it down that hard. Then she wants to show me where my eyes are. Luckily I close my eye in time to prevent it from being poked, but her fingernails need cut and I end up with a scratch on my eyelid. Next she wants to play with my hair. She LOVES playing with my hair. For some reason she loves to pull it over my face so it covers my eyes. BUT she is getting too rough with this game and usually ends up pulling my hair WAY to hair, so I have to stop the game and not allow anymore hair playing. By now, WAY too much playing is going on and not enough relaxing/sleeping is going on. So I tell her again, that it is not play time, it is night-night time and she needs to lay her head down. Before I even can finish the sentence, she flops her head back down, but this time she is sitting higher up and the top of her head connects right with my mouth. I thought for sure she busted my lip open. Now I am in pain! So before I start to get frustrated, I decide it is time for her to go in her crib. I cover her in kisses, tell her I love her, and lay her in her crib for the night. I then leave her room feeling like I just stepped out of the boxing ring.

I have a feeling these nightly rockings before bed are going to be slowly phased out. She does not seem to care about them one way or the other. They OBVIOUSLY don't help her calm down before bed.

Most of the "beatings" are accidental. Julia is just getting bigger and stronger and does not realize what can hurt someone. Occasionally, especially when she is mad she will purposely try to hurt me (or others), but that results in a time out and a lecture on why we don't hurt people. Right now she is big into pinching, and of course she is still bitting! Grrrr.... We are working on it...