She Can Be Annoying Too

Aurelia has picked up some new habits over the last two days. She may have been doing them for longer, but I worked this weekend, so this is the first I am noticing. Everyone loves the photos of her smiling and hearing about what a good little girl she is.... Turns out, she has her moods. And, the thing of it is (the thing of it is), she doesn't know that what she's doing irritates the crap out of me. She thinks it's the bomb. Now, bear in mind, these are all pretty frikin funny (if they were someone else's kid in someone else's house):

1. She picks up escapee pieces of kibble and returns them to the dog bowl. Now, our dog is not food-aggressive, thank goodness, but he may get protective one of these days and snap at her; who knows? So, I try to keep her out of his food, so he feels like something around here still belongs to him! Well, today, she discovered a new game: plucking one piece of kibble out at a time and bringing it to the dog to feed him. He would much rather she feed him whatever she's been eating, but she really enjoyed chasing him around with his own food this morning.

2. For her lunch, she gets milk in a sippy cup. She doesn't finish it at the table. When she's done with her food, she is allowed down from her high chair with her milk cup in tow to finish as she pleases (within reason). Well, today, she discovered a new game: taking a huge swig of milk, bowing her head and blowing bubbles with it all over the floor. Thankfully, it was the tile floor of the kitchen, and I won't have rotten milk stench all over the carpet. But I still don't think that's an acceptable use of milk.

3. To combine the two newly discovered games, I was baking a pumpkin bread in the kitchen; she was pleasantly occupied banging on the backdoor. Then, I hear another sound: the contented chatter of a little girl getting into some kind of nonsense. I crane to see over the oven into the dog's food/water corner to see her milk cup upright in the center of the dish of water and splatters of milk mixed in with the remaining dog kibble.

All of these things require me to bed over and clean up after her... the most frustrating feat of all. So there has been our Wednesday thus far. What will I do with two of them to appease? At least I know it will be much easier to get down to her level in a few weeks.