Our Little Rascal

If you spend any time at our house, it's pretty obvious we have an almost-two-year-old. Teresa can be pretty rascally when she wants to. She can also be totally sweet and obedient. When she wants to. I can see her testing her boundaries all the time. She gets a very rascally grin while she deliberately disobeys us, almost like she's daring us to do something about it. Sometimes when she's getting into stuff she isn't supposed to, I'll see her looking around to make sure we see what she's doing. Recently she's started mocking Marc when he asks her to do something. He'll say 'please, Teresa', and she'll tilt her head back and forth saying 'pease, pease, pease' in a little mocking manner. Then she'll laugh, while she continues not to do what he asked her to. I have to try to not let her see me laughing at it. Honestly, it's so much easier to find her rascally-ness amusing when Marc is home with me, then when I'm by myself with T. We'll be sad when paternity leave is over.

It doesn't help that she's getting taller, either. We're running out of places to put stuff that are out of her reach. Especially since she's figured out how to push the dining table chairs up to counters to get what she wants.

Today Marc was out running errands, so I was alone with the two girls. I was feeding Nora when T disappeared up the stairs. After a few minutes of total silence I got a bit nervous. She's not one to play upstairs unless someone else is up there, so as much as I hoped she was playing innocently in her room, I wasn't too surprised when she came down holding a bottle of lotion, covered pretty much head to toe in the stuff. (I had to laugh, because it reminded me of waking up to a little nephew Liam in my room with a bottle of my lotion spread all over himself and the carpet. I'm assuming he was probably around T's age at the time). Luckily, T spared our carpet, she just coated herself and her sweater. It's kinda hard to tell in the pics, but believe me, there was a lot of it. Especially on her face.





She loooooves stickers, of course. They have to be put on her belly. They're only rascally because after she sticks them on her belly, she peels them all off and tries to stick them on the coffee table.



She really does well with Nora, but she also likes to appropriate all her stuff. Nora has (sadly) not shown much interest in pacifiers. Teresa, on the other hand, thinks they're awesome, and spirits them away every chance she gets. She doesn't even suck on them, she just likes to have them. And she loves climbing in Nora's little bed. She's five pounds over the weight limit, but I always feel so bad making her get out. It's also not uncommon for us to find Mickey Mouse tucked in there.



Today I gave her a cookie, and then found her sitting on the couch, browsing a Carter's ad while she at it. It made me laugh.



Nora is sleeping and eating and creating lots of diapers and laundry. I don't remember Teresa having this many dirty diapers, but maybe I'm just blocking out those memories ;). T gave her a ball to play with while the rest of us ate dinner tonight.



I love it. T just loves her little sister, Nora is now included every time Teresa gives us high fives or knuckles us. She'll give me one, then Daddy, and then she heads over to Nora and gently taps her little hand as well. We've also been exploiting Nora to get more kisses from Teresa. Most of the time Marc and I get rejected when we request kisses from T, but if we tell her to go give Nora a kiss, we'll usually all get one.

The other day, Teresa climbed up next to Nora on the couch, and they just looked so cute together. Of course when I got over there with the camera, T totally bailed, and I ended up with this picture:



Unfortunately, that's what most of our pictures of Teresa end up looking like.