These are a few of my favorite things...

When the dog barks when the bee stings when I'm feeling bad I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad. That song actually sums up the two things my girls are most afraid of but the part about thinking nice thoughts and anxiety dissapearing does not apply to them. This applies to Bobo much more so than Ella who seems to be coming to the end of her I am absolutely terrified of everything stage. Seriously Ella would not even go near the library's pet hamster who I should point out is contained in a glass cage. So just in time Bobo will slide nicely in to the position of scardey cat. I guess watching Ella's fears all those months finally made a impact on her. We went to Fort Williams on Sunday for a picnic and the second Bobo heard the distant sound of a barking dog she wanted to "go home" we are familiar with this response these are the same words urgently sounded when we encounter a bee in the yard at home. Even though we are yards from the house Bobos response is always the same " I want to go home" shortened to "go home" in emergencies. Although she really wanted to leave at first with a group effort we convinced her to stay and she actually had fun and so did Ella who loves to point out that she was brave at all times. While the girls both have things that scare them they have things that with the same intensity please them. Ella's object of affection is a small oatmeal colored bear named Morris, named Morris because in her words he is a Morris too. Morris was actually left behind at toys-r-us last weekend when the lure of a new pool and sprinkler became too distracting. Not to worry he was back together with Ella in less than an hour. You can see Morris in both the photo of Ella and daddy holding hands and the shot of them standing up against the railing. Not to forget about Bobo's favorite friend she is a Mermaid named Nori and she (in my opinion) is not nearly as lovable as cute little Morris, she is hard and plastic with bright blue scraggly hair but Bobo adores her. She goes everywhere with Bobo. You can see how delighted she was when Nori was passed to her (it's the picture with her hand up on her check).

You'll come get me in an hour mama?

Bobo has never been a great sleeper, you know when you bring them home from the hospital that they won't sleep for a leisurely 8-10 hours but you hope that it won't be too terribly long until they give you a decent nights worth of sleep. I wasn't a first time mom so I knew that at least the first few months were going to be hard but... This child resisted sleep every step of the way. The first year of her life this girl got by on less sleep than I would think is humanly possible, I don't remember exactly how old she was but I clearly remember her slapping her little cheeks to keep herself awake. I couldn't believe it, I had never seen anything like it just how much could someone despise sleep. Which by the way I LOVE, I mean really I love love love to sleep, so clearly this little girl and I were going to have issues. Now that Bobo has grown a bit she seems to go through "sleep cycles" she will sleep like a angel for a few weeks until the devil takes her place and she will wake repeatedly or fight nap time and bedtime with determination that could break the best of us. At one point she was going to bed then right as I was drifting of to sleep around midnight I would hear her. I would lay in bed and try to convince myself that tonight would be different, that if I just ignored her she would settle back down. But that just didn't happen and so we would begin our nighttime ritual, from about 12:30 /1:00 a.m until about 4:00 a.m every night I would repeatedly put Bobo back to bed. I would let her cry but then I would start to panic I did not need two of them awake. So back to her room I would go, this routine got old really fast so in desperation one early morning (2:00 a.m) I brought her downstairs put on the lion king DVD and laid down on the couch. Now why would I think that someone as sleep deprived as I was would maybe possibly fall asleep, no I won't, I wouldn't do that. Well I woke up when I heard Nick say HONEY! I look down and on the hard wood floor her body half wedged under the couch was my little Bobo, finally exhausted. Now Bobo is by no means a great sleeper but I seem to have found a magical combination of words that has changed everything in regards to her sleep patterns. Now I am not sure if I should write this down, I may upset the God's of sleep, but the words are "I will come get you in an hour". This works at nap time and bed time as she has no real concept of time. She now asks me every time I put her into her bed "you come get me in a hour mama? For now this is working like a charm, except for the fact that big sister who is much more wise in the ways of time and keeps trying to explain to her at bedtime that I will in fact not be back in an hour, shaking her head at how silly her baby sister is as she talks.