Happy.

I had SUCH A GOOD DAY with this girl on Sunday.

(you know it must be a good day if you can still be happy after seeing yourself with 5 chins)

I love the Liliana Noelle that graced us with her presence the last couple days.  She was fun.  Chatty.  Sweet. Kept the sibling bickering to a minimum.  She (mostly) ate her food without protest.  She (mostly) took her bath without protest.  She had just a minor situation late in the day Sunday where she pulled her bipolar "I want to do that - no I don't routine."  But I got her distracted and snapped out of it pretty quickly.

We had a lot of mommy / daughter time Sunday.  Maybe that helped.  We went for a bike ride in the morning morning.  Then after lunch with Grams, Jason, Daddy and Tyler, we went to Walmart, just the two of us.  Lily wanted to shop "in her size clothes."  So I told her we could look through the clearance stuff and we found a cute Minnie Mouse dress and a sweater.  She tried to convince me that she needed like 47 new Frozen t-shirts and dresses but I didn't cave this time.

After grocery shopping, we came home and Daddy and Tyler were sleeping so we went out and jumped in the jumpy house for over an hour by ourselves.  We had a blast.  We were jumping and counting.  Jumping and singing songs (like eenie meenie miney moe).  Jumping and telling made up stories.  "Mommy, tell me a story about two bears.  A mommy bear and a daddy bear and no people."  "Mommy, tell me a story about the forest."  "Mommy, tell me a story about anything."

At one point, she's jumping away and then she stops and looks at me and says:  "Mommy, I'm SO happy."

 

If I weren't already laying down in the jumpy house, I would have fallen over.  

Me:  That's wonderful, Lily!  I'm so glad!  What is making you so happy today?

Lily:  I don't know.  I am just so happy today.  I just decided.  

Me:  Well, I love it when you're so happy.  It makes me so happy.

Lily:  Yeah, being happy is fun.

Then at bed time, the last few nights, we tried something new.  Grams was here Friday and Saturday and witnessed again the ridiculous bedtime tantrums we've grown accustomed to.  She saw me nearly lose my mind in complete frustration for the second weekend in a row.  She suggested music.  Saturday night, after 30 minutes of screaming, Mom lett Lily have her iPad turned on to Pandora. It took mom a while to get Lily calmed down enough to even be willing to listen to it but once she did, she fell asleep pretty easily and then Mom slipped in and took the iPad back.

So Sunday night, I gave Lily my phone turned on to Pandora and told her if she stayed calm, she could listen to the music for a while.  I let her have it for about 20 minutes and then I went in and said it was time to go to sleep.  She didn't fight me one single bit.  There was no screaming.  No fighting.  No yelling.  No locking people in their rooms.  No spanking.  No clumps of hair laying on the floor.  Bedtime was a relative non-event.  Same thing last night, only I took it away after 10 minutes.  No issues.

OH THANK GOD.

We'll see how longs this lasts, but even if it's only two nights, that's still two less nights I had to deal with screaming at bed time.

(Thanks Mom!)