valentine's day

I thought it would be fun to do some things with Celia for Valentine's Day. I put together a little bag with some stickers, a little balloon, and a felt flower that I knew she would like to keep and play with. When Pita woke up in the morning, it was on the table with a special breakfast of strawberries and a homemade glazed chocolate donut. Unfortunately, just like every morning, Celia immediately became oppositional as soon as she woke up. Our new routine is to get her dressed before she leaves her room in the morning,  to avoid tantrums and power struggle later on. She gave me a hard time and pretty much ruined the fun of giving her a surprise for Valentine's Day. I was pretty hurt and disappointed. It's very frustrating that I literally can't do anything with her these days, even fun things where she gets lots of attention, without her yelling and fighting with me and it all being ruined. I really hope her behavior improves soon, because I feel like I'm missing valuable time with her.

I finally tried the donut pan I received for Christmas. I made these with whole wheat flour, they're low fat, and they're sweet enough but don't have a ton of sugar in them.

Back to Valentine's Day. Once we got downstairs, Celia had breakfast and played with Chris a little while I started some laundry and tried to recover from feeling like the morning was ruined. I gave Pita the choice of going to walk around and play in the children's area at the mall, or going to play and have a snack at the bookstore for the morning. She wanted to go to the bookstore, so we did that. She was well behaved while we were out, for the most part. We had a snack, and Pita played in the block area for quite a while. Henry woke up and I fed him while she played. There was another little girl there and she and Celia played together. They were both very talkative and it was funny listening to them.

My Valentine's dates:

Celia ate a huge lunch when we got home. Henry started his nap, and it was such a challenge to keep her away from him and prevent her from waking him up. Even when I try to distract her and play with her, she knows I want her away from him and purposely tries to wake him up. It's not like she's just being loud and happens to wake him up- she does it on purpose to spite me! So frustrating. Someone please tell me this horrible three-year-old phase will not last the entire year!

Now we are having naps, thank goodness, and I'm watching The Bachelor from last night. Nothing like really bad reality tv to relax to!

To end on a positive note, I asked Celia if she could play with Henry while I warmed up the car this morning. I came back to the sweetest little scene. She was talking to him, hugging and kissing him, and showing him his toys. It was so cute. I grabbed my phone and took some video.