The terrible...ones?

About a year ago I had a friend who had very active and sometimes mischievous 1-year-old. Honestly, watching her 1-year-old made me worry so much about what Ruth would be like when she turned 1 that I didn't at all look forward to her toddlerhood. To me, it looked like the ones were just as terrible an age as the twos!

But since Ruth turned 1 almost 6 months ago, I must admit that having a 1-year-old generally hasn't been bad at all. I actually like the fact that she can walk -- it's much better than her crawling all over and eating stuff off the floor, and she can actually run around and have fun at places like the Children's Museum or the park. I also like how much fun she is to play with and how hard she works to communicate. Of course, there are days that my 1-year-old is more than a handful (especially now that she has figured out how to climb), but she was sometimes a handful when she was a baby, too. I have to say, though, that this weekend has been by far the most "terrible" yet, and it makes me a bit nervous about our plane trip on Friday.

Don't get me wrong - most of the "terrible" things Ruth does are funny (if not at first, they are looking back), and 90 percent of the time she is a very good girl. She got her first haircut (just a trim) yesterday and was a little squirmy at first, but eventually got distracted watching other people get their hair cut and sat nicely. Here is her first salon hairdo:



Later on in the day, however, she managed to dump almost a whole bag of brown sugar on the kitchen floor while I was doing the dishes. I turned around and saw the pile of brown sugar, which she had been eating for who knows how long. :) (When I put her in the dining room so I could clean up without her "help," she kept licking her fingers and saying "mmmm." :D ) At the time, I was a little more frustrated than amused, so I cleaned up the mess without getting a photo. After I cleaned all the sugar off the floor, I went into the living room to check on her and found her playing with a pair of scissors she found in the desk drawer. Needless to say, the scissors have found a new spot on top of the fridge and are no longer a threat. Of course, neither of those incidents would have occurred if I had been watching her more closely, so I am to blame for some of her "terrible" actions!

There are other "terrible" behaviors that I can't do much about. On Thursday, for example, we did a second walk-through of the house we wanted to buy. It ended up taking longer than planned because the real estate agent forgot to bring the key to the house, and by the time we were able to actually look inside, Ruth was ready for dinner and probably some quiet rest time. By the end of the walk-through, she was inconsolable and had her first official toddler melt-down. She just laid on the floor as flat as a board and cried.

Then there was Stake Conference this morning. Ruth woke up a little too early, so she wasn't in the best mood. (The girl needs her beauty sleep!) She was not at all interested in sitting nicely in the folding chairs and watching two hours of conference. She also fell over and hit her head on one of the chairs, resulting in a good amount of screaming and a nice little bump on her head. (Poor baby, I felt so bad!) When she didn't want to color or play at our seats, Tony and I took turns taking her out into the hall and holding her. I almost got her to fall asleep, but another little toddler came screaming down the hall and snapped her awake. Overall, conference was very uplifting and edifying -- especially with the visit from Elder Dallin H. Oaks from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles -- but it was much harder to concentrate with an uncooperative 1-year-old.



On Friday, Ruth will embark on her first airplane trip to Utah to visit her Grandma and Grandpa Gardner, Uncle Mike, and Great-Grandma and Grandpa Wayman. Our plane leaves at 6 a.m., so we will have to be to the airport no later than 5 a.m. Hopefully, I will be able to get her to sleep on the plane. Otherwise, I'm afraid we might have another toddler meltdown at some point on Friday morning (hopefully not on the plane!!!)

I wouldn't trade my 1-year-old for anything, but I am noticing that as she gets older, it's harder and harder to get past that stubborn, mischievous, little mind she's developing. :) Maybe they should start warning parents that the "ornery ones" come before the "terrible twos." :D

Happy Sunday!

-Meredith