I'm having a bad morning.

Actually it's been a bad past few days. My in-laws were here over the weekend and everytime they leave, the girls are always hard to deal with for about a week. This is day 4. Savannah has been waking up at the crack of dawn...literally. If the weather man tells us what time sunrise will be, Savannah is awake down to the minute. She crawls into bed with us, then tries to sleep on me, or tosses and turns until everyone is awake. Well, this morning we were sleeping heavier than normal and I remember Savannah coming into bed with us for awhile, but I guess she got bored and decided to get up for good. When Seth got up he found her in the living room with my purse and lipgloss (AGAIN) and this time she had smeared it all over her mouth and face. Seth took a picture and she looks like the The Joker. Bad start to my morning. I was mad. She had gotten into my purse 2 weeks ago and did the same thing, only then she put my lipsticks and lip glosses all over her feet and toes. So, to date I now have to replace 1 lipstick and 3 lipglosses ( it really stinks because they were all Clinique products, not cheap to replace). So frustrating--I think I get even more mad because I have REPEATEDLY told her to stay out of my purse, "mommy only". And it seems to have no effect. I feel like I have no space of my own anymore--not even my purse. I try to put it out of reach, but the girls always find a way to get my things. I can put locks and doorknob covers on so many things, but not everything--it's just not possible.

And to make things so much better (saracasm there), the girls have gone back to super defiant mode. I'm finding myself increasingly angry all the time. For the past 3 days they do nothing but ignore everything I tell them to do--even when I ask them questions about what choices they want, they just ignore me. This morning has been the worst. They girls are fighting with each other, and they won't do what I say. Savannah has begun lying to me. What's with that? She got into an old piece of cake left over from our small group (guess I missed a plate) and she had it all over her face and I asked her if she got into some cake. Her answer: no. No!? She had icing and chocolate cake all over her hands and face! I told her I could see the icing and cake on her and that she was lying. Then I told her what lying was. When I asked her where she got the cake, she tells me: "I didn't get any cake". Grrrr...I was getting mad. So tried to be calm and I asked her if she was playing in the cake icing. Again, she told me know. I asked her if she ate it. Again, "no". I could tell she knew she was in trouble, so maybe that's why she was denying all of it.

So, great. Now I have to deal with defiance AND lying. I don't even know how to address that issue with a 2 year old.

What a crazy time.

Well, we have had a crazy past few days. I came across a great opportunity to get a Shih Tzu puupy for only $100. One of my co-workers had two puppies in her care and realized she could only handle one, so I took the other one. This did not go over very well with Seth, or my dog Billy. Billy hated the puppy. I thought he would warm up to it and play with it, but he maintained his grumpy dog stance. The girls liked it only when someone was holding it or it was in his crate. If the puppy came toward Savannah, she would scream and start crying. She was scared. She had nightmares for 3 nights about the puppy crying to bite her or claw her. So...we put it up for sale and found a home for it 2 hours after posting an online newspaper ad.

I am sad. I got attached and started to love the dog, and now he's not ours. I'm in mourning. Silly I know, but that's just me, I love dogs and I bonded with this puppy, so now in his absence I'm just really sad. On the upside, Billy is acting like his normal self again. I guess we'll just have to wait until later in life to bring another dog into our home. Probably better that way--then the girls will hopefully have fun with a puppy and not be scared of it.