toddler.

days with my sweet mellow baby are gone.

they have been replaced by days with a (still sweet) fiesty drama queen. today went a little something like this... hadleigh woke up while i was getting ready for clinical, so she came in our bedroom to play with me. she started by trying to wake up jered (who was sleeping after working all night) by trying to pull the covers off the bed, pull herself onto the bed, and subsequently scream because neither worked. she then came in the bathroom with me and saw me open a drawer. so she learned she could open drawers... since the cabinets are already hadleigh-proof. she opened every drawer, pulled everything out of the bottom ones, tried on some headbands she found, and tried to do a pull-up on the top drawer so she could see what was inside. then she got bored, went to a basket of dvd's, and pulled at least 10 of them out, which are now scattered everywhere around the bedroom.

fast forward to this afternoon when i picked hadleigh up from daycare. we went to the park and to get an ice cream cone to share :) came home and sat with sonny at his water bowl. every time sonny drank some water, hadleigh would stick her finger in the bowl and hear "hadleigh, no ma'am" from me. about 15 no ma'ams later, hadleigh was laughing hysterically at me like it was a joke and was splashing her entire hand repeatedly in the water bowl and the entire floor was soaked. i couldn't help but laugh. so i got up, picked up the water bowl, and turned around to get a towel. turned back around... and she already had two pieces of dog food in her mouth. finally got her away from the bowls and into the car to go see jered for dinner (on his last night shift - yay!).

we went to dinner at a mexican restaurant and hadleigh got a soft taco. i took it apart for her, so she had the meat to pick up and eat... which she did not do. she beat on the taco meat like a drum, picked it up and threw it in the air, squished it with her forearm, and basically just played in it. for her finale, she swept her entire forearm across the table so that taco meat ended up in my lap and hers. there was meat in her hair, her lap, even her ears. i'm surprised the people behind us weren't wearing it. i just changed her and she even had taco meat falling out of her clothes.

it's now after 9 o'clock, and i hear my sweet girl in her crib wide awake talking to herself. not sleeping at all.

the joys of toddlerhood are definitely upon us.