Poor, Sweet, Lucienne...NOT

What am I going to do with Lucienne? There's no way around it, she's a bit of a brute. A very cute brute, but a brute nontheless. She had her poor cousin Clara running for her life all of Christmas while they were here. It's like she surveys the room for the "weakest" link and just terrorizes them every time they're around. She'll pull hair (her favourite pasttime), pinch skin, scratch (arms or face) and hit. Biting happens when they have something she wants and won't hand it over, the other things are all unprovoked.

We had a playdate with a new group of friends today and there was a 3-year-old we'd never met. She was a dainty, petite girl, just the kind Lucienne likes to pick on. It's so hard at this age because there isn't much I can do other than remove her from the situation. When it's her sisters at the receiving end I'll move her away and cuddle them (which is probably the worst thing I could do to her as she's a bit jealous of any other use of my lap other than her bum). But when the other children aren't mine I can only move her away, which doesn't always feel like enough when she's holding a fistful of their hair. I hate the whole forcing them to say "sorry" when they're probably not so we've always used "are you okay?" but that doesn't even matter at this point as she doesn't speak yet and doesn't have any sense of other's feelings. Yesterday this little girl finally gave her a shove. The other mother was mortified, I just said, "finally, they're almost even."

I know it's a stage she'll eventually grow out of but I hope it's soon. She's so full of spunk and life this one. She loves making people laugh. She has the cutest I'm-trying-not-to-smile smile. She wants so much to be a part of everything and do exactly what Audree is doing. She never runs out of hugs and kisses. She loves to climb and has figured out that dragging a chair around makes counters and tables much more accessible (with the Jaws theme running through my head as the chair comes scraping across the floor). She loves putting on hats and boots but her favourite thing to wear is her birthday suit. She's often running around naked in someone else's boots. She is so 18 months.