Pictures from my memory card

We recently had Bella's hair cut because she and I had a difference of opinion about how tight her ponytails should be.  She thought they should be so tight that she began to have a bald spot at the back of her head.  If it loosened even a fraction of an inch, it was cause for a meltdown.  So at first I said I was going to cut it as a threat.  I try to avoid empty threats, so as the days of arguments continued, I started talking to her seriously about getting her hair cut - for both our sakes.  By the time we got it cut, she was actually excited about it and she sat incredibly well as the hairdresser cut off a few inches of her hair.

The first picture was taken on Valentine's day, two weeks before we cut her hair.  

On another note, Elias watched a movie and decided he was the main character from the movie and dressed accordingly for two days.  If you watch Disney, you may recognize Elias as Christopher Wilde from the movie Starstruck...But don't tell him that I told you, because he doesn't want the paparazzi to know his whereabouts.

For a while, Bella has been getting up several times a night and then she is tired and testy during the day.  A good friend said that maybe she was ready to give up her nap.  I knew she wasn't sleeping long during the day, but I honestly look forward to my quiet time in the afternoon, so I was holding on to nap time for her.  As a test, I began not requiring her to take a nap.  It has made a world of difference.  The first night she slept through the night, I woke up with that feeling I had after my kids finally slept through the night as newborns.  I was so surprised that it was morning and she hadn't come to our room the entire night.  She is also less testy during the day, because she gets more quality sleep at night.  So even though I don't get the allotted quiet time that the nap had afforded me, I don't need it quite as much because I am not constantly dealing with cranky tantrums.  Some days, she can go all day without any sleep during the day, but more often than not, she still needs a little catnap.  So I now have her sit quietly and watch television in the afternoon and call it rest time.  She falls asleep most of the time.  The pictures below were taken on a day that she decided that she was not tired and didn't need to lay down while she watched t.v..  She lasted about 10 minutes before sleep overtook her.