Lilah Bean

Lilah Bean was such a sweet and happy little baby and toddler.  Very content, fun, opinionated, but easy to sway.  Then one day she woke up and she was our 'Terrible Two Lilah Monster'.  She says a loud and emphatic NO to everything.  She gives everyone dirty looks, hits a lot and makes a growling noise if she is irritated or upset. My other kids have all gone through this phase, but I don't think that we've ever had such a drastic change so quickly!  She is just not very pleasant to be around most of the time.  I don't know if or when we'll get the old Lilah back.  We are working on dealing with the new Lilah.  I have found she is not as stubborn as she may appear to be - her moods can be short lived, she goes to time out pretty good, and she can be persuaded to cooperate.  Everything now takes twice as long, but we are making progress.  We do occasionally catch glimpses of the old Lilah - like the other day when the new phone books came.  Lilah LOVES books, really, she carries stacks of them around the house begging anyone to read to her, takes them to bed, in the car, she loves them.  So when the phone books came she was so excited.  She piled all three of them on her lap and happily searched through them.  After dinner when everyone was sitting at the table doing homework she brought her phone books over to read.  Funny kid.

  

In case you were wondering, Lilah's nickname, Lilah Bean, is from Lima Bean.  All the kids have food nicknames from their dad.  Anna is Cupcake, Calvin is Hot Dog (although his dad has been calling him Badger 5 lately, it's a brand of garbage disposal, because that kid doesn't stop eating) and Madeline is 'mato as in tomato.