The Teenage Baby

Life may not have been peaceful before Olivia started crawling but it was somewhat easy. Lay her on her back, give her a toy, go make dinner. Lay her on her back, give her a toy, go to the bathroom, etc etc. What a difference two little hands and two little knees working synchronously can make. Now life is lay her on her back, give her a toy, go to the kitchen, turn around and there she is looking up at you in a puddle that is a mixture of drool and what ever she ate recently, with a big smile on her face. Of course it doesn't end there. There is the grabbing of the glass of iced tea that is sitting too close to the edge of the coffee table. Next thing you know you are cleaning up tea off the carpet, and changing a diaper that is not we from pee, but wet from tea. And the electrical cords. I ask why is it that dogs' and babies' main purpose in life is to either hold or chew electrical cords. Our living room is a mess with toys and bones, yet the only thing Olivia wants to do is grab the nearest cord, most preferably my laptop cord, which is already close to not carrying current due to Lulu eating through most of it. All of these changes seemed to happen over night. As soon as Olivia started crawling, she was into everything she could get her hands on, and the stuff she couldnt get, she wanted even more. Ugh.
Olivia has also started showing us more of her stubborn personality, which we know will be dominant as she gets older. She likes to clamp closed her mouth at some feedings, particularly her night time bottle feeding before bed, and squirm and even cry. You take the bottle away and she settles down a bit and just looks at you with milk dripping all around her mouth because the nipple was pushing on her lips and gums, trying to get in the mouth, and we now have Level 3 nipples that flow like a garden hose which makes it worse. Then you bring out the applesauce or bananas to get something in her before she sleeps and the mouth opens like nothing is wrong. Like we always say, she knows what she wants. Sometimes she can be my little snottybug.
Naps have changed as well. Her new routine, now that she is an expert at crawling and sitting up, is to sit and play in her crib for a while before deciding it is now sleep time. Naps dont happen because we said sleep time, she has to sit around for a while and then say "NOW it is sleep time." So in this "play-nap" time, she has discovered how to untie the bumper of the crib. She reaches over it, pulls the strings, unties it and chews on the string. Brooke decided it may be time to remove the bumper and see what happens, so she did. 10 minutes later, she heard loud crying from the room so went to check on her, and Olivia's leg was out of the slats and she was struggling to get it back inside. Brooke pulled her little leg back through, put the bumper back on, juiced her back to sleep, and decided we will live with the bumper for a while longer. If this is any indication of what life has in store for us, can I ask to just have a new puppy instead and call it a day? (Just KIDDING!!!!)