She's scrappy

Now I know where my little sister got her feisty streak. Tired of watching helplessly from the sling or the floor as her big sister monopolized the toys and hogged all the snacks, the now-mobile Baby A has decided she's not letting anyone push her around.

Unfortunately that's translated into her doing some nasty, gleeful asserting of herself. The victim--captured here a second before she was knocked to the grass--did nothing to deserve her treatment.

And that was just the first embarrassment of the afternoon. Shortly after A pushed over my friend Gloria's youngest, Z shows my friend and her husband the sign of the horns and pipes up with "Rock 'n roll!" Which is followed with "And look, my middle finger!"

The unpretty preschool drop-off

In general Z's been doing great at preschool, picking flowers to bring to her teacher and telling us about the "work" she's been doing. But things deteriorated at this morning's drop-off.

Instead of merrily skipping into the classroom, she clung pitifully to my legs. It was hot and humid both inside and outside of the building, so I waited for the rest of the children to enter the classroom as the baby in my arms heated up my upper half and the toddler around my middle warmed and immobilized my lower half. I could feel my hair frizz and visualize the damp circles forming under my arms. It was like being in the world's most unpleasant body wrap, except I wasn't just sweating out toxins. I was wearing them, too. My otherwise adorable gray capris sported a generously-sized smear of baby poop on the right pocket. Yeah, I was a real class act.

Cross-posted to the Chicago Moms Blog