princess phase

Thanks to my Mom, Brooke has some pretty cute princess dresses.  When we brought them back from our trip in July, they were all a little too long on her.  A few months later, they fit perfectly!    I normally only allowed her to wear the dresses at home, but one day, I let her wear her pink Aurora dress to the park.  A few days later, I let her wear the Snow White dress to Kroger.  It was cute to see her walking around as a princess, and EVERYONE made comments to her and complimented her beautiful dresses.  Thinking back, this is kind of when her tantrums stopped.

Back story: She started throwing the craziest tantrums at the beginning of December, which was totally out of character for her.  The first night, it was a solid 45 minutes of screaming and crying about putting on her diaper.  What the heck??  She threw at least one crazy fit everyday for two weeks, but the rest of the day she was her normal sweet self.  It really was super weird.  Nothing I did was working, and I was emotionally exhausted.  I felt like a horrible Mom, and I was dreading that the tantrums were the new "normal" for Brooke.    I saw a quote on Pinterest that said, "There is no such thing as perfect parents, or perfect children, only perfect moments."  I adopted this as my new mantra. I couldn't dwell on the tantrums because it was making me crazy and I was feeling so frustrated with Brooke, even when the rest of the day was great. I tried to just focus on the positive of each day, and praise the heck out of her good behavior.  It was definitely easier said than done.  Especially because it was really taking away from my enjoyment of the newborn phase with Colby.  I remember one day, as he laid on Brooke's bed during a fit, he just was calm as could be.  It wasn't fair that he didn't get my attention!  Instead, he just laid there during the whole ordeal.  Thankfully he was super calm.  If he would have been crying, I really would have lost it!

After her two weeks of daily tantrums (which normally revolved around wearing a diaper and getting dressed), I decided that it didn't really matter if I let her wear a dress over her clothes to run our errands.  I don't think that was the magic answer, but looking back, that really is when the tantrums stopped.  The other factor, I think, was that we started going out more.  Maybe she was just having a bit of cabin fever since we were home A LOT with baby Colby.  

She started requesting a different princess dress everyday, and its been pretty consistent ever since!  But hey, you're only a little girl once, right?  What better time to live up the princess obsession :)

And every princess needs a castle.  Brooke already loved Costco, but the fact that they had a princess castle on display was the icing on the cake.  She would have played in there forever if I would have let her.  I actually thought that she would have a melt down when I told her we needed to leave.  I told her that it was time for pizza and a smoothie (one of the reasons she loves Costco), and she came out without a problem.  As we were walking toward the check-out, she said, "Maybe we can eat our pizza in the castle.  Is that a good idea, Mommy?"  She is so stinking adorable sometimes.  Not when she's throwing a tantrum, but lots of other times, haha!  I told her that it WAS a great idea, but that we couldn't do it that day.  

This picture is just oozing cuteness, in my opinion :)  If that castle didn't cost $429, I would have most definitely purchased it.  I texted that picture to Kevin with some comment about how Brooke was in love with the castle.  He called me a few minutes later asking me if I was wanting to buy it for her.  Brooke has him wrapped around her little finger, haha.  We both agreed that it was too expensive, plus we already had our Christmas shopping done.

When we got home, she wanted to ride her bike.  I told her that we would need to take her dress off.  She tried to convince me that she could ride her bike in a dress, and I eventually just tied it up in the back to make it work.  I guess she didn't realize what I had done, because when she got off her bike and tried to fix her skirt, she said. "Something is going on here", hahahaha.

No matter the weather, or the circumstance, Brooke was all about her dresses.  We'll see how long this phase lasts, but for now, I think it's pretty darn cute.