Sarah

The other morning I woke up with Patrick at our usual time of 4 am and I went into the kitchen to get the coffee going and found this:
At some point during the (very) few hours between me going to sleep the previous night and waking at 4 am Sarah opened the dishwasher, stood on the door, reached the counter, and helped herself to a buffet of cupcake icing. Then apparently went back to bed.

So when she got up I asked her why she ate the icing off the cupcakes in the middle of the night instead of waking me for a snack, and she replied, "YUM YUM!". Oh.

So the rest of the day progressed with the typical cycle of ups and downs and after Rick came home from work I foolishly thought I could get dinner ready while he occupied the kids. At one point he yelled for me to come help him and said, "Sarah's behind the couch with the scissors". So I barked asked her calmly to please hand me the scissors, which she surprisingly did very willingly. She had that trouble smile on her face so I assumed that she did some costly damage to the (new) couch. Upon a quick visual inspection I saw the couch was just fine and she must have had that smile because I caught her with only seconds to spare. That incident was quickly forgotten.

Throughout our meal I was busy not eating, cleaning stray bits of food, wiping faces, refilling cups of milk, etc. and I kept thinking, Why does Sarah look different? It nagged at me a bit, but with the routine chaos I just didn't think about it long enough at one time to come to any conclusion.

After baths I was dressing the kids in their jammies and putting Sarah's hair into a ponytail so it doesn't turn into a scary ball of knots the next morning. That was the moment it dawned on me:

Sarah cut her hair. She hid behind the couch and cut her own hair. She hid behind the couch and cut her own hair and I didn't even notice.

Thankfully, with a little creative use of barrettes and the side-swept bangs trend (she didn't have bangs before), it doesn't look too bad. And I'm happy to report that all of the scissors are now on top of the refrigerator, which actually I'm not sure is a good idea since I'm sure she'll just come up with a way to climb on top of there to get them. Sarah doesn't let little things like refrigerators get in the way of what she wants.

Before everyone goes thinking I'm a horrible parent that keeps scissors accessible for toddlers to get a hold of and cut things, Sarah has been using scissors for a year now. She has never (up till now, of course) cut anything besides approved scrap papers, and she normally sits at the table.

So after I had Patrick tucked in asleep in his crib I went to get Sarah so we could read a story before she went to sleep. I came around the corner and saw the fridge door opened and a pair of little feet aglow in the light. I crept up and peeked around the door and there is Sarah-with the pancake syrup turned upside down and oozing into her mouth! What is with this girl!? I have never met anyone with such a horrible sweet tooth! I am seriously considering banning all junk food from our house. If all we keep here is that cereal that looks/tastes/smells like cat food (you know-that fiber stuff) and dried fruit I am sure I can fix this rummaging-through-the-food-in-the-wee-hours habit that she's got.