A rough week for Keziah

Don't let this innocent face fool you!


Keziah has been bruised and battered this week - mostly by the hands of her older brother. The transition to crawling has made Keziah a lot happier, but unfortunately it has made Micah a lot un-happier! He sees her coming from across the room and starts screaming at her, ramming her, crawling on top of her, hitting her... You get the picture. He likes to hug her really roughly or roll on top of her. I know he doesn't do it out of a kind heart, he does it because teasing her like this gets a reaction. From me and from Keziah. And Keziah is SO over-dramatic. She'll start wailing even if he barely touches her. No wonder teasing her is so satisfying for Micah. They remind me of a cat and dog we used to have - Spunky (the dog) would chase and tease Fluff (yep, that's the cat) and she would get SO mad at him. Spunky always had this satisfied look on his face until Fluff got him with her claws or something... I'm secretly hoping Keziah will learn to defend herself soon.

Here's Micah "playing" with Keziah. I know that look in his eye already when he starts heading towards her...

Here Micah is using her head as a drum for his balloons. She thought it was fun until he started playing double-time...

One day earlier in the week Micah got angry with her about something and pushed her down when she was sitting on her knees. She hit her head on the bottom edge of a cabinet and smashed her face into the laminate floor. She wailed like mad but I couldn't see any damage initially. It wasn't until half an hour later that I thought she was smiling kind of funny. Sure enough her lip had started to swell.

I tried to capture her wounds on camera but the pictures don't really do them justice. The first picture shows where Keziah's head met the cabinet and the second one shows off her fat lip.

I'm not sure what to do with him. I feel like this is what I sound like all day, "Micah, Micah! Micah stop! Micah leave her alone! Micah stop rolling on top of her! Micah - she doesn't like that!" I've talked to him about how when Keziah cries, that's her way of saying, "this doesn't feel good, please stop!" We use the naughty corner quite consistently and spankings occasionally and taking away privileges. What else can I do?

Micah in the "naughty corner":


I remember someone comparing children to puppies (sorry for another animal comparison) - that they need to be trained how to behave. It's interesting to see that even at that young age, our natural instincts are to only look out for ourselves. It helps to think of Micah's behaviour as a lack of self-control and so I'm praying that our consistent discipline will eventually help him learn good behaviour. But some days it feels like we're getting nowhere!


Keziah's rough week didn't end there. Last night Erik had the kids upstairs at Grandma & Grandpa's house when Keziah fell into the edge of a bookshelf. Her head immediately started to swell to a red golfball size lump on her forehead. It looked so awful! I didn't take a picture of it at its worst last night, but I took one this morning. There's still a bit of a lump and a large bruise is forming... (You can also see her cute little tooth in this picture :)


Now we're looking ahead to a full weekend. Erik has an early hockey game tonight which means that I might actually be able to take Micah. And my parents are expected to arrive sometime this weekend from Manitoba so I need to get the house in order!