Feeling Guilty

I was so worried for the last month of how Grace would react to the new addition to our family. I don't think that she is doing too bad but I think there are things that I have done wrong with her up to this point that I am going to pay for until I break the bad habits I have created. (I can't say that I have created all the problems because I have wanted things to change but my mother baby sits for me and she doesn't always listen to what I say... I have a problem with that but that is for another blog). I also worry that some of these bad habits will be extremely hard to break because she will see that her new brother gets to do things that she use to ... why does she have to change? You know we don't want our children to hurt. When she cries it breaks my heart. I cry. When she sees me cry she cries... it's truly a vicious cycle. The only thing that I can say is that I have been really good about getting my kids on schedules and Grace has slept through the night since 6 weeks and Mac is already sleeping 5 hours at a time after his 10 and 3 feeding. I guess I need to focus my energy in breaking her habits as I do and have in creating her schedule. She is soooo scheduled sometimes it too is a fault but we are doing ok.

Grace's bad habits...

Number 1 - I still let her have the bottle. She's 21 months old and she still has the bottle. That is not good. The reason why it has gone on this long is that when she was littler she was so skinny and she hated the sippy cup so she wouldn't drink from anything than the bottle. We have found a sippy cup that she will drink from so now my goal is to get her to drink her milk from that. At 2 years... the bottle is OVER. Like it or not... tears or not... she is not going to have it any more.

Number 2 - She won't sit on the potty any more.
She use to sit there all the time. She was really good at it. I think that we sat her there too early and would keep her there too long and so now she just doesn't want to sit there. I'm trying to get her to sit there if even for 10 seconds... it's better than nothing. She is a really big (tall) girl so it is getting hard to change her on our changing table. She is too long.

Number 3 - She hates to sit in her seat at the table. This habit I will not take credit for. My mother created this problem. While home on maternity leave I am working on getting her back to the way she use to be.

You know as I sit and write these things I wonder... "Am I sweating the small stuff?" Am I worrying way too much about nothing? After all Grace won't drink from a bottle all her life, nor will she wear diapers her whole life, and surely she will at some point realize that she has to sit at the table to eat if she wants to fit in to societal norms. So it might be small stuff and I will try to remember that BUT doesn't it come in the Mom's Manual that you get to sweat the small stuff????