It's Not Easy Being Beautiful...

It's not easy being the most beautiful Baby Vivienne in all the land, but somebody has to do it!

Everyone that she meets is always telling her how difficult it must be to be the only baby girl in a house full of icky, yucky boys!

I always smile and tell them that she has it all under control, but sometimes I really worry.

When I look at her, I see this very petite, very tiny little baby girl with the HUGE baby blues that twinkle and sparkle with that mischievous little gleam that any Mum would marvel over.

You can practically see the little fairy wings and hear the tinkerbell chimes go off every time I go to pick her up, she is so very sprite-like.

But I know better than to be fooled! There are times when I've caught her hauling one of her brother's around by the ear over him having taken HER dollie, so I know that she can hold her own.

It's just that lately, she has become awfully, well, soft. Not that she isn't girly, I don't mean that by any means. It's that I've found her in several precarious situations as of late that make me wonder.

On our first night in our new house, I could hear her crying. She and her brothers had been quietly playing in their new play area in the living room. They had been playing WAY too quietly for their own good, actually.

I should have realized that something was up. Our new house is considerably larger than the old one, and the babies had been confined in their play-yard up until now, so I had been spoiled into not having to corral them like most mum's do.

I found myself basically playing "Marco, Polo" trying to listen for the origin of my Beautiful Baby Vivienne's crying to try and locate her.

I tried the laundry room, thinking maybe she had figured out the sliding door, somehow. She wasn't there.

I looked in the kitchen, turning 'round in a circle to make sure that she wasn't following behind me (even if the sound was muffled, I still had to wonder!) No Beautiful Baby Vivienne there!

For a moment, I wondered if she had somehow figured out the kitchen door and managed to crawl out into the garage. This had me worrying about her falling down the stairs until I realized that the door was still locked from the inside.

I should have known, really. I found her in my pantry. It was bound to happen one of these days. Apparently, Kaiden had lured her from their play area by taunting her with a newly discovered old toy of theirs.

He had found the pantry door cracked, opened it wide, and tossed in the toy that Baby Vivienne had been chasing after him for.

He either got very lucky, or is much to smart for his own good, because she cripple-baby-crawled into the dark pantry right after that darn toy.

You can guess what comes next...Kaiden shut the door on her, leaving her in the pantry, in the dark, to her own devices with that toy.

I really wondered if he figured that she would be alright because that particular toy lights up when you push the button to set it off. It just seems like something he would realize.

Anyways, that's where I found her, in the dark, in the pantry, crying her tiny eyes out over having been shut in (or maybe duped.) She wasn't so upset that she had dropped her toy, though.

Then there was this incident yesterday. I had been in my bedroom in the front of the house, blogging of all things, when I heard a crash from the living room.

I had been letting the babies learn to play on their own without me in some attempt to get them a bit more independent (that whole separation anxiety thing.)

I listened for the cry, to see who it was that was upset, and if they were hurt or just fighting (yes I can usually tell the difference believe it or not!)

This time the cry was Baby Vivienne's, but it wasn't really a hurt cry, and no other cry accompanied hers so I guessed it wasn't a fighting cry either...and she wasn't moo-ing (which she inadvertantly does when very upset which ended up in her getting dubbed affectionatly "Moo-baby.")

I had wondered if she had decided to try and put herself into her feeding chair again as is her habit of late (she usually likes the idea until she figures out that once she is in, she cannot get out again without help!)

Then that cry turned to the whole, "Timmie's stuck in the well" cry that is usually reserved for matters such as getting one's appendage (or sometimes 2) stuck in the slats of one's crib, or when brother(s) steal your most coveted toy by biting something of yours that happened to stick out a bit too far.

I ran into the living room to see what was the matter, and I couldn't see her AGAIN. I counted little heads and came up one baby girl short.

I checked the feeding chairs and they were empty. I checked around the sofa to make sure that she hadn't rolled off of it. She wasn't there.

I checked the fire place just in case, she wasn't there either.

Then I saw it...two tiny little feet sticking up in the air attached to 2 very small legs that were somehow trying to walk as if that would get her out of her very sticky situation...

Something just didn't register at this point that she shouldn't have been upside down!

She was somehow laying diagonally across this little foot-wide, foot tall Lucite bin that the babies used as a toy-bin, with her head at one end, facing downwards, and her legs and feet at an angle sticking up out of the other side.

Both of the baby boys were ignoring her, trying to look cool, and innocent which made them look all the more GUILTY!

As I ran up to get her out of the bin, I realized that she was covered in toys with a little BLUE pillow that belongs to KAI (and only Kai,) on top.

I tossed the pillow aside, pulled off the Fisher Price corded telephone set, then removed several blocks before I finally was able to pull poor Baby Vivienne out of that toy-bin.

Poor baby girl, she was all sweaty from the toy pile and crying, but she was okay. She came away with a few tiny dots of a bruise on her temple, but that was all.

I didn't know what to think. We had always kidded about Kai acting like he wanted to be an only child.

Now I wonder if that might not be more true than we had originally joked about (they had sent him home a week earlier than his siblings after he was born and he had gotten used to having the bed and toys and parents all to himself at night and we always giggled about the way he seemed to prefer it.)

I like to think that maybe the boys were trying to put their toys away and mistook sister for a dollie, but that's being a bit optimistic. I know boys will be boys, but they are only 18 months old!

Poor Beautiful Baby Vivienne has the misfortune to be the only baby girl in a sea of little boys. I would be more worried about her, but then today, she seems to have started evening the score a bit.

Kian mysteriously has teeth marks on his hands from where he was mauled by his sister yet again for the attempted theft of her pretty green little mermaid sippy cup full of nice cold milk.

Kai tried to take away her ball only to find himself head-butted in the stomach, full force, by his very beautiful and very tiny baby sister.

Her statement? "I'm BAAAAABEEEEEEE!" (I'm Baby!) in a very deliberate, slow and very loud voice!

Yep, she knows that birth order is very important in the rank of siblings. I am not sure what the official story is on that one, but according to her it is best to be the baby of the bunch!

I don't honestly know if I should worry for Vivie, or for her brothers. I just know that the next time that someone says something about her being the only girl, that maybe, just maybe, she should be given the benefit of the doubt!