Matilda and Derwood

My dad makes up nicknames for us kids, I was always Fred (he always teased it was short for what they really wanted to name me-Fredrika *shudder*). My little sisters' was Snerdbark. He's nicknamed my children now too, which I consider a right of passage for them with Grandpa.
Kyndal is Matilda, short for Matilda the Hun or the more well-known Attila the Hun. If you're not familiar with him, he's the one who left a wide path of destruction in his wake...fearless and ruthless leader....a general crazed tyrant. Translate that into Kyndal and it goes something like this-she leaves a wide path of destruction in her wake, a fearless and ruthless leader (in her eyes we are only around to be ordered around), a general crazed tyrant. Don't get me wrong, we love the guts out of her, but she is similar in many ways. So Matilda the Hun she is.
Right now Matilda is testing our willpower for calm parenting with whining. I'm going to take a few moments to whine about whining. OMG this girl whines like no other. Somehow the massively repeated "Ask nicely, Kyndal" gets passed over as completely useless and instead she utilizes the whine. She still can hit two notes at once, so now it's a more on-purpose two-noted noise that is sure to drive us batty. Instead of hurling myself against a wall in pure frustration, I've had to hurl several household items against the wall. It took Ben three days to notice the gouge in the wall from my phone!.... So we're trying different strategies and I see glimmers of hope for a breakthrough here and there. Ignoring didn't work, it just gets louder and more repetetive (and my brain boiled faster). Yelling at her didn't work, plus it makes the baby cry. So far we have reached a combination of spanking (yeah, deal with it) and isolation in her highchair in the corner (since getting her to sit without restraint in time-out is a laughable thought) that is producing slight results. Any other advice past what I've listed here would be greatly appreciated. I've struggled a lot with her the past few weeks and the whining because it's really difficult to be angry at her and then be so in love with Devin all at once. It makes me super sad (maybe that's our problem, we're trying to be too nice?? Like all those parents who want to be their kids friend and then they end up enabling their awfulness??). So far all that I've been able to conclude is this: Heavenly Father saved the strongest souls for these times, right? Kyndal is definitely that. Ever since she was born she's been a handful, and I know that she's a stubborn and really strong little person on purpose. She was sent to us for a reason too, and I hope that somewhere in all my musings I can arrive at a parenting technique we can employ that will teach her to use her strong personality in correct and good ways. Because heaven help us if she goes down the wrong path, we'll never see the end of it. I truly truly hope that we can live up to the blessing that we've been given, and teach her to be a strong good person. In the meantime, we'll work hard to calm down Matilda's rough edges and try and make her the happiest little girl she can be. Without whining. Please, PLEASE without whining.
She does eat good snacks though, she can chow through a bag of Craisins startlingly fast.
Loves her "fountains", and her swimmin suit!

She also is a fearless little monkey. ... next came the jump down!

Now it's Derwood's turn. Before Devin was born, my dad was talking to my Grandma (Great Grandma Z to my kids-GeeGee), and was messing around telling her what we were going to name him. She has dementia, so it was funny when he told her we were naming him Derwood. She believed him but then asked why the heck we chose that name, so of course it stuck.

Little man had his 2 month check up yesterday, here's his stats:

Weight: 10lbs 13oz (packed on 3 lbs since he was two weeks old!) 27th %

Height: 22.8 inches, 43rd %

Head: I don't know, whatever it is, is in the 15th percentile

He's definitely bigger than Kyndal at this point, which makes me hopeful that he will be at least taller than me!! Shrimpy is inevitable, but taller than me would be nice.

BTW, I hate vaccines! Kyndal (again with the strength thing) never got grouchy or a fever or anything but Devin got a fever and was generally cranky. So sad.

He's such a sweet little baby, he puts up with a lot of love from Miss K. She dishes it out a little forcefully (yeah, we can't leave him alone with her), but she really does it all in love. She is so cute with him, and when he locks on to her face, he gives her some great grins. They'll be good friends once he can even sit up! I've made it onto his list of those he'll smile at (I was the last one!), and now he is generous with them. He has some really great little coo-ing conversations with Ben too, apparently he has a lot to tell him! Probably news from Grandpa Wiltbank :) We've got his dinosaur yells distinguished now, he's a really vocal little dude. He'll basically tell us everything that's going on with him without crying. Crying does happen, it just takes a lot to get there.

He's sleeping through the night the majority of nights now (so since I wrote that, he prob won't tonight!), he insists on being down by 8 and wakes up between 6 and 6:30. Heaven.

I caught a smile on camera! Both our kiddos had this really wide-eyed look about them, it's super funny.

Little peanut butter, so sweet. I called him peanut butter once and now that's what Kyndal calls him most of the time. Even sweeter :)