Oh, Savannah

Right now it is 7:10p.  Kyle is at the kitchen table finishing up a worksheet from his Language book, Bella is sitting on the couch leafing through piles of books & Savannah is in bed for the night.  In less than an hour Kyle will head up to his room to read & Bella will go to bed.  This is how our evenings usually go.  They're blissfully quiet & they typically end early...for good reason, too.
From around 8a until 6:30p our kids are in motion.  They spend hours upon hours playing outside with a seemingly tireless energy that apparently only comes with being a child, as I could only wish to have even 1/4th of their energy!  Today they played in the yard from 9a-3p & then we went to the park before dinner.  To say that they're tired come the end of the day is an understatement - they're downright exhausted, but in a good way.  That's not to say that my days with them are always 'easy', though.
With each day that passes Savannah becomes more & more of a handful.  The words "demanding" & "high maintenance" best describe her right now.  While Kyle kept busy playing with his toy cars in the driveway & Bella played with her toy animals in the sandbox, Savannah spent her morning throwing tantrums & having screaming fits over me stopping her from doing things that she knows shes not allowed to do. She wasn't content to just play.  She climbed up to the tree fort three times.  She stood on top of the glass patio table twice.  She rummaged through the garden & picked unripened veggies.  She threw sand at Bella.  She demanded drinks & snacks.  Fortunately her mood changed for the better this afternoon & she ended up having a decent rest of the day but it didn't stop me from feeling completely drained & exhausted well before dinnertime.
I must admit that I find her being difficult kind of humorous, seeing as how that's the hat that Bella wore for so long (and still does sometimes).  Now Bella's high maintenance ways have taken the back burner while Savannah's are boiling over!  In that sense I guess I should consider myself lucky..I'm not dealing with two crazy kids!!  Bella has found her imagination & can keep herself content & entertained for hours.  She's still bossy & challenging at times, but nowhere near as crazy as she was even 6 months ago.  I feel like I should be MORE than used to dealing with tantrums but you know, I don't think its something anyone could ever get used to?!  The ear piercing screams test my patience to the max but I know that all of these behavioral things are developmentally normal.  I just need to *constantly * remind myself that "this too shall pass".  Eventually Savannah won't throw her milk cup across the room during meals, nor will she bend over backwards to scoop handfuls of water out of the bath to throw on the floor.  She won't act like you're taking her to a concentration camp every time you put her into the car or pull Bella's hair *just because* she wants to. She'll eventually stop ripping books (maddening) & requesting to color just so that she can empty out the *entire* container of crayons.  She won't find humor in pulling every toy off of the shelf only to walk away & look at books, nor will she throw screaming fits while out in public.  She'll get easier.  Eventually.  After all, Bella did.  But then....
It's worth noting here that at this very moment Bella is freaking out because she insists that there are too many germs on her toothbrush so she can't possibly brush her teeth before bed.
Oye.