Olivia's First Biting Incident

Unfortunately we experienced Olivia's first biting incident today.  If there's a bright side, at least it was Lauren that was the bitee, verses another mother's child.  That might sound bad, but as most mothers would agree, it's better to keep these incidents in the family, verses our kids biting their friends or whomever they view as their current nemesis/rival/toy stealer.  Am I right? 

Though it looks like Lauren would be the biter per this picture, but they were actually just poking each other's tongues.  Weird?  Yes.  But it stemmed from an early morning game of "Name that Body Part" that I started between the two of them; hence the tongue poking.  Now where it got out of hand?  I'm not exactly sure.  But it was somewhere between changing diapers and changing their clothes that Lauren began screeching.  I turned around, from my 10 ft trip to the diaper pail, just in time to see Olivia rounding the corner into the dining room and Lauren in tears on the living room floor.  Lauren began to cry scream, "Mooooom, 'Livia bit me!"  Upon inspection, she surely had. :/ Even drug her top teeth down a bit while biting Lauren's shoulder.  My picture doesn't really do the damage justice, but Lauren's skin welted up pretty quickly.

I then go around the corner to find that Olivia had put herself in time-out in the dining room corner (we usually do time-out in the corner of our living room).  I will admit I was pretty hot at this point because Lauren was howling and this was the first time any of my kids has bitten anyone.  Looking back, I should've handled it better, especially when it came to dealing with Olivia.  I loudly/sternly asked Olivia what happened and Olivia said, "I bite", then pointed to her teeth.  "Why Olivia?!"  To which she responded with an outburst of crying and a heart-tearing lip quiver.  I felt awful I made her cry, but tried to keep on track with helping her understand that she cannot bite.  I picked her up and brought her into the living room to have her say sorry to Lauren and give her a hug.  Lauren was willing to accept a hug and apology, but Olivia was not ready to give one just yet.  I find it amazing that both my girls already seem to be able to feel the emotion of embarrassment (or at least that's what it looks like to my untrained eye).  After a couple minutes of buried heads and large tears, Olivia finally did give Lauren a "arry 'Livia" (remember, she calls Lauren "Olivia") and a hug.  And magically they were friends again.  I sure hope the process of saying sorry will get easier, because the process for these two is currently a tiresome 10 minute escapade!

...and here's a shot of the bite mark about 10 hours post-bite.  Olivia left her mark alright.  *sigh*  I hope this biting stuff doesn't stick around, or I need to get WAY better at dealing with the bitee. :0(  On a side-note, Lauren still has not ever bit anyone (knock on wood); however, she has been the bitee on numerous occasions (church, home, playground).  Should I be worried?  Sounds like she's great at taunting other's perhaps?  While wielding a great amount of self-control not to bite back?  Hmmmmm...food for thought...