Dear Maia, year two (and one month)

Dear Maia kitten,

Today you are two years and one month old. I was supposed to get this letter written a month ago. I started it; but life was too exhausting at the moment and I decided that this could wait, rather than, say, making your current two-year-old self wait for the diaper changes you now demand the instant you wet them. If it’s so bothersome, let’s work on the potty training some more, that’s what I say.

You are a delightful, delightful girl. Neither your dad nor I can get over your cuteness, your soft curls at the back of your head (your hair so long we can get it into pigtails now!), your sweet face, your high clear self-possessed little voice. You speak very well, even better than your sister did at this age. Certainly the sounds you have are different. She said “ove hoo,” you say, “wuv you.” You say “I” and “me “ already, and have been for months, and you can say pretty complicated things. “I think I do not,” you say when we ask if you need help. “Do not hug me and kiss me,” you said to me today, when I was trying to bring you up on the couch with me and apparently you feared I would be too smothering. You’re a very independent little girl. You love your snuggles, but on your own terms. And usually as a cat. We’ve been playing cat-and-kitten together for several weeks now, you and I. “Mama kitty,” you call me, and I say, “Hi kitten,” and we meow and nuzzle each other. Sometimes saying “Good night kitten,” is all that gets you to settle down in your crib at night. It’s the sweetest thing. Kind of confusing when you’re also demanding that I do my Cookie Monster imitation (“Me hungry for chicken, broccoli, and sweet potatoes!”), but I roll with  it.

Chloë steadfastly refuses to participate in the cat game, saying “I’m a human!” whenever we try to include her as a cat, so you and I meow by ourselves. It’s one of very few things that are just the two of us, which makes it especially dear to me. But I also love when the three of us (or four of us) play together. You love ring-around-the-rosy, Chloe trying to pull you down and me trying to hold her back; dancing in the living room; the two of you bringing your stuffed animals to me so I can give them  checkups. You play really well with your sister these days, too. The two of you will put on hats and shoes and be dancers, or deep-sea divers, or astronauts. You build towers and bridges and play with the Winnie-the-Pooh Duplos (even when it mostly consists of you playing with the Piglet and Pooh and  your sister howling “No, Maia!!” because you didn’t do exactly what she had envisioned, without telling you what she wanted). You’ll often hug each other, and it’s often with an eye to your dad or me to make sure we see you, but you genuinely love each other. It makes me so happy to see you together. I’m not so excited when you do whatever Chloë’s doing just because she’s doing it, including things like saying “I have a tummy ache” or “I’m tired” when you don’t want to help clean up toys, but I know that’s the price we pay.

You’re very definite about wanting to do what you can—climbing into and out of your car seat, zipping up your jacket when I start it, taking off your own diaper for potty attempts. You run for the stool from the bathroom to climb up on my bed or turn on the light. “Me!” you howl if I try to do something for you that you think you can do. If I catch myself in time we’re usually okay. Otherwise, you tend to throw a tantrum. You’re a sweet sunny girl, but you do get upset when you don’t get what you want. You’ve been doing a lot of defiance lately, too, and I swear it’s just to see what it takes to get in trouble. I’ll tell you to start picking up blocks, say, and  you’ll say “no.” I say “Do it now, or you’re getting a time out,” and you just sit, silently, watching me. I give you your time-out and you stand in the corner patiently and obediently. Then when I release you, you run to pick up the blocks. There have been a few times when you’ve been genuinely worried about my reaction to something—for example, when I found you with a big orange mustache from the markers I’d forgotten to put up out of reach—but for the most part, you’re really a very good girl. You remember about the no-no cabinet (the bathroom cleaning supplies) and you’ve been better about not pulling my bookmarks out of my books so much. You put garbage or plates away when we ask you. You stop running in the grocery store when we tell you. (Well, mostly. But it doesn’t help that your sister is always egging you on, and we understand that, though we pretend it doesn’t matter.) You understand so well, and you behave pretty well, too. I’m proud of you.

You’re starting to work on potty training; you have your own little frog potty, but you like using the big toilet with the potty seat you persist in referring to as Chloë’s, though she hasn’t used it in months. You’ve also tried perching there without the seat, presumably because Chloë does, but you don’t seem to feel very secure. (Which is okay; I don’t either. I want to hold you to make sure you don’t fall in, but you said “Do not hold me,”  so I don’t. I just hover anxiously.) You’ve peed in the potty a few times, most often during bathtime for some reason, but you don’t seem to have the concept really down. I don’t mind; you’re only just two. Recently you’ve been demanding instant diaper changes, and saying “I need to pee,” at various times. We’ll see how that goes this year. You’re pretty good at taking your clothes off, and your diaper (and I’m very grateful that except for a few instances, you only do it when you’re supposed to). Also at putting your clothes on. You’re not good at wiping yourself, or combing your hair or brushing your teeth; but you love to do it, so we let you do it.

We stopped nursing when you were nineteen or twenty months. I still vaguely miss it, and you still vaguely seem to remember some connection with my chest, but mostly you’re a big-girl eater and drinker, and we’re both happy this way. You’ve started drinking water out of big-girl cups, and are very proud of yourself when you don’t spill any down your front. (You also enjoy swishing it around in your mouth after toothbrushing. Eventually we’ll get you to spit it out instead of swallowing.) You do pretty well with your fork and spoon, and you enjoy a pretty good variety of foods. You’re pretty variable on how much you eat, but then, you’re a growing toddler, so that’s to be expected. You adore “snackies,” and will say things like, “No dinner for me. Can I have snack?” 

You also love Dora and Diego and Scout. I know we exposed you to TV more and sooner than we did your sister, because your sister was already watching, and I regret that; you’re self-sufficient enough that you can always find something to entertain yourself with, and you’ll often wander off in the middle of shows to color or play with Legos or come find me (since I usually use shows as my working-in-the-kitchen time).  I really love your independence. 

It also makes me feel a little nonplussed at times. I still call you my baby, and you’re still baby-soft and you toddle sometimes, especially when you run, and you like to be held in my arms; but you’re not really a baby, and you’re pushing yourself away from your dad and me, testing your wings already. I sometimes feel like you’re a stranger. Which I suppose you are in some ways; I’ve known you two years, but a lot of that first year was a nonstarter as far as getting to know you, since there wasn’t much you then—not nearly as much as there is now, and it’s still changing and developing. You’re so interesting now. You’re hot-tempered, quick to laugh, quick to try something you’ve seen someone do. When you don’t want to do something, you refuse and stand there, immovable. (Well, except that you’re small enough to be picked up, of course.) You’re not afraid to demand what you want or what you think should happen. You love to read and to pretend to be something else—a cat, a dog, a superhero. “Super Maia, to the rescue!” you say as I tie a scarf around you as a cape, and put your hands on your hips, and rocket away from me, and I watch you with a proud, amused, wistful smile.

I’ve been trying to remember baby you the past few days, and it’s hard to do. You have only ever been the way you are: darling Maia, my sweet big little girl, who can run and jump and draw circles, who brings squiggly drawings proudly to me and runs away when it’s time for diaper changes (you’re the one who asked for them!), who has giggly sessions of saying “poopy!” with your sister, who tells your dad and me spontaneously "I wuv you," and who sometimes pushes your daddy away at night, saying “No, Dad. Mama!” which always makes me feel sort of sorry for your dad, but secretly delighted that you want me. I love you, my kitten, my funny wiggly girl. Here’s to year two, and to even more Maia, which is all I could want.

Love,

Mama kitty

In the still of the night

Chloë is sleeping now, I hope, after a long and protracted bout of screaming on the toilet because she wouldn't wipe herself. It's not entirely her fault. We'd done the wiping at night to get her into bed more quickly. But in the last couple of weeks, she's started delaying longer and longer, and insisting at bedtime that she didn't need to pee but getting up twenty minutes later to say she did. So we decided to start getting stricter about wiping. It probably wasn't a good idea to start with nighttime right away, though.

Maia had her own screaming fit before bedtime, because Chloë's Froot Loops necklace from school was not to be hers. Chloë had brought it up, I'd made her take it off for bathtime and then again after she got out of the bath, and Maia wanted it, wanted it, wanted it. I put it up on the post and she screamed, "Os! Os!" and "That!" and "Maia! Maia! Maia! Maia!" Then I took it downstairs, and she stood at the top of the stairs and she screamed wordlessly. I gave her milk instead, and she tossed it away from her and fell on her butt, still screaming. 

A little while later I picked her up, and she curled up against me and quieted. I fetched her milk and she drank thirstily. I winced when Eric came in from work and Chloë explained that Maia was upset about the Os necklace, but Maia didn't revert. Once they got in bed, they both went down quickly. Maybe it'll be a late morning tomorrow.

Status report: Chloë, 3 years 1 month, and Maia, 16 months

These girls. How I love them, and how they drive me crazy. I don't have a coherent story here; all you get are snippets of our day-to-day life as these girls grow and learn and get cuter and funnier and are amazing and infuriating by turns, or sometimes all at once.

We went to Swan Creek Metropark, which is new to us, today on the way home from the dentist (I went, then Eric came with the girls, and I took them while he went in for his appointment--but the girls were disappointed I'd gotten done quickly and they hadn't had a chance to play in the waiting room, so I looked for a substitute). It's a very nice little place. There's a big playset with tall slides and some things to climb and a nice swingset--and a small playset with short slides and steps and baby swings. We started out in the small one, and Maia climbed up the steps and then went down the slide herself, pausing only to make sure I was standing at the bottom of the slide. Chloë struggled to climb the bendy bars and cried out for me to be close, to help her. She climbed them, no real problem, a couple of times. Then we went to the big one, and Maia climbed up and went down slides with me, and Chloë hung from a bar (so did Maia, and loved it) and climbed the helix ladder with, again, difficulty.

That's the way they are, mostly. Maia is adventurous and up for fun, once she gets over a natural initial shyness. I was swinging her by her arms the other day, up and down and all around, and she loved it--so much she cried and flung her arms about when I had to stop. Her temper is so fierce when it gets stirred up. Chloë is more phlegmatic, but she's so reticent about trying things, insists that she can't do it, won't do it. She's doing so well on using the potty, but she refuses to do without the pee guard or to try to wipe herself better. The way she says "I can't" all the time makes me crazy. I'm not sure if it's worse or better that she often says it as she's doing the thing she says she can't do.

The "Sarah" thing seems to have faded, at least the last week or two. At family camp some great-great-aunts and -uncles asked her what her name was and she said, "Sarah." But a little girl asked her name on the playground today and she said, "Chloë." So there's hope there. And I love how happy and bouncy and interesting and interested she is. She talks about the airplane trips--"Next time, I want to go on three airplanes!" and wonders where the people in the cars are going. ("Maybe they are going shopping like us.") She tells me, "I will hug you veeeeeeery tight," and I hope she's not saying it to try to intimidate me, because her veeeeeeery tight hugs are the best hugs anywhere.

Maia is picking up words like a vacuum cleaner. She pointed to her arm and said "elbow" the other day. Today it was "cracker." She names and can point to Grandpa and Halmoni (okay, "Aba" and "Ahee." We know what she's saying).  She's been using "bah" as her multipurpose word (bath, drink, dog, etc.). She also says "boom" and "ding" when she hears them. She's big on onomatopoeia. She's also done "more blueberries" and "cracker please" spontaneously.

She adores Dora the Explorer, even more than Chloë (who got excited at the determination that her Elmo backpack was too small for preschool and she'd need another: "I can get a Dora one!"). Whenever she's in Chloë's room, she's constantly fetching the big Dora omnibus, saying, "Dowah. Dowah? Dowah." She pages through it, tearing it more often than not. She can name Backpack and Map. Boots, Dora's best friend, is also Dowah. Swiper, the bad guy, is "mimi," which Eric told me today is "mean."

They both love the new shoes we bought recently. Chloë can now put on and take off her shoes entirely unaided. (As Brenda said, isn't Velcro great?) Chloë's been very big into being a dancer/ballerina/princess lately. She insists she needs special clothes for this (usually just a skirt or a dress, or a particular shirt) and likes to dash around, contorting herself oddly, to dance. "Am I pretty?" she says often. "Do I look pretty?" Of course we always tell her she does, with or without her dancer/ballerina/princess outfit.

(This was not that outfit.)

They both had fun with their cousins and other family during our time in Seattle. We visited Mom's work and when her coworkers gathered around, exclaiming and praising and begging for hugs, I expected Chloë to be shy; but she jumped around and danced and offered hugs, which was totally uncharacteristic but great to see. She liked seeing Aubrey walk past our campsite, and having Abby in the house (incidentally: my poor kids, with cousins Aubrey, Abby, and Addie). She talks about the neighbor kids often. I think she'll do okay in preschool once she gets over the parental separation. Maia's still too young to play with kids really, but she does enjoy playing by Chloë's side in the backyard, splashing in the water table or digging in the sandbox or dunking her fist into the bubble solution. She covets Chloë's tricycle; she's too short for it, but she loves being pushed on it when we can get Chloë to give her a turn. (Chloë's very very good about sharing with her. But she is very proud of being able to ride her tricycle now.)

Chloë hit me the other day. We were arguing about something or other and she said "Bad Mommy!" and I said "Bad Chloë!" (which was not the most mature response) and she wanted to say something else, and couldn't come up with anything, and slapped me on the arm. It was very light and was pretty clearly testing the water to see if it was an acceptable act--after she did it she stepped back and watched me to see what I would do. What I did was say emphatically, "Chloë Leeja Snyder! You do not hit! Time out!" She went to the designated corner silently. Then she started to cry, and then to wail "Mama," until I told her she was done. She came right to me and listened while I told her that it was okay to be angry, but not okay to hit. I don't know how much of that sank in, but I'm sure we'll go over it again. She said "Bad Mommy" again tonight, and I told her that the next time she says it will be another time out. I don't mind her being angry, but namecalling is one of the things we think we should nip in the bud.

But mostly I think she's doing fine. Where I'm a little worried about discipline is with Maia. She gets so mad so quickly, and is so much more adventurous than Chloë, that I'm thinking the ways we're already set in with Chloë aren't going to be sufficient for her--but she's still young to figure out what exactly we should be doing differently. If we should. There are no big problems yet; but I definitely see her as more of the rebellious type, and we haven't dealt with that yet, really. 

Maia's doing really well on her food; I give her small fruit strips and whole huge blueberries now. She still tends to chipmunk, but we'll work on that. Chloë's getting better and better at eating neatly and drinking "like a big girl" from a real cup (also, at remembering whether she had hot chocolate the day before, as she gets it every other day). They're both loving the late-summer raspberry harvest, and the Yellow Pear and Brown Berry tomatoes in the garden. Also, the "smoothie store."

Status report: Chloë, Month 34

At just two months to go before her birthday, I sometimes forget that Chloë is still two. "I'm two!" she said the other day, in response to my idle question. "No you're not," I said scornfully, and then remembered that she was, and had to pretend that I'd been joking ("You're seventeen!") to save face. In front of my two-year-old.

But really. She speaks so well, except for Ss, and she remembers things, and makes up songs, and notices things I don't, and can be so eloquent on what she's feeling and thinking and wanting. Oh, the wanting. She's very good at demanding things. Also at saying "You don't tell me what to do." She's funny to listen to sometimes, when we tell her to, for example, put down the Swiffer and come put pajamas on, and she goes into this long explanation that doesn't explain anything: "But I have to. Because I, because I, because I don't, and I need the Swiffer, and I don't want to, I don't want pajamas, I want more naked time, and you don't tell me what to do, and Mama doesn't tell me what to do, and Maia doesn't tell me what. To. Do." 

She's definitely been getting more time-outs this month. I don't think it's an unreasonable amount, just a normal testing of boundaries, but it does take up some time. 

Also, the potty thing. Dude. We switched her to Easy-Ups, to see if getting away from her beloved diapers would help, but it doesn't seem to be the comfort of the diapers specifically that holds her in thrall; it's the not going in the potty. I've been getting her to sit on the potty at night, Easy-Up on, and was able to persuade her to do it bare-bottomed once, though only for a few seconds before she started crying. I swear we didn't tie her to a potty and beat her or anything. Why is this so traumatic for her?

And sleep continues to be our other big trial. She's still taking hours, sometimes, to fall asleep, and feels free to roam around her room as long as I don't catch her (the standing rule is that if she's out of bed, she doesn't get a story the next night). Half the time she ends up sleeping on the floor, like so:

If she's in a really ridiculous position, we'll move her; if not, we've been leaving her. She sometimes ends up in her bed come morning anyway. She doesn't like going down for a nap, either, but she definitely still needs it. Switching her to an afternoon nap may have been part of the problem, but it may also have been merely another symptom. This situation is still developing.

On to happier topics. She had her first real haircut this month, meaning anything other than my straight-across-the-front bang job. The hairstylist was marvelous. I'd been worried since Chloë has hated the head/hair part of baths forever, and consistently screams and wails when any bit of water gets in her face, but the hairstylist managed her perfectly, reassuring her and getting no water whatever in her face, and Chloë was perfectly behaved and even excited about having gotten through it without tears. (Also, the stylist mentioned that normally with the really little kids she doesn't shampoo them, just spritzes their hair with water in the chair. But Chloë didn't take the soft option!) She liked the especially-for-kids cape she got to wear:

She didn't get impatient while her hair was being cut, and kept as still as you could reasonably expect a toddler to do. Such a big girl. She went from this:

to this: 

and is utterly pleased by the seven seconds it now takes to comb her hair on bath night. I've now adopted part of the hairstylist's technique when rinsing Chloë's hair (the key is bringing the showerhead really close to her head), and we're doing a little better on baths now. 

As Eric noted recently, she's turned a corner on eating; now unless the food is meant to be eaten with hands, like pizza, she almost never requires more than a napkin after meals, and can handle her fork and spoon with aplomb. She's slowly learning to cut (we have a knife but have only brought it out once or twice, but she's doing okay with the fork edge) and has been practicing drinking from a big-girl cup at meals and at tooth-brushing, and doing excellently. Normally she doesn't like water, but she gulps it expertly and greedily at bedtime. Otherwise it's mainly her new favorite, mango juice.

She got a Dora compendium when Mom came for Maia's birthday, and we've read very little else with her ever since. "How about a tory from the book that Gwampa gave me," she would say, and we'd groan. Lately she's been willing to hear something else once in a while, but Dora still features heavily, both in bedtime reading and in my nightly oral story, and also shows up in pretend play once in a while. That girl gets around.

She continues to enjoy working in the garden and baking with me (she decided the other day that she wanted peanut butter cake with chocolate frosting for her birthday cake--birthdays are big lately too), and playing with her Duplos and train tracks, and eating Maia's yogurt melts. She delights in sharing food with Maia--especially so when it's a baby treat, such the melts or the "baby trail mix" I make out of Cheerios, puffs, melts, and dried apple bits, but she's also happy to share a bowl of Goldfish crackers or a string cheese. "We're sharing!" she announces, all pleased.

She's still a little skittish about cars and trucks in the road, and will say urgently "Hold my hand!" when we're getting out of the car in a parking lot, though that may just be her general sense of what the rules are. "No talking with your mouth full," she reminds me at dinner occasionally (sometimes when my mouth isn't full), and "No throwing," when I toss a toy off the table. She also enjoys telling her little sister the rules.

The park and bubbles are very big with her right now, as is (sigh) being "a princess," which mainly involves putting on her tiara and some jewelry and then maybe pretending her string of beads is a guitar or a horsey. Her exposure to princesses is mostly in Dora rescuing them (and in one of those stories, becoming one, but only for the purpose of rescuing her friend Boots), but she's obviously picked up that they're desirable things to be. Luckily she also still enjoys being an astronaut and a cowgirl (man, she rocks those horses hard), a bridge-builder and a shark. 

She's gotten through the "I don't like kisses" phase she was in a few weeks ago, which makes us happy. I told her "I love you," as I was hugging her good-night today and she said, "I love you too," matter-of-factly. I suppose it is very matter-of-fact, on both sides, but it's still a wonder and a joy, and so is she, even if she's also a trial sometimes. I'm probably a bit of a trial as a mommy sometimes. But we're getting through all right.

Status report: Chloë, Month 31

Today Chloë wanted porridge for breakfast, because Goldilocks eats it and so does Papa Bear in The Berenstain Bears' New Baby. I'd have just fed her oatmeal, but she knows what it is and claims not to like it (the same way she's claimed she doesn't like potato-cheese-broccoli casserole two nights running, but she hasn't gone to bed hungry), so I racked my brains and the pantry cupboards for a substitute. I came up with bulgur wheat. Somewhat dubious, I cooked it, added some milk and sugar, and served. She tasted it. "I don't like porridge," she said. Then she had another bite. "Maybe I do like porridge," she said, but she didn't eat any more, concentrating on strawberries instead.

I went to make some toast for myself, and asked if she wanted some. "Yes," she said. "With peanut butter and apple butter." (Eric's been feeding her PB&AB sandwiches at lunch this week.) I was in the kitchen waiting for the toaster to go off when I heard her say, "Mommy, I'm done."

"The toast is ready," I called back, and she said, "Maybe I'm not done after all."

Chloë is a hoot and a pain these days. She's so eloquent and interesting to listen to; but then she's also always contradicting, protesting our edicts with "But I like X," or tears, or both. She only occasionally gets truly "I'm absolutely not going to do this thing you've told me to do" rebellious, but that may be in the future. Bedtime and naptime are more of a trial than they used to be, as well as the end of anything she likes. We're getting more tantrums over things she wants to do but can't, rather than just misunderstandings. She's also taken to saying "I don't like [food x]," a lot, usually when she just doesn't want it at the moment. "I don't like juice" is patently absurd.

We introduced her to a table knife recently, but haven't had much opportunity to expand. I've also started giving her a "big girl cup" at dinners, and she's done very well with them--and is proud of herself for doing so, which I'm all for. Her straw cups squeak a lot. 

I love her imagination. A lot of it is derivative, but then a lot of it isn't, either. She's got Dora and Boots, and P.B. Bear, and other characters tagging along when we do things; but then on a walk today she said, "Look, a snowman!" pointing to the air, and said, "The snowman is following us. Run, snowman!" as she began running herself. We made the box for Maia's new carseat into a spaceship, and she loves to play in it. She also loves wearing a string of beads, say, or a scarf, and will call it her helmet, or her guitar, or her motorcycle. (What's with the motorcycles?)

I read somewhere that developing imagination also means developing fear of what might happen, and we may be seeing that; she's afraid of being alone now, and of going down the stairs by herself. She's pretty clingy to me, but that's normal. She has started to be more defensive of her property, and more intent on appropriating anything she's interested in, like a proper two-year-old. Mom and Dad sent some gifts for Valentine's Day, and she loved her beads and seemed to understand that the ducks were for Maia; but she keeps calling them "my duckies," and when I gently correct her she says, "But I like them! It's okay for me to play with them!"

She can draw "smiles" (faces, actually usually without a mouth), moons, circles, and balloons now, and loves to draw maps, though I'm never sure what's actually on them. I've drawn several things inside her spaceship, upon request, and she likes to color them in. Drawing isn't as big as it used to be; now it's mainly pretend games and some running and shouting. That's fine. Reading is still important, and the stories are longer now, which is nice--though she still enjoys shared storytime with Maia, too, especially Maia's big ABC book with the different textures.

Potty training...oh potty training. We decided on the stepwise approach, with reward chart: first go in the bathroom, then in the bathroom without pants, then in the bathroom without pants and on the potty, then in the bathroom without pants or diaper on the potty. We did great until it came to sitting down. She got two prizes and was very pleased with them; but now she simply won't sit on the potty. She will on my lap, so there's something, and I'm going to see if I can get her to sit on the potty at other times, to try to work around this. It's good, in a way, that she's not having control or recognition issues. She's been excellent about telling us she needs to go, and holding it until we get to the bathroom and get her pants off. But except for once a couple of weeks ago, she doesn't want anything to do with the potty itself. I'd hoped we'd have started saving money on her diapers by now, but in fact we're using more than we used to because we're changing them every single time she pees.

She loves singing her ABCs, both by herself and with me, Eric, or her Leap doll that Aunt Karolyn gave her. She can't keep in tune or in time, but it's great to listen to anyway, though her imitation of Leap's laugh is a bit disturbing.

She still likes to hear a song at bedtime, but the big thing now is bedtime stories. We started with Goldilocks, and I haven't been able to branch into any other fairy tales, but we're reading a lot from her Disney book, and I've also been making up Dora adventures, usually with her in them. So we've got the Dora space story (in which Chloë gets a ride to Pluto to get a spare engine), the ice cream story (in which Dora and Boots help Chloë get to the ice cream truck so she can treat them all--I realized after I made it up that last year we told Chloë that was the "music truck" and intended to deceive her in this way as long as possible), the naptime story (in which Dora and Boots get told by Dora's mom to take a nap) and so on.

She's interested in the things we do; she helped me start some seeds the other day, and has started putting the silverware away independently (I mean, once we set her up on the chair and such). She's keen on baking, but wants us to play her candy cane game more than anything. She's growing more independent and complex and infuriating, and we love her that way.

Status report: Chloë, Month 29, and Maia, Month 8

I walked in the door last night after work. Chloë, standing in the kitchen, looked up and pointed. "Mommy, are you home Mommy?" she said. "Is it snowing outside?" Meanwhile, Maia sat in the opposite doorway and spotted me. By the time I'd put away my bags and taken off my shoes, she was there at my feet, grinning her "Pick me up!" grin. I love my girls.

Chloë grows ever more verbally mature these days: complicated sentences, complicated reasoning, advanced memory. "That is for the water park," she said knowledgeably of Maia's new life vest (...thing; it's not quite a vest proper). We haven't talked about the water park for months. "Mama, what day is it?" she asked a couple of weeks ago, and when I told her Friday, "Are you going to wear your sneakers to work today?"
 "We will use more sprinkles at our next Cookie Day," she says. Cookie Day was, admittedly, a pretty big hit with her. She got to wear an apron, just like Mama and Mimi and Addie, and was very, very useful in cutting out cookies and decorating with sprinkles and rolling balls in sugar. Who knew two-year-olds were so good at snickerdoodles?

 She's been climbing in and out of the bathtub "all by myself." In the tub, she still lies down to get her hair wet and now helps to soap herself up (bar soap is her newest fascination). Then, when she's all soapy, we turn on the showerhead. I have to use the head on her up close to get her hair rinsed, or she won't do it, but then I replace it and she cavorts under the water until I force her to come out. We're contemplating going to a water park again this winter with some friends, and if it works out I can't wait to see how happy she'll be.

She's been doing a lot of crawling lately, which I think is due to reversion because of Maia getting so much attention for it. (Except for the crawling she's doing in her Play Hut.) She wants to be held, and to "nuggle" quite a bit, too. I'm not sure if it's jealousy or insecurity due to getting to be a bigger girl, or what. I'm happy to hold her, though. And Maia is happy to play with her when she gets down on the ground, or try to steal her sippy.

 And for some reason she's been trying to lick people. It's mostly stopped after she got a time-out on Christmas night and a threat of not playing with her cousins if she kept it up.

Now that we're better at understanding her, her unhappiness escalates even faster when we don't. She also gets her feelings hurt easily--if I tell her I don't want to play with the guitar, or to stop saying "No Maia" endlessly ("I was just telling Maia not to pull my hair"), or snap at her to get something out of her mouth (especially when it wasn't). But she's still a happy girl, loving her shows, playing with blocks, wanting to read books and bake muffins and go outside.

She's playing imagination games like there's no tomorrow. Maia's bouncer is a motorcycle. The area by the front door is a park that she drives the Play Hut to. She made imaginary strawberry and blueberry pies in the bathroom out of cups and other toys lying around. She actually cooperated picking up the living room for once when she decided she was taking Tiger (actually a leopard) shopping and piled things from the floor into her cart for him to eat or play with.

She'll recite her favorite color (green), animal (snake), food (banana, though we think tomato is probably the true favorite). She knows how old she is, how to play Ring Around the Rosie, how to sing her ABCs, how to count to ten and occasionally beyond, how to sign "I love you." She also knows how cute and awesome is because we tell her all the time.

Potty training is de-escalating again, and we need to work on getting her to put on her own clothes--and be less frustrated when taking off a short-sleeved shirt, as she has trouble with those. And between Halloween and Christmas candy, she's gotten into the habit of asking me "Mama how much did I eat?" at every dinner, meaning, "Did I eat enough that I can have some candy?" which she'll then ask for by saying "Maybe I can have something after this." And every morning she says "I want some eggnog in my milk." She's going to be a sad, sad girl when the eggnog runs out. (Though we've restricted the eggnog aliquot to once a day and she still drinks milk at other times throughout the day.)

Maia can do high-fives now: put up your hand and say "Baby high five!" and she baps at your hand with hers and grins, probably because we've been so delighted she does it. Now that she's crawling, I've been across the room from her and gestured with my arms, saying "Come here!" and she moves her arms too in windmill fashion, and I can't tell if she's excited or imitating me. Or maybe just mocking.

She's expert at pulling herself up to stand, and can now easily reach the top of the coloring table, to our chagrin when we were trying to wrap presents on it. She's attempted cruising a little bit, though mainly in a specific effort to reach Eric or me. She likes to bounce in my arms, and to sit with her sister.

She persists in disliking purees, but she snapped up some stage 3 chicken dinner Eric offered her, and she loved last night's pre-chewed potato chunks and chickpeas. And she adores picking up her own Cheerios and puffs and yogurt melts and sweet potato chunks. We're going to give away the stage 2 foods and be selective about stage 3s, and move to "real" foods as much as we can--and mash as we can, because prechewing all her food is annoying. (Especially when she gets upset that it isn't coming immediately. As I tell her, milk is the only food my body manufactures on-site; everything else has to be imported and processed first.)

She loves to laugh; she's much more of a giggler than her sister was at this age (or ever, really). She's very happy, even when she's got a poopy diaper, which is actually a bit inconvenient at times. She makes up for it in nighttime unhappiness. I've got more work to do on nighttime feedings, as I've gotten back in the habit of settling her for a nursing and then falling asleep, and if we do that she wakes up every couple of hours after that, which is no good for either of us. Especially if Chloë's waking up with a nosebleed or a bad dream in the meantime, as she occasionally does.

Chloë likes to get in Maia's face when she's eating, and Maia likes to pull Chloë's hair, but they do really well together. They play together on the floor; Chloë lets Maia play with her toys, even her favorites like Elmo and Newborn Baby and her new electronic ones (until Eric and I ruled otherwise). She asks us if a particular toy, or a particular snack, is okay for Maia (generally yes to the first, no to the second). I keep finding her stuffed animals in Maia's crib. I don't think I've ever seen her try to lash out at Maia, even after hair-pulling or similar offenses; she just cries "No do not pull my hair Maia" in a teeny pained voice and waits for it to end. We may have to do something about that once Maia is big enough to understand "no" better. But right now it's very convenient to have such a patient big sister to such a sweet little sister.

Status report: Chloë, month 28, and Maia, month 7

Maia is crawling now. I waited to post this update until I could say that honestly. Yeah. We'll go with that excuse.

Ahem. So our house is no longer safe. How do other parents handle having a mobile baby and a toddler who likes to play with small toys? Just forbid them all? Christmas Day is going to be ridiculous, between a girl who's discovered she loves presents (I asked her what kind we should get for Daddy, and she said, "A brown one") and a baby who's discovered she loves eating paper products.

Putting that aside, the girls are bright and beautiful and growing up, up, up. Let's talk about:

Motion. Maia's spent the last couple of weeks working on the whole crawling idea. She tried out going backwards for a while. Then doing a roly-poly method that involved sitting, then getting on hands and knees, then swiveling to sit in a slightly different location. Then getting up on hands and feet. She's still doing that and I each time I expect her to just stand up. Now she's doing a slow classic crawl. We don't expect it to last long. The slow part, that is. The gates are back up.



She's started flipping over during diaper changes, and refuses to leave her socks alone. We were in Babies R Us the other day and I looked over and noticed she was sockless. I spent the next five minutes going back up the aisles we'd just gone down because I couldn't find one of the socks. Eventually it turned out she'd flipped it out of the carrier to the bottom of the cart. I suppose that's not the worst place to discover you suddenly need baby socks, but I was still a bit annoyed.

She's in the big tub now, because she started doing her best to climb out of the little one, and is loving it. She plays with the toys Chloë is happy to throw in after her, and doesn't protest when I lay her down to wash her belly and thighs and delicate bits. (Incidentally, Chloë has started getting interested in her bits. I guess it's that age.) It's ever so much nicer this way.


Chloë was overjoyed by the arrival of new boots from her Grandpa and Halmoni. She put them on as soon as we opened the box and she didn't take them off until bedtime, and was reluctant even then. I didn't think much could compare with the enticement of naked time, but these boots did it. She's now big enough to climb up some ladders at the playground by herself, and delights in going across the monkey bars (which is to say, she touches them as I walk below the monkey bars carrying her along before she steps on my chin in her scrabble to get up on the platform on the other side). She loves to "hang," and does it from anything she can: bars at the playground, my chair and desk, Maia's bouncer.



Sleep. Maia sleeps pretty well now; she goes down easily (except a few nights ago when she screamed for two hours, burped, and then murmured herself to sleep within minutes) and stays down for anywhere between six and ten hours. Chloë has started waking up more during the night. We go and ask what's wrong, and usually she says, "I want you to stay." Then either we do, while she talks and pats our faces, or we don't, and she screams. She's also woken up yelling "I don't want that, I don't want that," or "I want a snack," or "The other one," so I can only assume she's having vivid dreams just like her mama. (I think I dreamed the other night that she called my knitting "needling." It sounds so totally like something she'd say, especially since she likes to ask for a needle when I'm knitting with double-points, and I was doing it the other day to make her a hat, but I can't get her to repeat it.)

Talking. Maia is babbling, babbling, babbling. "Ba ba ba ba," she says. "Na na na na. Eh." She's so happy, most of the time, and has this great rumbling belly laugh. Chloë's language grows ever more sophisticated. "I want a bite of your toast," she'll say, or "We are going to the mall to get a present for Grandpa." She's taken to saying, "What did you say?" and "Where did we go?" and I'm thinking she just wants to talk about it, so we say, "What did I say?" and "Where did we go?" Sometimes when I ask her whether she knows something she says yes, and then I say, "Okay, what is it?" she says "Yes" ("Heth") again. I told her it was okay to say "I don't know" when she doesn't know something, so now when I ask her if, say, she knows what a reindeer is, she says "Heth," and I say, "What is it?" and she says, "I don't know." And sometimes she surprises me by what she does know. So sophisticated.



Food. The innovation here is all Maia's; Chloë is her usual food-lovin' self. Maia is still a bit temperamental when it comes to eating solids, but she loves her puffs, and she's taken to trying to steal Chloë's sippy/straw cup whenever possible. We've given her her own, which she's very interested in. Carrots still seem to be her favorite. In the meantime, she's drinking more in her bottles than I'm pumping at work. We'll see how this situation develops. Especially since she's also developed that clawing-at-the-R.I.N.D.S.-as-though-they're-supposed-to-have-handles thing that Chloë went through, she doesn't have to remain a formula-free baby.

(I threaten her with formula constantly. I don't at all mean it, but with the current pumping/eating differential I'm worried that I'll have to actually go out and buy some formula, and then she'll simply refuse to drink it because she's already repeatedly shown herself willing to starve rather than eat the way she prefers. I'm trying to get up the will to pump more at night and on the weekend. I'm really starting to hate pumping,  especially with the added scalding requirement, so this is difficult.)

Chloë does continue to get better at using her fork, even cutting her own bites of lasagna recently, and she can hold a small, firm piece of pizza whole in her hands and eat it that way. (She likes to eat them cold for this reason. Eric says it's because she takes after him.) She's been happily consuming her Halloween candy, a piece or two a day, or alternately homemade popsicles ("pockle") when she's been a good eater. She's taken to knocking her fork against her teeth and lips when she's nearly done, which is annoying.



Discipline. This one is all Chloë's. She's definitely more rebellious and challenging these days. "Don't tell me that!" she says frequently. However, she then generally does (or doesn't do) whatever we've just told her to do (or not do), so it's more bravado than anything else. I get impatient with her at tooth-brushing time--she get the brush to try herself, but generally just bats at her teeth a few times and then sucks at it to get the taste of the toothpaste--and try to take it away from her, and she bursts into tears and wails, "I want to brush my teeth!" She also says she wants Daddy to brush her teeth, but she always says that. If she had her way I would be her slave all day until it came to tooth-brushing time. Then come back to sing her songs when I tuck her in.

We'll actually negotiate the number of songs sometimes. "You can stay," she says. "You can sing a song?" (We're still working on the right way to ask for things; currently she thinks saying "Do you want me to read a story?" is the way to get me to read her The Very Hungry Caterpillar one more time and "I want more pasta," is the way to get a second helping at dinner) I usually say, "I will stay and sing you a song." Then she says, "Maybe three songs!" or occasionally, "Five!" I say, "Two songs," and she says, "Okay." Wait a minute...I just realized that's me doing the negotiating, not her. Dammit.

But she actually knows some songs now. She can sing her ABCs, although N usually gets left out, and knows "Twinkle Star" with help and bits of "Row Boat" and "On the Loose" and "My Star" and a few others. She'll name the one she wants me to sing, or leave it up to me by saying, "Something." She's a funny girl. They're both funny, happy girls.

It will do you good

The girls, they are a-changin'. Maia is now up on her hands and knees and scooting backward. Then she runs into a chair or something and can't quite figure out why she isn't moving, but doesn't get really fussed about it unless she's stuck. She had her first bath in the big tub today, her big sister helping her by providing toys and cheering her on, because a couple of days ago she started trying to climb out of the little one. She didn't succeed, because she can't crawl yet, but she's darn close. She's really into the independent play. Also into the peek-a-boo where I pretend she's scaring me. And pretending that she's eating my face never gets old.

And Chloë has decided that we've had enough of the good side of two; it's time to show us why they call them the terrible twos. Now that she's firmly entrenched in the use of "I" and "me," what we hear all day is "I want X," or "Don't tell me Y." Every other minute she's been crying because we didn't let her have more candy, or three pieces of graham cracker instead of one, or the scissors, or what have you. She's gotten clingy again, asking that we stay at bedtime; when we go she wails "I want hoo," in a pathetic way that rends our hearts unless she starts up this very fake crying that she's also recently adopted and hasn't figured out we can see right through.

So: Maia growing more awesome, Chloë slightly less so. Only not really, because at the same time she's so articulate, and retains things so well, and surprises us with her maturity in questions and thoughts. "Will hoo be in the office when I wake up?" she asks me when she goes down for her nap on Saturdays. "This toy okay for Maia?" she says, holding up something that she wants to bring to her sister. She's so charming. Still jealous, especially when I'm being cuddly with Maia; but we've got a routine now where I come home from work and she runs down, calling "Mommy! Mommy!" and, if I don't grab her right away (usually I don't, because I'm putting milk away and taking off my shoes and jacket), says, "Can I have a hug?" and I lift her up and squeeze her tight. And then she tells me what's on her mind, like, "I ate Ms," or "Maia pooped," or "It is not raining outside," and I'm glad to hear it.

Sound off

Eric: Chloë, stop touching things on the counter! [Chloë continues to touch things.] One...
Chloë: Two?
Jenny: Bad things happen when Daddy gets to three.
Eric: That's right. What happens when I get to three?
Chloë: Four.

Don't count on it

Chloë's still working on her rebellious streak, including taking great joy in running away when it's time to put a diaper or socks or pajamas on and refusing to come back when ordered to do so. She's also working on her numbers. How do these come together? Witness tonight, after her bath. Chloë runs over to the window where she wants to "ook hindow."

"Come back here," Eric says. No response. "Come here now." Nothing. "Chloë Leeja! Come over here!"

Still nothing. So he says threateningly, "One..." intending to count to three, whereupon he'll go forcibly pick her up and deposit her where she's supposed to be.

"Two," Chloë says happily. "Dhree." All threatening manner is derailed when the two of us burst into laughter and then Chloë joins in, pleased that we we're amused.

Status report: Month 19

"I really like this age," I said of Chloë the other day.

"You say that at every age," Eric said.

Which I suppose is true, starting at about six months, anyway. I can't help it that kids get more awesome as they get older. (Don't tell me when this starts to reverse. I don't want to know.) Chloë at nineteen months is subtly different from Chloë at eighteen months, but the differences are there, and yes, I like her better now than I did a month ago. Why shouldn't I?


Nineteen-month-old Chloë really, truly does not feel like a baby. She's off her bottles and doesn't wake me up with crying. Well, she does occasionally, like the other night, when I think she might have been having a bad dream. She woke up screaming around 4:30, settled in my lap for about fifteen seconds to rock in the chair, and then told me "sleepy," and "nap," indicating she wanted to go back to her bed to sleep.


But in the mornings it's "Mama," and "up," and when I come in she doesn't immediately want a drink or to be held; she wants to talk. She's so tall; she can scramble up on the couch, and walk up and down the stairs by herself (if she's not arrested in her tracks by the sight or sound of a dog, or Mama downstairs, or Dada upstairs, or Ganpa in the living room). She's pretty good, though not perfect, about staying with us in stores. She loves to color and to splash. She wants to play with or eat specific things, or see specific shows, or rock with Dada instead of Mama. She needs to work on some self-confidence, since she's still a pushover with other kids and asks us for "hep" more often than she actually needs it, but she still knows who she is and what she wants.


(Come to think of it, she stopped waking routinely in the early morning around the time we stopped giving her bottles. Now she doesn't even want a drink most of the time, and if she does water or juice are often her choice.)

She's starting to get rebellious, running away when we try to put her diaper on, then repeating "Here?" and "Now?" when we tell her to "come here now" until I want to either scream or laugh, depending on how tired I am. She's learned what "burp" means (though she applies it to gas at both ends). Whenever she does it I say, "Say 'excuse me,'" and she says, "No?" with a grin. She did actually say it once the other day and I made sure to praise her profusely. The rest of the time I fight not to grin back, because she's so cute when she thinks she's being annoying. Mostly she's still a good girl, but we're waiting in trepidation to see what comes these next few months. She screams sometimes when she doesn't get her way, but we haven't really been seeing what I'd call real tantrums yet. Though she did get upset during dinner prep tonight when she thought I wasn't going to give her another piece of raw onion.

She reliably identifies herself as "Kha-ee" now, even in photographs, where before she was "Baby." When we try to impress on her that she's being bad by calling her "Chloë Snyder," she often repeats "Nye?" but I'm not sure she realizes that's part of her name, too. She does understand "name," as in when Eric asks her "What's my name?" She understands so much. And has started repeating it, too--it's time to start watching our vocabulary.


Her own vocabulary continues to expand. Strawberries have featured heavily this month--Eric bought a box that smelled really good, and after that Chloë would run to the fridge and yank at the handle trying to open it, saying "Dobby?" She's still keen on asking for yogurt, though not necessarily on eating it. She knows "napkin" and "heavy" (mostly "heavy book"), and "diaper" and "nipple" (because she noticed hers one day and thought they were "ows"). We're trying to work on "thank you," and she'll sign it sometimes when prompted but has only tried to say it once or twice. We'll keep working on it. She's still good at "please," and when she asks for something if I wait with my eyebrow lifted, or Eric says, "And...?" she adds "Pee!" with a good grace.


We've started working on letters, numbers, and colors this past month. She knows A, B, D, E, I, L, M, N (at least, we think so...she may also be mixing it up with M; it's hard to hear the difference), O, P, R, T, and sometimes Y. She routinely mistakes the C for a moon. A lot of things are moon-shaped, it turns out. She knows one and two and five fairly well, probably mainly because we count body parts a lot, but is still shaky on three and nearly nonexistent on four. And she likes saying colors (I never knew that "purple" was such a cute word) but is iffy on their application.


She's doing a lot of "X"/"No X" these days. It started with the kids in glasses in the Little People book. Then it was our glasses. Then it was the Little People balls--she now knows that they're only on that one page, and she delights in flipping through the book, looking up at me and saying, "Balls? No?" at each spread, until at last we arrive at the schoolhouse page, when she waits for me to exclaim, "Balls!" Which of course I always do. If she's wearing socks and I'm not sometimes we'll discuss this, she pointing alternately at my feet and hers until I get tired of saying "socks...no socks...socks...no socks..." I have a bruise on my arm from a really bad blood draw a couple of weeks ago (for glucose testing--no gestational diabetes here), and sometimes she'll push up both my sleeves, or my sleeve and hers, to point and say "Ow?" at mine, and "No?" at hers. And there's in/out and up/down, too. At her bath tonight, Eric and I were both reciting, "The scrubber is in the water...the scrubber is out of the water!"


She's starting to get into two-word phrases. Her first and best is "More please," but she's also doing "flower baby and "sky baby" and "water baby" to indicate her different videos, and "see Mama," "read book," and "Ganpa bye-bye?" She's still saying this last one, though he left Monday. It's like my ceramic pumpkin that she took a fancy to a few weeks ago. She wanted to play with it, and I let her. Then she brought it into the bathroom, and of course at some point she dropped it and it shattered. I got it all cleaned up without injury to either of us, and explained a bit grumpily that the pumpkin was broken and it had gone bye-bye and that she should not poke around in the garbage where the pieces were. For a while after--and she's still occasionally doing it--she would look at me at random times, or when something else turned up broken, and say "pumpkin, broken."

Dad was in the area for a business trip last Thursday, so he came for a weekend visit. It was a very quiet visit, if you don't count the constant "flower baby" video watching and litany of "Ganpa. Mama. Dada. Kha-ee." Chloë certainly enjoyed herself; she was more boisterous and smiley than usual, grinning and contorting herself in weird ways and running here and there. She and Dad made up a game in which Dad would pretend to sleep, Chloë saying "jeepy" (sleeping/sleepy). Then Chloë would point and say "Hwake!" and Dad's eyes would pop open. She would ask after "Ganpa" whenever he wasn't around, including at bedtime, but when we summoned him she wouldn't go to him for a hug. She would blow kisses, though, or her version of it: clapping her hand to her mouth and making kissing noises behind it. I guess the "blowing" part hasn't sunk in yet.


She's still doing the sleepy/wake game with us, and still asking after him, especially when we go into the spare room. She goes to the bed and says "Ganpa" because while he was here and she wanted to play on the bed, I would say "No, that's Grandpa's right now." His memory is definitely lingering more than it did on previous visits, much like she still remembers "Ha-ee" from Mom's visit, which makes me happy. Her memory in general is improving, which is pretty neat to see in action, even when I want to tell her to give it a rest with the pumpkin already.

(Of course, now we have to get her to identify the spare room bed as hers, because the next big project is to move her in there before Maia comes. We're going to be taking the bed off its frame and moving my stuff out this weekend.)

She's taken an interest in my belly lately. I don't know for sure that she's noticed it's getting bigger, but she likes to tickle it and blow raspberries on it and kiss it, more than she did before. We tell her that there's a baby inside and it will come out soon, but we've been telling her that for months and no baby has appeared, so I'm not sure she believes us. She nods when we ask if she'd like to have a baby live with us, which is a good sign, though I'm kind of expecting her to enjoy the baby for a couple of hours and then say "baby bye-bye," or something similar. But I can't really imagine what she'll be like in two months. Even though she's not growing as fast as she was the first year, she's still learning and changing so much every day. I'm finding myself trying to drink her in, to actively enjoy her and remember that she won't always be like this, even if she does continue to be more awesome. I'm also afraid of missing out on her when the new baby comes. But that's my problem, not hers, and I think she's going to be a delightful big sister. She is a silly, happy, growing, learning girl, and we're proud of her.


This toddler thing is in the bag.

Yes, you will

Chloë's been saying "Nana," for a while now, to indicate that she understands we've told her no about something. But she hasn't really used it personally, shall we say, until today.

She and Halmoni (my mom, who's been visiting, and was responsible for the new chair, which Chloë adores) and I were eating oranges (which she persists in calling apples) and her hands and face got drippy, as was to be expected, so her halmoni got her a paper towel and wiped her clean. Chloë wanted the paper towel herself, to finish the job, as she always does, and Mom gave it to her. Chloë wiped herself and then threw the paper towel on the floor. "Go pick that up and throw it away," I told her. She looked at me blankly and I thought I'd packed too many things into my instruction, so I broke it down: "Pick that up."

"Nana," she said, and shook her head violently, something she's just learned to associate with "no."

"Excuse me?" said Eric, who was standing nearby. "Pick that up, right now."

Chloë just stood there a moment. Then she picked up the paper towel and took it to the garbage. "Good girl, thank you," Eric said, and so did I when I had uncurled from my fit of silent laughter and turned again to face her. It probably shouldn't have been that funny, especially considering this is the first step in a defiance escalation. I was sure she was going to refuse outright to do what I said. Eventually she will, and we'll have to decide what to do. For now, we have a reprieve.

Status report: Month 16

I really need to update more often. I've got so much to say, and so many pictures to show off. (This would be less of an issue if my new computer were working properly, I suppose.)

Sixteen-month-old Chloë is all about talking and independence. She wants to do things, but she wants to do them in her own time and her own way. Did you know you can bribe a sixteen-month-old with a wipe to lie down for a diaper change? Did you know I have to most days? I think she's a bit more of a challenge this month than last, but we're also proud of how much more of a big girl she's getting to be.


Talking is huge. She's picking up words like litter, except without her propensity for putting them in the garbage can and carefully closing the lid, then applauding herself. She's much more willing to imitate things we say than she used to be. She knows "jacket" now that we've been using it a lot; she can say "Ahh-ee" (Addie) and "Aay" (Rae), or she could at Thanksgiving when we asked her to. (And she can say "Dude" when her mother is exclaiming over something.)

Separation and stranger anxiety seem to be nearly gone. She waves me good-bye in the morning, and comes to greet me at night, but she never asks to be picked up; usually she points at my shoes and says "Djhou!" or my jacket and says "ahh-keh" or just comments "Mom," and goes on with what she's doing. She had a great time with Grandpa and Halmoni when we went to visit, particularly Grandpa--I'm thinking she remembered him from when he visited for her birthday.


She says "kagul," which can mean either cup or the water in it; I keep a glass in the bathroom and when she says it I fill it up and give her a sip. She can't hold it herself and drink, not successfully anyway, though she loves to try. She likes playing with her cup in the bath partly because there, it doesn't matter if the water spills out. She surprises herself occasionally by getting it all in her mouth; she sits there (she's much, much better with the sitting lately) with big eyes after the gulp, and I sing one of my many Chloe-specific adaptations:

"I have a little daughter
Her name is Chloe S
I put her in the bathtub
Because she was a mess

"She drank up all the water
She ate up all the soap
She tried to eat the bathtub
But it wouldn't go down her throat"


She continues to be a good eater, sometimes too good. She loves everything: fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, tiny sips of hot chocolate, whole olives. Even raw dough. We were making egg rolls the other night; Eric and I were at the stove discussing meat:veggie ratios, and Chloë was over by her little table, where we have a bowl of crackers or fruit most of the time and her sippy. (Not so good: she doesn't like water anymore, unless it's out of my glass. But she drinks her half-and-half juice with pleasure.) I turned without knowing why and saw the package of egg roll wrappers in her grip, the wrappers ripped at one corner and one whole one stuffed in her mouth. "No!" I shouted. "Nanana!" she cried around the wrapper, still chewing.

The egg rolls turned out well anyway. They did end up being too late to be dinner, so instead of sampling one, Chloë had tofu with barbecue sauce. Neither Eric nor I would touch it--I don't like barbecue sauce and he doesn't like tofu--but our fusion child scarfed it down and asked for more. She likes artichokes, too, and pasta salad, and pumpkin pie, and green beans in butter. She especially likes anything of the right consistency for her to stab with a fork and successfully bring to her mouth herself. Mealtime is sometimes quite messy, but it's usually a lot of fun.

She's on her way to becoming a one-nap child instead of a two-nap one; she sometimes refuses to sleep in the afternoon and sometimes takes only a very short one. Other days she sleeps practically all day. She's taken to asking (by pointing) for her pillow and blanket from her crib and snuggling down with them on her floor, even when she's not actually tired. When we're in the living room watching one of her shows, she'll often put her head in my lap or curl up next to me. It's a sweet time. Though I have to remember to keep a book or something close at hand, because she's only got a few shows and I know them pretty much by heart.


One of them, Baby da Vinci, features the "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" song. She loves the video in general because it has so many kids in it ("Baby!" she says, turning to me to make sure I'm aware. "Baby baby baby!") but her favorite part is when that song comes on, and lately I've been having to play it for her four or five times in a row. "Heaaaa," she says, patting her head. She knows where her shoulders are, but during the song she usually hits her head, her toes, her eyes, and her nose, and is content to wait for the song to catch up with her. Eric and I tap the appropriate body parts during the song to help her along.

She has three winter hats, one her halmoni bought her and two that I made, and she loves to pull them on and tromp around the house in them. She also likes trying on Eric's blue hat, which is enormous on her but looks adorable when we turn the brim up. My fears of her freezing to death because she wouldn't keep a hood on are assuaged for now, though of course we haven't actually taken her out in truly cold weather yet. We'll see how it goes.


We're not really doing anything on the potty training. She likes to sit on the potty, and occasionally she does something in it, but I don't think she's made the connection that she's always supposed to do that in the potty rather than in her diaper. Mom and Dad say we need to time when she normally, er, eliminates, and make sure she's on the seat at those times. We haven't yet gotten our act together to do that, but it sounds promising.

Her understanding is amazing. I tell her things like "We need to change your diaper so we can go shopping, so let's get your pants off," and she leans into me to let me remove her pants. I say "Can you hold your bottle when we go downstairs?" and she walks from her room to the top of the stairs with it, stopping to close the lid to a box, and waits for me there to lift her down. She can obey instructions like "give this to daddy" or "put that in the trash," and is often helpful when I'm folding clothes by putting her bibs in the special bin we keep them in. She's so pleased to help, and I'm so proud.


She's gotten very keen on trying on clothes lately. Usually when she's already fully clothed. She'll extract a shirt from the basket of laundry I'm folding, or pants from her drawer, sit down and try to pull them on. (It's always on her legs.) She's actually gotten close to getting on a sock a couple of times, and is pretty good with her hat and mittens. She also continues to enjoy removing her pants. At least, I have to assume she enjoys it; why else do it?


She's a good girl overall, reasonably obedient, but she's starting to explore more. Thus, the egg rolls, and how we're moving things away from the edges of counters and tables. We got her some crayons and a coloring book recently, and since then we've been having to constantly define what can be drawn on and what can't. When we've all been in our bedroom messing around and she toddles down the hall, we don't let her go in silence more than maybe a minute. She hasn't gotten into serious trouble or injury yet, but it's only a matter of time.


She's fond of pretending to eat my face, probably because it usually ends in her being tickled and hung upside down. When I make funny noises she makes them back at me. She loves to go in to wake up her daddy; sometimes she flops down and uses him as a pillow, sometimes she sits and stares, and sometimes she starts jumping up and down on the bed. She's definitely continuing to be a lot of work, but she's also definitely continuing to be worth it. Chloë times are fun times.