A new era

Maia is off to kindergarten! When she woke up this morning she said, "I'm not going to school today." Then she dressed herself with care and brushed her hair and her teeth, and came down to breakfast, and watched her daddy pack her lunchbox. "I might say I like it," she said when we crossed the street in front of her school. We were early to her classroom (apparently we were supposed to line up with everyone else under the covered area), and she waited more or less patiently. When everyone else got there, she hung up her backpack and lunch with her classmates, we hugged her goodbye, and she ran off to the circle where everyone was meeting. No tears, no frowns, no hesitations. She's going to do so well.

And Eric and I came home to a childless house. I will get lots of work done today, and he's going to be starting his tutoring work as well (also possibly doing more of the porch-painting that took up our yesterday). It'll be nice to have the quiet house. But...but...

Dancing into the new year

And today is the first day of first grade! "My stomach is still hurting," Chloe reported this morning. She's been anxious. Excited, but anxious. We went to orientation yesterday, since it was a new school--yeah, so we moved across the country, from our house into an apartment without sufficient parking but with a pool--and she was excited by the nice playground and the fact that the cafeteria is a separate building from the gym, and confused by the fact that gym is called PE here, and excited and anxious by turns about the fact that she's riding the bus this year. She likes the idea, but she wants us to come along. On the positive side, as we told her, all the kids from the apartment building who go to this school will be at the stop, so she'll be able to meet lots of kids at once this way.

"I wish I went to the same school as Chloe," Maia says. She's in preschool, but it doesn't start until next week. Gymnastics (for her) and jazz (for Chloe) also start next week. I've always loved September because it felt like the start of the year, and it's certainly starting a lot of things for us.

Eric's found a game...store, rather than group, and I've at least identified a knitting group to try. We're not settling into our new lives as well as we could since we don't like the place. We want to move, but we can't afford a house until approximately February and it doesn't make sense to move to another rental. I'm battling discontent. Also a tendency to not get started on things I want, like getting the house in order and getting to a good schedule for some goals I want to pursue, because I don't feel truly settled. But I'm trying to reconcile myself to what we have for now, and act as if we're settled and happy. The girls don't seem to be acting; other than occasionally wishing for a yard, they've seemed happy with our new arrangements, and I'm sure that getting them into school and classes will make that even better. Maybe I should go take a dance class.

The big day

Today is Chloe's first day of kindergarten. She's been so excited about it. We went school shopping last week, and school-clothes-shopping a couple of weeks before that, and she was eager to help pack her lunch and make sure everything was in order in her backpack. She had three nosebleeds yesterday, so last night we discussed writing a note to her teacher to keep her informed, and the first thing she asked me this morning was "Did you do that note?"

She was all smiles when we left her at her classroom door this morning. All three of us walked her in, since I'm working from home on Tuesdays and it wasn't terribly busy. Her teacher met her at the door and told her to put away her backpack and play with the Play-Doh at her seat; and she gave us quick good-bye hugs and was off. There was a "Boo-Hoo Breakfast" for kindergarten parents in the school library afterward. We didn't go, but I did feel slightly boo-hoo-ey as Eric, Maia, and I walked back to the car.

So did Maia; she wanted to be picked up and buried her face in my shoulder. But she's also anxious about going to meet her preschool teachers today, and she recovered quickly--though the house is very, very quiet without her favorite playmate to assist in making the usual ruckus, or demand the usual shows. Change, it is here.

Potty boot camp redux

So we ran out of Easy-Ups today and put Chloë back in underwear.

So.

Ohmigod this day has gone so much better than I thought it would.

She hated the idea, of course. The last Easy-Up was a dirty one right after she got home from a sleepover at Memaw's, and after that she was eventually persuaded to put on some underwear. She woke up from her nap calling "I have to pee! I need a diaper on!" but we refused, and after a period of wrangling she said "The pee is coming right now!" I pulled off her underwear and transferred her bodily to the potty, over her crying, and held her while she finished peeing. There was a mess on the floor, but she'd gotten some into the potty, and so we celebrated and cleaned up the mess for her and awarded her a sparkly moon sticker, which she was very pleased to get.

She got wiped up and into new clothes and underwear. The next time she needed to pee she said, "I need you to help me," which turned out to mean putting her on the potty and holding her. She was too agitated to go, then and later (which was in the middle of a session with the new arch sprinkler, during which she slid down the slide through the arch and onto a towel I put on the ground to prevent big bumps, to her delight). But after that she again said she needed to go, and I helped her sit on the potty and held her tight, and we were both rewarded by the sound of tinkling.

She finished, and wiped herself, and washed her hands, and grinned ear to ear as we praised and hugged her and got her another sticker and the promise of some gummy bears. She was by no means cured; she refused to sit on the potty to try to pee before bedtime, and chanted after dinner "I don't like underwear I only like Pull-Ups I don't want underwear today or tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that or the day after that," and said plaintively on the way to bath, "I really wish we had more diapers." She's currently asleep in underwear, and we'll see whether she wakes up in the night to pee, as she sometimes does, or if I'll have to deal with a wet bed in the morning. I told her that if she does wake up she needs to go right to the bathroom when she calls me, and I'll meet her there.

But I see hope. It's good to think that maybe my oldest girl will be potty-trained before my youngest.

Shoe-in

Maia got her first pair of shoes today. Her feet were much too small for the smallest shoes we had for Chloë, toddler 6s, so when we went to Stride Rite today to get Chloë some sandals Maia got sized too. She's in 4.5s wides. The first shoes we tried on, white with little flowers on top, were mediums by mistake, so the salesperson went to the back to get the correct size and I removed the shoes from Maia's feet. She wailed. I could just see her thinking: Finally, after weeks of vainly yearning after my sister's shoes, I have my very own! and then, when they were gone: Nooooooo!

But the salesperson came back quickly--with a different style because the other ones didn't come in wide; these were plain white with flower holes cut out, still very cute--and she was reshod. I helped her up and she extended her foot tentatively, a curious look on her face. She took a few steps and tumbled, but she was happy to try again. She wore the shoes out of the store (though she didn't walk across the street in them); I didn't see any need to trifle with her happiness by taking them off her.

In the meantime Chloë got some Teva sandals in size 10. She says her beloved size 8 sparkly shoes (Skechers Twinkle Toes) fit fine, and they seem to, and even her size 7.5 sneakers go on fine...but she measured at 9.5 and these sandals don't seem as huge as all that. Whew. She had Teva sandals last year, broad and sturdy and waterproof, and they were great, so we got the same style this year but blue with green flowers. (Last year's were pink.) The choice was between these and a hot-pink, narrower style with thinner straps. At first Chloë voted for the pink ones, but I gently steered her toward the blue ones. These are her first pair of non-pink shoes. We looked for green but as far as I can tell, kid shoes don't come in that color. (Except for Crocs, but I wanted real shoes for her since she'll be running around all summer in these.)

With two kids in shoes we need to add another level to the back-door shoe rack. Also I'm so glad that Maia will be able to step into Chloë's old shoes in a size and a half because man, those tiny shoes were expensive. Darn Eric's family's wide feet.

Growing up and up

I saw Maia walk this weekend! She took a couple of crablike steps once to get to me, and then a couple of forward steps to go from Eric's hands to mine. Eric also saw the crab walk at a different time. She's also delighting in climbing the stairs, and in riding her rocking horse standing. She's been grinning all weekend. She's got a couple of days to go on her antibiotics and the remnants of a cough, but otherwise is very well. Whenever we hold her and start patting her back now she pats our backs a few times too. "It's okay Mom," she seems to be saying. "It's okay, Dad."

Chloë continues to have sleep troubles. In the last week I've gone in and seen her sleeping with her legs slung over the side of the bed, her trunk on the mattress; one leg in and one leg out of bed; with her legs under her pillow and her head on the blanket; facedown on the floor with one leg hooked over the chair. The other night I was talking to Dad on the phone about an hour after bedtime and she came out into the hall and called me. "Mama, did you say 'Chloë'?" she said. I said I had, and that I was talking to Grandpa. "Did you tell him that we went out into the garden and planted tomatoes?" she said. "No, I didn't," I said. "Go back to bed."

We did plant tomatoes, just in time for some torrential rain. I'd mentioned that I hoped it would rain so the tomatoes would get water, and that morning Chloë said, "The rain will be good for our plants to grow!" She has a great time digging around with the little spade she got for Easter, and continually asks me to dig for worms. When I find one, she accepts it in her hand with delight and coos at it for about three seconds. Then she puts it carefully down in the hole and asks me to find another one. I'm glad she treats them well but it's a pretty exhausting pastime.

We went to the farmer's market Saturday, and watched the river for a while. A couple of men were fishing on the dock there, and we got to watch one of them catch a big silvery panfish. Now Chloë wants to go fishing. I know both her grandpas would be delighted to take her, so I'm sure we can get her out fishing this summer.

They got a sandbox as a joint birthday present from Memaw and Omi, and Chloë has been asking every day when we're getting the sand. Maia is a bit young for it, but I'm contemplating bringing out the empty sandbox and putting it in the yard for them to play around in. They're enjoying it that way in the living room now, which is fine but doesn't leave a lot of room for things like walking. We also finally brought out a wooden train set that we got from Ikea over a year ago, and both girls love them--Chloë to build tracks and run the trains around on them, Maia to lift them up and chew them. "Maia Destroyer," Chloë laments whenever this happens (as our friends call their youngest). She also likes knocking down the towers and bridges and rocketships Chloë builds. Maybe they'll play more harmoniously as they get older.

Prizes

Maia laughed at me last night. We were hanging out in the living room while Chloë ate her prize of the day, a cookie ("Mmmmm. Cookie."), at her little table while Maia lounged against my knees. I hoisted her up to "fly" and started making faces at her, and after a little while she giggled. My prize of the day.

We traded in the plastic kitchen/shopping cart/food Chloë's Memaw and Omi had given her for a water table. Since it's the end of summer, there weren't any in the stores we visited, so we ordered online. It arrived yesterday, and once I got home from work we took it outside. Chloë loved it...so much that she forgot to eat the grape tomatoes I picked and put in a bucket for her. In fact she sent Eric inside for her yellow bucket because the red one alone wasn't enough. Instead of talking about the Care Bear show at night as is usual, she talked about playing with the water table again. I know what I'm doing when I get home.

Status report: Maia, Month 4

What a beautiful thing a happy baby is. The smile, the contented gurgles, the almost-giggles when her belly and hands and toes are kissed...the lack of crazy-making crying. Maia has been happy a lot this past month, and that makes all happy.

Her four-month checkup went great, with her big sister holding her hand for her shots, and she's been cleared to be started on cereal. "You may have to," the pediatrician added, because she's 95th percentile on head, height, and weight. Why do we have such huge babies? The six-month pajamas are mostly okay on her, but some were too short (the Circo ones), and the okay ones don't have a lot of room in them. It's time to break into the nine-month clothes box. (Ha! Like I've got them all organized and labeled!)


Sleep has gotten a lot better this month. She now takes one or two naps during the day pretty regularly, and at night will have a last feeding somewhere between eight and nine and get a change, pajamas, and bed in the crib. We're still working on sleep training, so sometimes this involves forty-five minutes of crying and intermittent checks on her, and sometimes it requires only one or two checks before she grumbles herself to sleep, and sometimes she goes down silent and smiling. And sometimes she's already asleep, but that's okay too. Once I started forcing myself to stay awake for her first nighttime feeding, she slept longer intervals in the wee hours, so evidently I've only been depriving myself by trying to nap through that feeding. Ah well.


She does a lot of grumbling and growling at the bottle, and some at the R.I.N.D.S., but she's doing well on both. We did start her on cereal a couple of days ago, and last night she had her "Oh, this is how you eat!" session. At the beginning the food we spooned on her tongue got deposited on her lips as she moved her tongue in vague confusion; at the end she was moving it to the back of her mouth and lunging forward to get the next bite. We're giving her one more day of cereal, and then she can graduate to something fun, like squash or carrots or bananas. Chloë was interested in her cereal and wanted to have some, to the point of telling me not to give Maia any more the other day, so that's another reason to put it away for now. Not that I think she'll be less interested in the squash or carrots or bananas, but maybe we can convince her that her own big-girl versions are tastier.

And last night she slept from eight-thirty to three o'clock. Yay semisolids!

She's sucking and chewing on everything now, and much more interested in toys than she was last month. We have a dragonfly/butterfly (I'm not sure which) that we stole from Eric's mom when Chloë was this age, and Maia adores it. She sits happily in her carrier in the kitchen while we're making dinner, squeezing its crinkly wings and chewing its soft body. She loves her Winnie-the-Pooh mobile and the toys on her little bouncer. She watches Chloë's shows with her, though she's very easily distracted by a toy or a face or a "It's a baby!" with a kiss.


She's such a contented baby now most of the time. I love spending time with her, and I feel guilty that I don't get to do it as much as I did with Chloë...though I'm not positive this isn't better, since she gets Chloë too. She's a little confused when she gets put in Chloë's lap, or held upright to "stand" and hugged hard by her, but she seems to like this not-quite-so-huge bigger person in her life, and Chloë seems to like her. It's all good.

Potty mouth

We bought Chloe a potty seat over the weekend. The guidebooks all say she's too young, that kids normally aren't ready until 18 months at least, but she's shown great interest lately when we use the toilet and has started patting her diaper to indicate she needs a change. And apparently my brother and I were toilet trained well before 18 months. And wouldn't it be awesome if we didn't have to have two kids in diapers after all?

So we bought it, figuring we'd start slow, get her used to having it around, that kind of thing. She was interested in it right away: opening and closing the lid and the compartment for flushable wipes (did you know there were flushable wipes? I didn't), playing with the little plastic pee-screen for boys, pulling the seat and the waste receptable out of the base. It's a three-stage model: first a complete potty seat for first learning, then a stepstool plus seat-that-fits-over-a-real-toilet-seat for learning not to fear the toilet, and then just the stepstool. Lots of moving parts, so lots of fun for a one-year-old. I had to tell her the seat itself was not a chew toy.

She wanted help sitting down the first few times, but once she sat she was content to stay, reading books or having her toes counted. We need to get her a tiny chair. I wasn't planning on even trying to have her sit without her clothes, just get her used to the sitting. But yesterday, she came to Eric and pointed at her diaper, and then at the potty. He figured, "Why not?" and removed her diaper and helped her sit down. And she used the potty! Only a little, because some had already gone into the diaper, but enough.

Eric heaped praise on her (once he got over his surprise), and we're wondering if we should be offering some kind of reward. The problem is, she's too young for stickers or similar, and toys or books would get too expensive, and food isn't a good idea. She's sat a couple of other times and hasn't produced anything, which is fine, so maybe it won't be much of an issue for a while. (It also helps--or hurts?--that she can't say "potty" yet, so it's a judgment call on what she means when she pats her diaper. She's working on "apple," though. Still no "mama"--the closest she gets is "danma.") Still. My baby girl is starting to learn to use a potty!

A pair of firsts

Chloë had her first sleepover last night, at Mimaw's. Reportedly she screamed for an hour and a half due to gas, delaying her bedtime. Then she slept through the night. She hasn't done that with us yet. I see how it is.

Today she spent a lot of time sitting and playing with her toys (i.e., trying to eat them), and we ended the day with a bath. Getting her undressed, Eric decided to try blowing raspberries on her tummy, and produced a little, hesitant, baby laugh. It's not the belly laugh I was promised by the pediatrician, but it's still a beautiful sound.