These are the days to remember

One of the things I regret about not keeping up this blog is that I’m losing more of my memories of the girls. For example: Maia is so sweet right now. She’s three, almost four, and she plays really well with her big sister, pretending with the My Little Ponies and building coaches and castles with the Legos and imitating Chloe’s drawings, much more sophisticated than Chloe herself was doing at this age. But her laugh is still her baby laugh, and it thrills me to hear it because every time might be the last. And I remember that Chloe’s laugh was never quite like Maia’s, but I don’t remember how it was. When did she transition from her baby laugh to the smarter, fuller, sometimes-slightly-raucous laugh she has now? I don’t remember her first year of preschool, except for some highlights. I don’t remember exactly when Maia became potty-trained. I want to write it down, so I don’t forget it. I spend so much of my time exasperated or anxious or bored with the girls, and I hate that. I want to remember how good they are, even when I can’t feel that way in the moment.

A couple of Maia moments:

Maia dresses up as Elsa almost every day. She and Chloe were Elsa and Anna for Halloween—the warm versions, Elsa at coronation and Anna in her winter dress. Chloe already had an Anna dress-up dress, so I bought Maia an Elsa dress from China off eBay and made them cloaks and headgear (Anna’s hat for Chloe and a yarn wig for Maia). I figured they would enjoy them at Halloween (which they did—they had three or four different Halloween dress-up events and rocked them) and maybe dress up again once or twice and they’d be done. If I’d known Maia would be living in her costume I would have sprung for a handmade dress from Etsy rather than the cheap eBay version. I would also have actually finished the edges of the cloak instead of just cutting them and leaving them. (It’s made of fleece, with some flannel edging fused on, so this was permissible for something that wasn’t going to get a lot of wear.) It was fine through Halloween and a bit beyond, but the edging is suffering now. The dress is holding up very well, however.

"Can I have my snowflake necklace?" she asked one day while in this getup. "It gives me ice powers!" Then, "But only pretend. I don't really have ice powers."

I'm working from home now, and the girls have yet to internalize that shouting upstairs at me when they want something is no longer going to work. (This isn't so bad when Eric's home; but he teaches one afternoon a week.) Today I got on the phone with someone and heard Chloe yelling "Mom! Mom! Mom!" I slammed the door (which the phone on mute) to respond. Pretty soon came a persistent knocking. I used mute again and yelled, "Go away, I'm on the phone!" I'm a charming mother. When the call was done I went down and explained that they cannot shout at me because I will not answer, and if I don't it is appropriate to silently open the door to see whether I'm on the phone or in a rage-induced seizure. (I didn't say that last part.) Chloe nodded. I returned to work. Sometime later Maia came up and crept to my side. "I came up to ask you something because I knew I wasn't supposed to shout," she said humbly. Then she asked me to take out Twilight Sparkle's ponytail. 

Barbie talk

"I didn't know Merida was up here all night!"
"She was supposed to get a salon, like the other Barbies, because of all the weddings."
"Elsa and Cinderella got married. Because their names both end in -a. And they're both in blue."
"Merida wants to marry Anna."
"But Anna is already married."
"Then I'll marry Merida."
"But Anna is married to you."
* * *
"Yes, her feet are high-heeled. But they can be flat."
* * *
"Let's compare skins!"
* * *
"Psst! Elsa!"
"Go back to sleep."
"The sky's awake, so I'm awake. So I have to play."
"Go play by yourself."
Thump.
"Do you want to build a snowman?"
"Now let's do it with ourselves!"

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

Status report: Chloë, 3 years 5 months, and Maia, 20 months

And so on the last day of the year I bring you the last monthly update of the year. The girls know that we're having a party tonight, but not why; and though they're big, big girls, they're not big enough yet to stay up for midnight.

"Aw, Mom."

Chloë is going through a whiny, defiant stage. Have I mentioned this before? It's still true. "No fair!" she was yelling at intervals all morning. (Eric blames me. I'm afraid this time he's correct. It's from the "Bedtime for Frances" miniseries I found on Netflix.) "I didn't want you to zip it all the way," she complains when we help too much. "You don't both need to tell me," she says when Eric and both holler "Yes!" when she's called out "I can flush, right?"

Vis a vis the potty, she's almost entirely independent now. We've been checking her wiping (visually), but she's been doing well, so I told her last night that if she felt dry, she could just pull up her underwear and proceed to flushing and washing. I expected her to call me anyway, but she didn't. Next step is to get her off the potty seat. I keep mentioning it and forgetting to do it.

Maia's been doing some sitting on the potty, occasionally, but I think it's mainly so that she can read her potty books. She does enjoy the attention, though, and especially being on Chloë's seat. And Chloë's always very helpful in telling me "Maia wants to sit on my potty seat," and putting the seat on and moving the stool so I really have no choice.

Chloë showed the probably typical but unbecoming "Are there more presents for me?" attitude during Christmas, but other than that they were both delightful during the holidays. They enjoyed their toys, helped clean up without much grumbling, helped enthusiastically with baking. Chloë's fairly good at measuring out dry ingredients, and is eager to say "I can do that!" whenever I introduce a new step. She wants to learn about cracking eggs, but I'm not ready for that yet. Maia likes to stand on the chair with Chloë and dip her fingers into things. Chloë got an easel for Christmas, and when Eric started to put it together, she clamored to help. "I don't think there's much you can do," he told her, "but we'll see." But, in fact, she helped gather and hold things, keep track of the "L," hold pieces in place, and screw on the wing nuts. She also did her first screw-driving helping to change batteries in her moon and stars. We'll have her fixing the roof in no time.

She's still keenly interested in the alphabet and counting. She's getting better at the teens and can work her way up to one hundred if you prompt her a few times. She also knows two plus two is four, though I'm not sure she could do two plus three. 

Maia is talking, talking, always talking. A lot of it is mimicking, especially anything Chloë says; but she comes up with her own sentences too. Like "Mama eating pizza too" and "Mitten falling down!" and "Daddy sleeping, tiptoe, shhh," and, heart-meltingly, "Happy see you Mama." She's starting to take more interest in her wardrobe, and whenever I help her on with something she particularly likes, she wants to go show Daddy.

She's now our adventurous eater; Chloë doesn't like anything remotely "spicy" (occasionally including basil and oregano, though not cinnamon) and has recently declared she didn't like tomatoes, though she then ate about a third of a pound of them at Memaw's with her cousins, so she's clearly not being totally truthful there.  But Maia likes my spicy cheese (pepperjack) and the cheese-onion tart at Christmas and my potato omelets and, in general, anything her sister and father won't touch. She's not keen on bacon or sausage (though Chloë adores them both), but she liked the ham at Christmas and in general is eager to try anything on Eric's plate, or mine, that she doesn't have. Or that she does have. She also likes to eat with my fork.

However, Chloë still loves her mermaid food, seaweed and seaweed soup and rice. Maia too. Mom made them soup when they were here (she makes it better than I do) and they both literally slurped it up.

Maia is so funny these days. Dad invented a game wherein he's sitting on the couch, and she's trapped between his legs, and the only way to get out is to tickle his toes. She loved this game, and of course played it with me when he was gone. Then the other night she played the "Mama tunnel" game (crawling between my legs, particularly when I'm standing right against a counter). I trapped her and said "What do you do to get free?" and after a few seconds' thought she tickled my feet.

Also, she continues to like playing with her blankets:

The girls are really engaging with each other these days. They have actual conversations sometimes ("Maia, do you want to play sleepover?" "Yeah!" "Okay, let's go to my room." "Wait, Toë." "Oh, you need your babies? I'll help carry them." "Thank you Toë.") I came down the other day to find they'd dragged Maia's little couch to the entryway and were kneeling backward on it, talking animatedly about fish. Turned out they were on a boat. They're considerate of each other most of the time, responding to each other's wants and upsets. They're such sweet girls.

Too far to go alone

I did a bad thing today. I took the girls to the park (this was not it) and we had a good, long, time there. On the way home I let Maia pull the wagon part of the way (this was not it either, though it was excruciatingly slow). We inched our way closer to the house, stopping when Maia got stuck or Chloë wanted to pick a leaf or when they both became fascinated with a little girl sitting on her front stoop. Whenever Maia dropped the wagon handle to point to something or pick up a leaf fragment I picked it up hopefully, only to have Maia screech at me until I gave it back to her and we resumed our infinitesimal progress.

I looked longingly at our house several doors down and thought, for some reason, what would happen if I fell down and died right here? I've had a morbid streak the last several months, but this wasn't really about my relationship with death so much as concern about what would happen to the girls if they were suddenly by themselves in the middle of the street. Also I may have been contemplating the likelihood that I would die of old age before we reached the house. So I said to Chloë, "If I got really sick here and couldn't go home with you, you could go home and get Daddy, right?"

"No," she said. "It's too far for me to go alone."

"But if you really had to, you know where it is, right?" I said. "It's right there."

She looked worried. "It's too far."

I gave up. "I suppose you could ask somebody in one of the houses for help."

"No," she said decisively. "All other houses have a dog."

I left it at that. When we finally reached home we put the wagon away and played in the sandbox some and had a bath before dinner, and over the course of the evening it became clear that Chloë had picked up the sniffles that Maia probably got from Eric and that I think I'm developing now. At bedtime, she mentioned her sniffly nose and seemed unusually distressed by it, so I stayed after her bedtime story (the story of the little shoe that fell into the river and how it found a happy home) to snuggle with her.

After a moment or two, she burst out with, "Some houses are too far away and you would have to drive me to them." There may have been more to it than that; at any rate, my Chloë-interpreter hummed quietly and then told me she was worried about what I'd said about getting really sick, particularly since she was now sick herself.

So I said, "Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry I was talking about that. I'm not going to get that sick. I will always take care of you and keep you safe. And if I did get that sick, Daddy would take care of you." She started crying, and I held her close and said comforting things and told myself to shut my big mouth the next time I think about my own mortality. "And you're not very sick either. You're only a little bit sick. If you did get really sick, we would take you to the doctor or the hospital and they would make you well."

"The doctor would be better," she said, sniffling.

"Well, sometimes the doctor isn't open. Like late at night, like now, they don't see people. But hospitals are good too. I went to the hospital when you were born, and Maia, and they took good care of me, and you, and Maia. And Daddy, too."

She still seemed a little upset. I stroked her hair and hugged her, and I said, "I love you." She nodded. I said, "And you know Daddy loves you too. And there are a lot of other people who do."

She nodded again. "Everyone does."

"That's right," I said.

We snuggled a while longer, and she seemed calmer. After a bit I told her I was going to go do a few things, but I'd come back and check on her later. I went downstairs to do some chores. Not long after, I heard her call, "Mama? I have to poop."

"Go ahead," I called back. "I'll be up in a minute."

When I came upstairs I found Eric had offered to help her and been turned down. "Mama said she would be here in a minute," Chloë was insisting. I sat down on the mat to wait with her.

"That story of the little shoe wouldn't really happen," she said after a minute.

"No," I agreed. "It was a made-up story."

We talked about what I'd been doing downstairs, which led to her asking if I was staying home tomorrow, which led to "Is tomorrow a preschool day?" (I have a post in the works about preschool.) "I go to school on Tuesdays and Fridays. Just like French fries!"

Eventually she did her business and we went back to her bed. I snuggled with her for a few more minutes--"How about two more minutes?" she said, holding up two fingers, and I agreed. She held onto me at first, and then shifted, and then turned over so that only our heads were touching, her "cuddle" blanket between us. When I said it was time for me to go, she said sleepily, "Has it been two minutes?" I said yes, and she nodded and turned again, pulling her blanket over her shoulder. I kissed her temple and left the room, and the next time I checked on her she was fast asleep.

Two stories

About a big girl:

This morning I changed Maia and then let her run around pantsless (and by "let" I mean "didn't want to bother trying to catch her this morning") for a while. Eventually it came time to get clothes on her, but Chloë needed to pee and then have her wiping checked, so I left the pants drawer open and told her, "Pick out some pants to wear," fully expecting she'd do nothing of the kind. I went and checked Chloë, and then Maia appeared in the doorway, new pants mostly pulled up.

About a story:

"You told me two stories yesterday," Chloë told me. "Remember the one where Dora and Boots went to Aunt Karolyn's house? And they were sad because you and Daddy went away. And they had a nap. Grandpa and Halmoni were with them. What else did they do there?" I couldn't answer because I've never told her such a story. I told her one story yesterday, a much-repeated one about Dora and Boots going up the Tallest Tree and the Cloud Staircase to get to the top of a rainbow so they can slide down. Originally they got up the tree by getting a lift from their airplane-owning friend, Tico, but lately Chloë has decided she'd rather hear about them using a long, long rope to climb up instead, so we've altered it. I think it's so interesting that she feels free to modify stories that way--but only the oral bedtime stories, never the books.

And as for this story about Aunt Karolyn's house, that's pretty much what happened at James and Amanda's wedding, except for the nap part, if you substitute "Chloë and Maia" for "Dora and Boots." And you know what Maia calls Chloë in our family pictures? "Dowah."

Dear Chloë, year three

Dear Chloë,

A couple of days ago you told me, “I am Sarah, and I am three.” Sarah, as far as we can tell, was the waitress at the Ruby Tuesday we went to the day before. Neither your dad nor I remember this, but that's what you tell us. Sarah made appearances all day and occasionally thereafter, including tonight. I don't think she's going to be your first imaginary friend, but she's the first time you've claimed to be someone else. Normally, when we say “What are you?” all you ever say is “I am Cwoë.” You still don't have Ss or Ff, and I love your lisp. You say “tinger” instead of “finger” and “miley pate” instead of “smiley face,” and I sometimes wish I could preserve this aspect of you forever. (Though I suppose it wouldn't be very helpful in your college interviews.)

Freshly three-year-old you amazes me every day. You don't look at all like a baby anymore. I marvel daily at your long legs and arms, your face that comes into sharper focus each week. You speak so well, count so high, understand so much. You were aware of and interested in your birthday party this year: decorating, picking out the cake (“What kind of cake do you want?” I'd ask. “Moon cake!” You'd say. “Yes, but what flavor?” I'd reply), blowing up balloons, tabulating who would be there. You're constantly asking questions that make me pause and try to figure out how I know what I know—and if I know it. You pretend all day long, making the office your school where paint pictures and take naps, a cube of Legos a multi-flavored birthday cake (complete with pretend frosting), and yourself an astronaut or a dancer or a princess—which is the same as a dancer, just with more jewelry. We've tried to keep you from getting immersed in the insidious Disney Princess culture of girls your age, and so far we've succeeded pretty well, I think. People keep talking to you about princesses, and so you call yourself one, but you don't seem to know what to do after that. (Maybe because those princesses don't do anything themselves.) I think that's fine. I like the dancer, the teacher, the birthday girl. I can't wait to see what you play as you learn more.

You've been potty-trained for about a month—huzzah! It took a lot of time and effort to get here. But now that you are, you're so proud of yourself. Along with the potty-training has come, of course, pretty new underwear, and you've taken to putting it on yourself...and also your pants, and sometimes your shirt. You need someone to orient them correctly, but otherwise you, as you say with your arms outstretched and a glowing smile on your face, do it “all by myself!” More often you say “I can't do it,” so it makes me especially happy to see you so willing to try, so proud, so accomplished. A couple of days ago we talked about putting the top of the convertible potty seat on top of the toilet. Not only did you agree, but you proudly used it and then, to my surprise, suggested trying to use the toilet without the potty seat at all. It didn't work, as you're still not that big, but I was so surprised and impressed that you were willing to try it. You're not a terribly adventurous girl. Very cautious, and pretty clingy and whiny these days. I think that's the age, but you're definitely not as independent and fearless as, say, your cousin Addie. I'm okay with that. That's who you are, and it keeps you from doing things like dashing into the street and asking strangers to hug you, which is fine with me. But every once in a while you surprise me. I love when you do that.

You're so much your own person now. You have your definite likes and dislikes, and your own ways of doing things—of defying, of denying, of being tired, of being happy, of being unhappy. You still love green, though you're starting to get into pink a bit too. You refuse to do anything without your socks except bathe. I bought you some sandals, blue with green flowers, that I thought you'd love. And you like them, but only if you're wearing socks under them. On the other hand, you adore the sparkly, light-up sneakers your halmoni got for you. I'm so pleased that you're remembering your family and responding to them with affection. You're mature enough to play with your cousins and same-age peers now—really play, not just quietly follow along when they give you orders. You tell them what you want to play and what you don't, you contribute your own ideas. You haven't gotten to the point of compromising in order to play together, but you will.

You still love to read, which makes me very happy. We've gotten into longer books now, Olivia and Berenstain Bears and such, and I want to work on teaching you your lower-case letters, which we've neglected (in our defense, it's really easy to do so with the alphabets available for toddlers), because you're going to love being able to read for yourself. I mentioned that to you not long ago, and you hesitated, so I added, “But I'll still want to read to you,” and you relaxed. I want to read with you as long as you'll let me. And I'll keep making up bedtime stories and ridiculous songs for you as long as you want them.

You've gotten more physically active over the past year, doing a lot of jumping and dancing and running up and down in the hall--especially in the last month when you've been out of diapers or Pull-Ups. You're not as into naked time as you used to be, but you still indulge sometimes (though always with socks). “Do you see my butt?” naked you will ask if you're especially punch-drunk from tiredness. I'll say “I see your butt!” and you'll dash off, giggling, to run up and down the hall, and then repeat. You have a love-fear relationship with slides, and a simple dislike for swings, but you like going for walks, and pulling your sister in the wagon, and playing in the water table and the sprinkler and any pool you can find. You love to climb on me, or clamber over your daddy when he's trying to comb your hair. You love your daddy, and it makes me so happy to see it. Though the “Where is my daddy?” gets kind of old when I've told you “He's sleeping” or “He's at work” four times already.

You draw real things now: snakes and suns and flowers and circles with blobs in them that look like eggs or eyes or maps of islands. They're rudimentary, and you still enjoy simple color scribbling, but it's a definite sign of advancement. I love your pictures, and how proud and possessive you are of them. “Maia didn't color that,” you told me when Maia held up a picture of yours that she'd scribbled a line or two on and I'd praised it (because Maia is also quite proud of her scribbles). “I colored that.”

I continue to be proud of how good a big sister you are. I'm not saying you're perfect; you certainly have your jealousy and your moments of pique, where you push Maia away or yell at her because she's innocently taken something that you wanted. And your own streak of bossiness comes out when you repeat the things we've told her-- “No Maia! No buttons!” or “Don't touch!” But you're so unendingly patient with the way she steals your drink—whatever it is; all she wants is whatever you have—and sometimes refuses to tell you good-night or give you a kiss when she's giving them to your daddy and me. You'll readily keep her company or try to entertain her if I ask you to. You share your food with her without anyone asking you to. You try to get her to play with you in the tunnel or with your Duplos or in the sandbox. When she won't kiss you, sometimes you kiss her, on her hand or her leg or her belly. When I chant “So sweet—such a treat—baby feet” you tickle her toes and say “Baby peet! Toh tweet!” and you seem to mean it. When I tell you I'm taking you somewhere, your first question is always “Can Maia come?” You're such a sweet girl. My favorite sound is the two of you laughing together, especially when, as it often is, it's because Maia thought something you did was funny and you kept doing it so she'd keep laughing.

You are my beloved big girl, growing up in so many ways, unfolding like a flower bursting into bloom. You're going through a whiny and defiant stage, which is sometimes annoying and sometimes hilarious (“Never—pretend—to bite me—ever—again!”), but I know it's what you need to be doing, and I'm doing my best to be patient with it. It's the clinginess that gets me most, actually. But a small part of me revels in it, because in my own way I want to cling to you, too. It's my job as the parent not to, but sometimes I can't help catching hold of you and hugging you tight, loving everything you are and everything I see you becoming but wishing I could keep it all from happening because right now is so perfect and right. But that's selfish and short-sighted, and so I keep watching your beautiful self become ever more complex, more funny and smart and thoughtful. And I try to hold you just tight enough to keep us both feeling safe but giving you the room you need to grow.

Love,
Mama

Status report: Chloë, month 30

Oh, my big funny sweet smart strong silly two-and-a-half-year-old girl. What fun two has been so far, even with the tantrums and the discipline issues and the total insistence on a lack of potty training. It's not hard to focus on the positive when your little girl calls out, "Mama I really like you" (even though what she seems really to be saying is "Don't go") or listens to you tell her to dream about the good things that are planned for tomorrow and adds, "And cats and dogs. And rainbows. And cats. And Olivia."

Chloë starts every morning lately asking to have milk and be buried (sit against the green cushion and have her "friends" and blankets piled around her until she's enveloped by them). But beyond that, it's anyone's guess what will happen. Maybe we will blast off! by counting "ten, nine, eight, teven, eight, fibve, torr, twee, two, one...blast off!" Maybe we will get on a carousel in the kitchen (the bouncer again) and ride around and around. Maybe we will play with the candy game (Candyland) or the Elmo game (Memory, Sesame Street version). Maybe we will play with Legos, or in the winter house, or read the map to get through the cornfield while we see Swiper.

I'm totally digging the imagination thing, though it bugs me slightly that she's mostly cribbing from her shows (is it a problem that we don't let her watch a greater variety?). And the repetition can get irritating. Oh gods, the repetition. But then she does things like insist everyone wear helmets for going to outer space:



Outer Space is very in mode right now. The Purple Planet Dora episode is still tops, and the space book (or books with space in them, such as "The Einstein book," actually titled Starring Lorenzo, and Einstein Too, in which a theater family's misfit son goes to outer space with Albert Einstein) gets frequent rotation, and Chloë's always putting on a space suit or a helmet or finding new rocketships. Or making them.



She's so talkative, so eloquent; I've stopped keeping track and started to accept that she just talks now, like a real person. Even if a lot of her sentences are taken from things we say...but isn't that how most language works? "When we go to the fabric store next time I will see the rabbit," she says, referring to a sign on a gas station. "I didn't mean to talk with my mouth full," she'll say, after answering some question I've asked at the dinner table. "I'll try to remember next time." "Will you sing the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo song?" she says, and when I do, "That sounds like the Rudolph song from my Christmas show." When asked why, she'll say, "Just because."

Though her constant repeating things hasn't gotten any better. She cut herself at the grocery store the other day, and had to have a bandage, and all night, and all the next day, it was "I need another Band-Aid," "I know I need another Band-Aid," "Daddy I need another Band-Aid Daddy," "Mommy, Daddy got me another Band-Aid," etc. She was very upset about this "ow," expecting it to be gone much sooner than it unfortunately will. She hasn't had many bad scrapes or sores.

She made up her first song the other day. Something about "I am Chloë, I am Chloë, I am Chloë, and I am two," and then I think it went into something esoteric, but I'm not sure. I was too busy being admiring.

I drew kites on the tub wall at a recent bath, and she colored in the triangles--surprisingly well considering the medium and her age. She's always asking me to play now, when before she wanted a book, or a show. Even when I suggest baking, mostly she'd rather play. She even beat Eric at a game of Candyland tonight, and me at a game of Memory (two-year-old's edition, in which we put rejected cards down face-up and I gave hints so broad a semi could have driven over them). She likes to play with Maia when Maia will, but if not, she'll play around her.



(You'll see her "winter house" in the background there, the little fort I constructed out of her blanket on a whim and haven't been allowed to take down. Why is it her winter house? I don't know, but I find it a charming name.)

She continues to do well when Maia has demands on me, though I continue to feel that I'm giving her attention more than I am Maia, which worries me. But then Maia has particular ways of requiring my presence that Chloë can't compete with, at least not for the next few months. When we nurse Chloë will hang on my knees, or play with Maia's toys, or ask me to read, or if she's tired or unhappy lay her head on the Boppy while I stroke her hair with one hand, keeping Maia at the milk with the other. I feel very motherly in these moments. A week or two ago, after nursing the three of us played on Maia's floor a while, and Chloë decided Laughing Baby was thirsty, so she gave her some milk:



"Elmo is thirsty, too," she said afterward, and put him to her chest. Then she gave him to me. "Mama, give Elmo some milk." So I put him to my chest. "Mama, you have to open your shirt," she told me, but I refuse to nurse a Muppet, so he went thirsty.

The potty training thing would drive me insane if I let it. She would be potty-trained now if she wanted to be. She just doesn't want to be. She says she likes her diapers, though I prompted her for that answer so it's not trustworthy. But she's so totally ready, and she's got control. She'll wait to poop until she's finished her food, or until we go upstairs to the bathroom (she was reluctant to do this until we made it clear she was not expected to sit on the potty, just be in the room). During naked time at night she'll hold her pee until she gets back into a diaper again, asking for one if it's gone too long.

Her Grandpa and Halmoni sent a package of underwear to help motivate her, and yesterday I asked if she wanted to practice wearing some. She said yes excitedly, and selected the deep blue-green ones (other options: sparkly Ariel, and seahorses and stars), and ran around in underwear for a while, and even sat on the potty twice (and demanded the stickers to go with it). We ended up in the bathroom for something and Chloë said, sounding surprised, "That's pee," as she wet herself. We got her (and the floor) cleaned up and into a new pair (seahorses and stars), and sometime later she said, "Mommy I need a diaper." I put her into a diaper. She peed into it. I sighed. I'm wondering if we should just have a "boot camp" sort of weekend: tell her "Okay, we're getting you potty trained this weekend," and take away the diapers except for at bedtime. The pediatrician suggests a stepwise approach, getting a reward chart and rewarding her for doing her business in the bathroom, and then while sitting on the potty whether clothed or not, and then eventually for doing it in the potty. We'll see. I'm trying not to let it get to me. I think when she decides she wants to be trained, it will take hardly any time at all, so that's a good thing. Right?

Words no other two-year-old has uttered

In Chloë's Elmo omnibus is an "Elmo goes to the doctor" story. We read it today (along with the babysitter one, which we likened to when she stayed overnight with Memaw and Omi Saturday) after Eric went to work. She dwelled on the part where Elmo gets a sticker (actually, demands one) after getting his shot. Later, in her room, she said, "I want to play doctor!"

I suppressed my snicker and agreed. "I need a check up!" she said. "What do we do first?"

"Well, we need to find out how tall you are. Let's go look at your growth chart," I suggested, and we went out in the hall. "You're three feet and half an inch tall!"

"What next, Mommy?"

"We should find out how much you weigh. You need to stand on the scale." She decided the vent in her floor was the scale. "Wow, you're nearly thirty-six pounds! You're such a big girl."

She beamed. "What next?"

"We should check your eyes. How many fingers am I holding up?" I said, holding up my index finger.

"Seven."

"I am not! How many?"

"One! What next?"

"We should check your ears and nose and mouth. Here, let me look at your ears." I formed a circle with my fingers and peered into her ear. "Your ear looks fine. Let's see your nose." I looked. "Ew, there's snot in it! Open your mouth and say 'ahh.'" She did. "Your mouth looks good."

"What next?"

"Next, you need a shot," I said, and picked up a small tube of Vaseline. "Hold out your arm. This will feel like a pinch." I pressed the tube against her arm. "You didn't cry at all. What a big girl! Here's a Band-Aid, and here's a special sticker."

"A star sticker!" she said, accepting it.

"A star sticker," I agreed. "Now, do you hold someone's hand when you cross the street? Do you ride in a carseat?"

"Yes!"

"Good! Well, I think your checkup is done. You seem very healthy and strong."

"I am very healthy!" she said. "I want a checkup again!"

So we repeated it. And again. I shortened the checkup each time, and each time it became more obvious that there was only one part she was really interested in: receiving her imaginary sticker. The third or fourth time she said "I want another checkup!" I said no. She wailed, "But I want another shot!"

Chloë the Explorer

Chloë's been intrigued by the products she's seen and the couple of Youtube videos we've watched that feature Dora the Explorer, and the show seemed wholesome enough, so she got a Dora DVD in her stocking. It's been a big hit. I'm now regretting it, as there's a ton of repetition in it, but it does seem to work well; Chloë's remembering a surprising amount about the different episodes. (She's supposed to; the shows follow a formula of "Inciting incident that requires a quest - Map shows two obstacles to get to the quest - Dora and friends successfully navigate those obstacles and some other problems while asking the viewer to act with them" with Dora and her sidekicks asking the viewer to count, or find something, or say something, or jump, etc.; and the map part of the show always involves several repetitions of their projected path so that the viewer can later inform Dora where to go next.)

One of the episodes involves going through the Milky Way and past the Space Rocks to the Purple Planet to bring some aliens home, and after watching this a couple of times Chloë has been playing "outer space" all around the house for days. Her sleeper is a space suit, her turtle is her helmet (Dora stresses the importance of wearing a suit and helmet; I'm glad she's concerned about safety); a plastic ring is her steering wheel; the Play Hut or her bed is the space ship. It's extremely cute, and much more soul-satisfying for us to watch than her wanting to be Princess Aurora or Belle.

But what interests me most about her Dora playacting is that the character she's most interested in is Swiper, the antagonist. As antagonists go, he's not much; he's a would-be thief, but all that Dora and her friends (and the audience) have to do to thwart him is say "Swiper no swiping" three times. There's at least one episode in which he succeeds, but mostly he's only a momentary threat, another task to perform. But Chloë has been talking and talking about him. "Where is Swiper?" "I see Swiper!" "Swiper is sleeping." "Swiper's mouth is full." "Swiper is playing in the snow." I guess I can see why; she puts herself in Dora's place as the pilot/climber/hide-and-seeker, and Boots is just an echolalic sidekick, and Swiper is a dynamic and contrasting element. Or maybe she's just naturally drawn to the character most closely allied with nefariousness. Though in that case, for my money she should be concentrating on Backpack. Any character who says "Yum yum yum, muy delicioso!" as he eats all the useful but momentarily unwanted props bears watching. Who knows when YOU may be unwanted?

The trouble with Chloë's cookies, Memento-style

Scene 3
Chloë attempts to climb into her carseat. Normally she can do this easily, but she won't use her hands, so she fails. "You're still holding those cookies, aren't you?" I sigh. I take them from her. She scrambles up into her seat and settles back. She holds out her hands, and I hand the cookies back before I buckle her in.

Scene 2
Chloë sits by the back door while I put her shoes on. "I still have my cookie," she informs me, holding it up. "I have two cookies."

Scene 1
Chloë comes to me while I'm packing the diaper bag so we can go out. "Look Mama, I made cookies," she says. "Do you want a cookie?" She offers me her empty sand shovel, and I take an imaginary cookie and taste it. "Mmm, delicious," I pronounce, and she takes a cookie for herself.

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.

Affirmation

Sunday morning Chloë asked for milk, and I decided to give her a treat. When I walked into the living room with her sippy, she looked at the cup and noticed the liquid in it was brown. "Chocolate milk?" she said after a moment, having had it before. I nodded. "Chocolate milk?" she repeated, as if getting used to the idea. She took the cup. "Chocolate milk? Chocolate milk?"

"Chocolate milk," I confirmed, and she finally took a drink.

She wasn't suspicious of the drink; she knew what it was; she wanted me to confirm that I had heard her correctly. She does this a lot these days: seek active affirmation that we understand her. So, we spend a lot of our time repeating what she says. It's good in a way, since it confirms that we understand each other, but it's also a lot of repetitive talking on both our parts. "A back tuck?" she says on our walk. "A back tuck?" until I agree, "A black truck," and then she can continue, "A hite hun!" and point to the white (actually silver) one on the other side of the street. "Goldfish*? Koë have goldfish?" she says on a break at the park, and even though I say, "Sure," and start digging through the bag, she repeats it until I say "Yes, you can have goldfish! But you have to wait!" If she says "A kirle?" it may be enough for me to point and say, "Oh yes, I see it too," rather than having to say, "A squirrel! I see it too," but she's pretty strict.

*I'm not even going to try to transliterate.

And her tantrums come almost exclusively when we can't figure out what she's saying. If I'm totally mystified by a word she's using (for example, last night it was "tiyyi") I'll sometimes try to talk around it in the hopes she won't figure out I can't translate, but I don't often get away with it. Sometimes she can show me, or Eric will know ("chili"), or from context I can grasp it, and if we can keep guessing she'll usually stay relatively calm. But if we give up she generally can't contain her frustration. That's totally understandable. But I wish it weren't so. I love talking to her, talking with her, having actual conversations in our limited way; but sometimes it feels like a minefield. I never know when exchanging information is going to blow up in our faces.

Sometimes identification comes harder because she's seeing things that aren't there. For example, there are animals in the clouds. The handles of our ice cream spoons, when the spoon part is held in the hand, are rocketships. There are snakes in the lines of a chalk drawing. (Okay, presumably she put those there. You should see the "circles" she draws.) It's marvelous, but it's tough.

She's also been waking up early and often lately, and always calls for me. Last night I had brought Maia to bed for her 3:45 feeding because I'd stayed up too late making apple tarts for my department for Treat Tuesday (however, the report is that they are delicious and belong in a magazine, so it was worth it for the ego-boost), and she woke at 5:30 to nurse again, and two minutes later Chloë started calling for me. I sent Eric, and when he said "Mommy is feeding Maia," she flew into a rage and stomped into the room crying. She insisted on coming up and crawled into bed, and so the four of us slept together until about 6:30 when Maia wanted to suck some more because it was there and I got out of bed with her and Chloë ended up following us and plagued me by asking for her light to be turned on and messing with my guitar case and the glider's settings and patting Maia on the head too hard and telling me not to sleep. But anyway. Poor jealous girl. It was kind of sweet for us all to be together like that, but man, was that bed crowded. Still, she got to be part of something everyone else but her was doing, and I guess that's important.

Spelling may take a while

Chloë has a colors book that is particularly simple, with each color's name spelled out in capital letters. Since those letters are really all she's experienced, she started pointing them out, and at some point Jenny started having her point them out in order. So from the book she has learned "G and R and E and other E and N spell gween!" Learned, at least, as long as the letters are right in front of her.

Today I'm wearing my Alton Brown T-shirt, which, on the reverse, says "SCIENCE! It's what's for dinner!" I was on the floor with Maia and Chloë came up beind me on the couch, and starts pointing at the letters: "S and C and I and E and N and C and E... spell Daddy!"

Yeah, OK, I'll take it.

Status report: Chloë, Month 25

Chloë caught the bug too. "Koë neck hurt," she announced the other day, feeling at her neck. We've given her baby ibuprofin (which she loves-- "Koë have medi in mouth?" she asks regularly) and are trying to keep her warm and snuggled and rested. I told her the other day I was sorry she was sick. "Koë sick?" she said, and looked intent. "Koë not two any more?" I hastened to assure her that I'd said sick, not six, and she was still two.

I've marveled this past month at how big and grown-up she's getting. Her two-year checkup proved her to be thirty-four pounds, just under three feet tall. She's in 3T clothes mostly, with some 4Ts fitting fine (and others, like the pants Mom sent, too long, but she wants to wear them anyway so they get rolled). She's been jumping up a storm lately, and has started balancing on one foot, which I think is ahead of her age for motor skills. Apparently the jaundice had no serious lasting effects.


Playing pretend has developed and blossomed this month. She likes to feed me and herself pretend food, and plays "water park" all the time: on her bed, on our bed, on Maia's blanket, on the couch. She offered me a fish from the water this morning, and when I complained it spit in my eye, ate it. "Candy fishy," she explained, which relieved Eric and me both. Occasionally she'll go "shopping," usually for jelly beans. And today after watching the Care Bears movie, she wanted to chase butterflies, which is what Secret Bear did at the beginning of the movie. I didn't mention that real butterflies should not be caught; there's time to tell her about that later. So we chased butterflies by running around the house, pointing at imaginary butterflies. "What a pretty butterfly!" I said when she decided she'd caught one and proudly showed it to me in her empty hand. "Sparkly," she added.


Bathtime is marvelous these days, except for tonight when she was punished for not picking up her toys when told by not being allowed to have bath paints. But normally, she helps undress herself (including taking off her diaper now, useful when she's on the potty), settles into the tub with her duckies and watering can and paints, plays for a while, helps scrub herself, lies down to have her hair washed and rinsed, and stands still to be rinsed with the shower head afterward. It's wonderful. I hope it lasts a while.

She's definitely fond of sparkly and pretty, and of her hair and jewelry adornments. Also of big cheesy grins. Her cousin Addie smiles the exact same smile sometimes. Where do toddlers learn to do this?


She seems to be starting to have a better understanding of numbers, as the sick/six thing shows, though she's still weak on anything higher than two. We're continuing to work on that and on her letters. She stopped at Kroger the other day to point out some lit-up A B Cs on a cookie display. If you ask her what B stands for, she'll tell you "bath!" or "ball!"

She's been doing very well with Maia; she continues to like to hold her and talk to her, and always wants to know where she is. During Dad's visit last weekend they were going to go for a walk while Maia and Eric stayed behind (because I had the stroller in my car and I was at work). Chloë loves walks, but Dad says that before they'd gone more than five feet down the sidewalk she wanted to know where Maia was, and insisted on going back inside to be with her. She likes it when I stand Maia up, and will come close and compare heights, and then hug her. "Two sisters," she says.


She's been a real couch potato lately, probably because in the last month either Eric or I have been sick and so we've been more lax about the TV, and has learned how to turn the TV and DVD player on and off. But she's also enjoying being read to, and we're getting into the longer books now, the Berenstain Bears and Olivia and P.B. Bear and Dr. Seuss. We picked up I Wish That I Had Duck Feet at the Borders sale, and she tells me, "Chloë want to have whale spout. Whale spout on Chloë head." And she can tell you that Big Bill Brown can only wear one hat. (I also recommend Pirate vs. Pirate, which I also got then and is great fun to read aloud.)

She usually picks her own breakfast these days, and occasionally if we're uninspired we'll ask her what she wants for dinner. Usually her answer is "pasta," but sometimes she'll say "pizza," or "grilled cheese," or "cheesy pasta" (and once, "oatmeal"). Her memory is amazing. (Also her appetite sometimes.) She's loving the tomatoes; she's going to be sad when tomato season goes away. But then, that will make it apple and squash season, and then orange season, and I think she'll be all right. She's all right all over.

Erudite

Eric caught my cold, unfortunately. The girls so far are okay (and Maia at least is probably immune). Eric's been eating a lot of chicken noodle soup, and Chloë has asked for a taste repeatedly, but always after he's started eating. So he's had to deny her, but tells her why. The other night at dinner she said knowledgeably, "Daddy eat noodles because Daddy sick." I'm not sure if she actually said "because" or not, but that was the clear meaning. We had some canned chicken in the pantry from the farmer's market, so I made up some chicken soup of her own so she could eat it with Daddy. (Did you know I once promised myself never to personally serve my child meat?)

She's started calling me Mommy sometimes instead of Mama. In particular, when I do something she doesn't want, such as finger-combing her hair, she's started saying "No, Mommy," instead of just "No." But when she calls for me, it's usually Mama--as she says herself: "Chloë say Mama Mama Mama in the morning."

We bought her some bath paints recently, which was a horrible mistake. She loves them. She's clamored for a bath all day, every day, since we introduced them. "I think you need to wash your hands," I told her one night when she said she was all done at dinner.

"I think Chloë need to take bath," she replied. (Note: she does not use personal pronouns yet.)

(She's also started playing "water park" all the time. Her bed is the "old water park," her blanket on the floor (to guard against hurting herself if she falls out, though she hasn't recently) is the "new water park.")

Dad is coming for a visit today (actually, should be there now; I'm leaving work in a few minutes) and she's been looking forward to it. I told her last night "Grandpa will be here tomorrow." We often talk at bedtime about what the next day will entail, and so she responded, "Chloë wake up in the morning, Mama go work, Mama come home, Grandpa come home?" And then, "Chloë have bath?!"

Making a splash

Playing pretend has branched out. Predictably, from food we've moved onto...water. First the sky portion of Maia's quilt was a pool, which Chloe splashed in, jumped in, and caught a fish from to bring to me. (It slapped me in the face with its tail, so I tossed it back.) Later, she borrowed a (green) kitchen towel to spread carefully on the living room floor and put her inflatable ring on as a boat, which she then sat in. Ducky and Oppy swam a little. More fish came out ("candy fishy," she explained, which was good since I wasn't thrilled about the idea of a stack of pretend fish stinking up my living room as they pretend rotted). She laid down in the water and said, "Chloë hair get wet. Chloë shirt get wet." I told her that she'd need to get a towel to dry off, or let the sun dry her, and she looked up at the overhead light and stretched her arms up to it, basking in the sun. I know it's only been a few weeks, but so far, two-year-olds are the awesomest thing ever.

Feed me

Chloë ate a ton of peanut butter toast this weekend--I think she had something like four slices altogether, plus another this morning. This morning Eric said for the first time that we need to make sure she gets enough vegetables. She's been eating well at breakfasts and dinners but not so much at lunch lately, and we don't generally serve vegetables at breakfast so that limits the possibilities. However, she also ate a ton of tomatoes this weekend (we bought a pint of yellow cherry tomatoes at the farmer's market Saturday that are nearly all gone, plus there were our tomatoes and pasta sauce) and she'll eat those any time of day, so it may be tomatoes for breakfast for a while here. I've got a couple of plants in pots in the backyard, and they look like they never produce anything, but in fact a couple get ripe every day; it's just that whenever one even nears redness she picks it and stuffs it in her mouth. (She's learned that it's best to put the tomato entirely into her mouth before biting it, to cut down on her shirt changes.) Hey, it's summer; she needs to enjoy them while she can.

(Also, the imaginary food game gets ever more interesting. Yesterday she handed me some pretend cheese to put on some pretend pasta. I sprinkled it on and tasted it, and offered her a bite. She refused, because, she said, it was spicy cheese and she didn't want spicy cheese.)

And Maia has decided that nursing for more than ten minutes at a time is for suckers. So to speak. She sits down with me readily enough and nurses for about five minutes. Then up pops her smiling face. She gurgles. She grins. I wipe her chin. She nurses again for several seconds, then stops, and smiles, and repeats. Eventually I get tired of it and switch her to the other side, where the same thing happens, and then I give up. The only exception is when she's tired, when she'll actually settle down. It's much faster than nursing used to be, but I worry a bit over whether she's getting enough, and particularly whether she's getting enough hindmilk (the fatty stuff). Still, she's moving out of her 0-3 month clothes and into her 3-6 month clothes right on schedule, so I'll try to trust she knows what she's doing.

A smorgasbord of delights

Chloë did breakfast this morning. Clad in her diaper, her blue sunhat, and her matching blue handbag, she paraded past where I was changing Maia's onesie on the floor. "Chloë go shopping," she said brightly. "Chloë get ice cream, popsicle, banana." She showed me her bag, zippered shut.

"Ooh," I said. "Can I have one?" She said yes, so I said, "I'll have a popsicle. Mmm, chocolate." I gobbled it up. She took one too, though she wasn't as noisy about eating hers as I was about mine.

"Chloë go shopping again," she said. "Ice cream, popsicle, banana."

"Could you pick up some apples for me?" I said.

"Yes." She handed me what I think was an entire bag of apples. I took one and said, "Wow, this one's huge!" I took a bite. "Mmm, yummy."

She took one too. "Huge!" she said. "Mmmy." Then she decided she wanted another popsicle. Those bananas never did get touched. She did offer her upside-down hat to me, saying, "Pasta?"

"Thank you," I said, picking up a foam X from the floor and using it as a fork. "Ooh, delicious."

"Chloë get cheese," she decided.

"White cheese?" I said. "Swiss? Or cheddar, the yellow kind?"

"Yes." She thought. "Spicy cheese."

"Spicy cheese would be good," I agreed.

But she didn't go; she got interested in the pasta in her hat again. "Chloë need fork. Chloë need spoon." I suggested she look in the bin of toys. "Spoon?" she said, holding up a foam 1. I agreed this would do nicely, and she dug in.