Status report: Chloë, 4 years 1 month, and Maia, 28 months

These girls. How they grow. How they amaze. How they annoy. In other words, all is on schedule and perfectly healthy.

Chloë is such a big girl these days. She acts old...I mean, when she's not crying for ten minutes because we refused to let her change her socks so that her clothes would match. Eric has taught her checkers and a number of card games, and she wants to play those all the time now. She's also learned how to think about hypotheticals. Some time ago I asked her about a hypothetical, and she couldn't get past "but that isn't true." The other day we read "Olivia Meets Olivia," in which Olivia is designated Olivia One and does various things to deal with a second Olivia in her class. Afterward I asked her what she would do if she had another Chloë in her class. She said, "Well, I would be Chloë One, because I'm the first one I know, and she would be Chloë Two."

She likes to get in people's faces a lot--not aggressively, just darting in for lots of kisses or to show me something an inch from my eye. She's still pretty clingy; we had trouble leaving a few times when we were in Daytona Beach, even though she had tons of family around her and our assurance that we wouldn't be gone long. But she's eagerly looking forward to preschool again (next week!).

She and Maia are still great pals. In the morning they'll often greet each other with a hug. They squabble about who gets to play what--Chloë definitely isn't old enough to understand the "other people have rights too" concept--but they love to play together, and make up games and stories, and Chloë will include Maia on things like decisions while she's playing a game on her LeapPad.

Maia, in the meantime, is our fiery little girl. We're definitely getting more of the Terrible Twos with her than we did with Chloë. (Does this mean the threes won't be as bad?) She very often refuses to clean, saying, "I don't want to," and we then have to yell at her and/or threaten room time before she complies. Chloë tattles on her all the time, and it's annoying, but it's also true that she's not nearly as obedient as we'd like. When we bake I still have to yell at her about not putting measuring spoons in her mouth and not sticking her fingers in the bowl. Or picking up the spilled baking soda off the counter and licking it, though really if that actually appeals to her I'm not going to oppose it. 

She's not progressing on potty training, but she's not backsliding either; she uses the potty sometimes, but mostly she just uses her diaper. She's much more likely to use the potty the later it gets past her bedtime, though.

She loves to sing. She's not very firm on the ABC song, but she can do Twinkle Star and Baa Baa Black Sheep and part of the Dora theme song with the best of them. When Chloë wants to dance (which she does, often), Maia will generally dance along and start singing whatever's in her mind.

She asked me to sing a song about "woman" last night. After I did ("big women, small women, short women, tall women"), she sang, "I love woman, lots of woman!" As Eric said, maybe there won't be any grandchildren out of that one. However, her bedtime song is usually the Soft Kitty song from "The Big Bang Theory," passed on from Uncle Bob, with a couple of added verses by me because it gets monotonous when she wants to hear it for the tenth time that night. Her latest potty-training prize is a tiny stuffed kitten, now named Banana (mostly by Chloë) because it's light yellow, and when I tuck her in she hands Banana to me and says, "Sing kitty song," expecting me to make Banana dance to its tune. She still hasn't given up playing kitty, being kitty, loving kitties. And mewing when she wakes up. I think we all know what she's going to be for Halloween.

In the meantime, Chloë and I ended up talking about Christmas at bedtime tonight (it followed naturally from her checkup tomorrow and cranberry juice...just trust me) and she said, "I love Christmas and Thanksgiving! They're my favorite days!"

"They're good days," I agreed, and prepared to say something about having to wait for them.

"Every day is a good day," she sang, her head nestled against me as we snuggled. "Every day is a good day!"

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 33

Our girl at two-and-three-quarters is full of defiance and trepidation, "why?" and whine, silliness and fun. I got a newsletter from Pampers today informing me my 30- to 36-month-old should be forming four- and five-word sentences now. I refer them to Chloë herself: "Mama, you're silly. You're silly and I am silly and Maia is silly and Daddy is silly. Our whole family is silly."

She asks--states, really, "Why," whenever I refuse something and often after I merely say something. Where before she would ask for what she wants, now she demands it. "Put on my bib and scoot me in to the table." "Put on my shoes and my jacket." "Change my diaper." (I've started telling her she's going to have to learn to change her own.) We're working on fixing this, and otherwise she's very good about please and thank you, sometimes to ridiculousness. At bedtime she often hangs out in the nursery doorway while I'm feeding Maia. The other day she appeared, saying, "Hello Mama." I said hello. She continued, "How are you?" I said, "I'm a little disgruntled. How are you?" She said, "I'm a little digwuntuud too." There was a short pause, and then she said, "Thank you." I said, surprised, "For what?" and she said, "For hello."

She continues to be a good big sister, though a bit of a tattle-tale sometimes too--but Eric pointed out that it's good to know when she perceives something is wrong, like "Maia is in the garbage," or "Maia is going toward the stairs." She likes to share Maia's food, and is happy to share her own drink as long as she gets some too. They giggle together sometimes. Crawl over each other, too.

Her imagination continues to soar to new heights. The living room is a spaceship, sure, that she and Maia use to blast off. But now she goes to work in the office and does homework, then trims her beard (like Daddy) with a bubble wand, then makes me a Lego cake and takes pictures with a Lego camera. She makes clothes and cooks food, fixes cars, and pours pretend sugar on the floor so she can pretend vacuum it (and then ask me if she missed any).

This one's for Grandpa and Uncles James and Nels.

She's still very keen on her bedtime story, and if possible a naptime story if I'm in the mood on the weekend. She came to me with a piece of paper the other day and told me she was going to tell me a story. "Once upon a time there were Goldilocks and the Three Bear Pirates," she began. "They went to the zoo and the park." The switch to afternoon naps was a necessary and probably a good step, but otherwise sleep has been bad this month; for a while she was getting to sleep between ten and eleven after hours of whining or crying or lying awake, kicking the walls or playing with her turtle nightlight on the floor. When I invited her to bring the turtle to bed with her she stopped getting out of bed, and the past couple of nights she hasn't put up a fuss at bedtime. I don't think the turtle was the true root of the problem, but we'll take what we can get.

She's always putting things in her mouth and nose, often her fingers, and very often licks her hands while I'm telling her bedtime story. I asked her whether it felt good on her mouth or her hands more, and she said her hands. I don't know what to do about that. She's also very keen on washing her hands, especially now that she can reach the faucet and soap to do it herself. She continues to enjoy getting lotion for her hands or her ows, but now it's mostly so she can wash it off afterward "with a lot of soap and water."

Similarly, she's now riding her tricycle well--she still needs practice and confidence, but she can pedal and she's learning to steer. Now that the weather's nicer Eric has been taking them out for walks and to the park and the zoo (hence the story) several times a week, and she seems to be loving it.

We've been having her try to brush her teeth for a while, and she does okay, though certainly not well enough that we're letting her take over. She strips her clothes off easily sometimes, but other times she wails "I can't do it. I need help." She won't go down slides anymore either, and certainly not on swings. We're not sure why she's so fearful. We're hoping it's just the age.

She continues to enjoy bathtime with Maia, though she recently asked for a solo bath so she could play with her bath crayons and have some bubble bath. She dislikes having her hair combed or brushed, so it's getting cut pretty soon. I keep asking if she still wants to do that, since it's so pretty long, but she's sure.

She had a marvelous time on "bacation," in South Haven, and refers to it often--as well as other things that prove her memory is getting longer and better all the time. Not to mention the times when she asks for, say, naked time before bedtime, I say yes, and when we get to 8 PM Eric says "Time for jammies," and she says, "Mommy said I could have naked time!" and I have to explain that when I said that I had assumed we'd be finishing baths on time. A fine memory. 

She's so much fun to play with these days. I do a "horsey ride" thing with the girls, where I'm on my back with my knees bent and they sit on my lower belly and I jounce them up and down while singing the William Tell Overture very badly. Great exercise for my thighs. Anyway, she saw my cowboy hat, I explained what it was, and now she wears it for horsey rides. Today we somehow ended up playing "knock me down"--she'd sit up, I'd push grandly but gently at her forehead, and she'd fling herself over backward like I'd punched her. She likes Ring Around the Rosie and Row Your Boat and Hide and Seek, though she doesn't get the "hide" concept and isn't strong on the "seek," and loves playing Candyland, especially without the cards because then we can send the gingerbread "guys" on adventures instead of just sticking to the path on the board. Such a happy giggly girl. Strong-willed, and curious, and strange, and a lot of wonderful.

Dreaming, all right

Chloë is currently passed out on the floor. Sometimes she wants to sleep on the thick double-layered blanket that she likes to keep on the rug by her bed, but before I went in just now she was simply splayed face-down, half on the blanket, half off, hand outstretched to the turtle planetarium night-light she had undoubtedly been playing with after she got done kicking the floor and walls.

As you might guess, we're having sleep troubles.

She switched to an afternoon nap recently--or rather, stopped going to sleep during morning naps and started falling asleep during TV time in the afternoon. So Eric's been putting her down with Maia's afternoon nap, since that way they can coordinate actual activities in the early or late afternoon. But it doesn't seem to be suiting her exactly. She sleeps late and heavily, and then at bedtime, as tonight, she won't go down. We used to have a sweet bedtime ritual: naked time with books, then pajamas, tooth-brushing and nose medicine (Ayr saline gel to protect against nosebleeds), good-nights, and then an oral bedtime story and a song snuggled up in the dark before sleep. We still have it, but she doesn't sleep after the song. She wants to snuggle.  She wants to sleep on the floor. She wants this, wants that. She needs her moon back on. She needs a tissue. She needs to pee. She doesn't want to be alone.

We've tried toeing the hard line, since that worked before--making sure she has what she really needs, then checking on her occasionally as needed but not giving in. Then, not checking on her. That's resulted in lots of wall-kicking, calling for us, crying for us, getting out of bed, and sleeptimes of 10:30 or later. (Bedtime is 8:30-9.) But I don't think indulging her is going to help--or at least, not in anything but the very short term. There was one night I did go in and snuggle with her, I think because she was sick. She fell asleep while I was there, but then she woke up and found me not there and called for me again. Repeat twice and then it was my bedtime. I think that might have been the night I stayed and we were both awakened by Maia in the wee hours (or I was awakened by her and Chloë was awakened by me) and she said, "Mommy don't leave me," and I explained I was going to go feed Maia, and then she finally went to sleep for the rest of the night.

I think that Chloë's napping too late in the day. But Eric has difficulty getting her to lie down any earlier, and has trouble planning activities when they have breakfast and then Maia goes down and then they have lunch and then Chloë goes down and then Maia goes down again; and he's running the daycare. I can and do prevent her from sleeping any later than I get home, but that's still pretty late. Eric thinks the problem is simple overtiredness, which can also (rather frustratingly) delay sleeptime. So all we really know is that something's not right. So we'll try one thing, then another, to try to fix it. Poor guinea pig baby.

Potty boot camp, day 1

(Yes, I know I've got a monthly report to write. I've got to get this out of the way first. Also, it is long.)

Chloë had been making great progress on the "incremental progress reward chart" plan. She filled up her row of "go in the bathroom with pants off," then "go in the bathroom with pants off while sitting on the potty." But when it came to "go in the bathroom with pants and diaper off while sitting on the potty"...we came to a standstill. She didn't want to use the potty. We tried putting underwear on her, and for a while she was pleased to wear underwear and then change into a diaper when she needed to go...but she wouldn't sit on the potty without the diaper. I offered to buy her a goldfish, which had her excited, but it didn't get any potty attempts out of her. And then she started rejecting the underwear, preferring to stay in a diaper all day.

So today, after a couple of days of warning her, we went for broke and told her no more diapers (except for sleep times). We got her in underwear, despite her information that she doesn't like underwear, and the first hour or two after waking was fine. Then she needed to pee. I told her then she needed to sit on the potty. "I want a diaper," she said.

"No more diapers," I said. "You need to be a big girl and go in the potty."

"But I like diapers!" And it went on from there. We had a full-pitched battle of sorts, me insisting that there would be no diapers, and she insisting that she needed them. She was screaming, begging for a diaper, saying, "I like diapers because diapers are nice! I don't like the potty!" or "Don't say no more diapers! Don't say that!" between halting sobs. I kept saying calmly, "You need to use the potty," holding her when she came to me for comfort, though I was the one making her unhappy, and felt horrible.

(I also wanted to laugh when she leveled a finger at me and commanded, "Never put underwear on me ever again!")

I offered to let her hold a diaper, if that would help, which was a mistake; she said yes, but then what she wanted was to hold it while it was on her. When I said no and set it down, she took it from me and spread it out on the floor and sat on it and said, hopefully, still crying, "I spread out the diaper for you to put on me!" It was so pathetic and sad.

At length Eric took over, and with him she settled down and declared she didn't need to pee. Neither of us believed this, but we let it go. Maia went down for her nap (Chloë has started taking her nap in the afternoon rather than the morning) and Chloë and I colored for a while, then decided to make cookies. In the middle of it, Chloë  said, "I need to pee."

"Let's go upstairs then," I said, dreading the screaming that would inevitably wake up Maia.

"I already peed," Chloë said, looking down.

"Now? --At least get on the floor," I said, whisking her down from the chair she was standing on. It was too late, but I wasn't attached to that chair anyway. Chloë finished releasing a veritable pond of pee. I peeled off her skirt and underwear, wiped her up, and cleaned up the floor.

There was another tantrum later when she wanted to poop, and I worried (as I'd already worried) about constipation, but that was solved when she woke up from her nap, in a diaper, and told me she was going to poop. Later in the afternoon, we went outside, me to transplant garlic, she to play with a football-with-a-tail that some neighbor had accidentally thrown in our yard. "I need to pee," she said, so we went inside. That standoff ended when she couldn't hold it anymore and peed on the bathroom floor. She'd removed her pants and underwear for that one, so the casualties were her socks, my socks, and a bathroom mat. Then, at bedtime, she was eager to get ready for bed because she knew she'd get a diaper. Eric insisted she needed to pee first. I was changing Maia when Chloë came to inform me she needed to pee. "The pee will be on the floor very soon," she said.

"Then at least go into the bathroom," I said, in a defeatist sort of way, and Chloë obediently went to the bathroom and peed onto the floor again.

She got into bed, without her usual bedtime story because I didn't have the temper for it, and after Maia was in bed as well Eric and I tried to figure out whether we're doing this okay or setting her up for major failure later. There's a ton of advice on potty-training, but almost all of it assumes that your child is at least willing to try and is merely trying to learn the necessary skills. Chloë has all the skills she needs to be potty-trained; she simply doesn't want to. She said so, in fact. We're trying to sort out why she doesn't want to sit on the potty--the Internet has some interesting suggestions--and decide whether the various ideas that come to mind are good ideas or are our frustrations in disguise. For example: taking away shows? Not letting her go on walks unless she pees in the potty first? Are those acceptable incentives, feeble shows of will that are merely going to increase her resistance, or secretly punitive measures because we're both so frustrated that she won't just sit down and use the potty already?

This is tough. My parents suggest we start potty-training Maia now. Maybe that will avoid this sort of issue with her.

(We're also considering using her as a peer pressure sort of thing, which the Internet also suggests but she doesn't have a peer group to provide. Maia loves playing with the potty anyway; maybe we'll try putting her on it. Maybe that will do nothing and we'll still be washing a load of urine-soaked towels every night by the time her birthday comes. If we all live that long.)

So, at the end of day one, it's Chloë 4, parents 0. Stay tuned!

Conversations with Chloë

[At the park]
Me: It's time to go home.
Chloë: I want to play just a couple more minutes.
Me: No. It's time to go. I told you a couple of minutes ago that we'd be leaving soon.
Chloë: I want to plaaaaaaaay!
[Screaming and sobbing ensue. I yell. She wails. We start walking out of the park.]
Me [noticing her rub her eyes]: Do you want me to carry you?
Chloë: Yes. [Brightly, as if there are no tears on her cheeks:] Thank you for going to the park!

[At bedtime]
Chloë: I want the space story.
Me: Okay, I will tell you the space story. Then I'm going to go, and you're not going to whine about it. Okay?
Chloë: Okay.
Me: [Tells the space story, in which Dora, Boots, and Isa help Chloe get to Pluto's moon to retrieve her spare engine to fix her spaceship. Chloë, as always, giggles when Boots says "But where's the sun?" and Dora says "It's right there, Boots. It's the brightest thing in the sky" and Boots says "Oh yeah. Silly me" and finishes the story with "and they live happily ever after" when I forget.] Good night, sweetheart.
Chloë: But, but I want...
Me: We agreed you weren't going to whine. Remember?
Chloë: But I like to whine.

[In the garden]
Me: I'm going to take this plastic off the dirt.
Chloë: What is dirt for?
Me: ...It's for growing things. This is where we're going to plant our vegetables when it's warmer.
Chloë: Can I help?
Me: Sure. Can you move these sticks to that pile over there?
Chloë: Okay!
Me: Hey, look! A worm! [Picks it up, shows her.]
Chloë: Wow! [I put the worm back. A few minutes later:] Where is the worm?
Me: It's in the dirt.
Chloë: Okay. [Later:] Thank you for working in the garden!

[After reading a book]
Me: We're going to the bookstore tomorrow. We can get you a new book. What book would you want?
Chloë: I don't know. Another llama* book for Maia. And maybe Where Are Baby's Eggs?** for me.
Me: ...I will put those on the list.

*We have Llama Llama Nighty Night. Both girls adore it.
**A Karen Katz book advertised on the back of one of her other Karen Katz books.

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.

Knitting the ravelled sleeve

Chloë's been having a hard time with sleep lately. She's been very clingy in general, and at naptime or bedtime she firstly doesn't want to go to bed at all, and secondly wants one more story, one more song, one more hug; and then it's "Mama I want hoo; I want hoo, Daddy!" and screaming (which inevitably leads to a request for a tissue, which we can't in conscience refuse) unless we handle it very, very carefully.

So we have been, in the hopes that she wouldn't disturb Maia (who's doing much better; the teeth haven't erupted, but they're very close) and that she'd get over whatever insecurity was causing it. Saturday night I spent more time in her bed than in mine. But it hasn't been helping, and she's been getting shorter and shorter of sleep because she just won't settle down on time and has started waking multiple times a night and earlier in the mornings.

So we agreed we needed to start toughening up again and if possible getting her to bed earlier. Yesterday at naptime I was trying to get her down first, since she'd woken at 6:15 and Maia at 8. We read a couple of stories, and then I tucked her in and told her to sleep well. "I want a song," she objected.

"One song," I said, and sat down with Maia in my arms, and sang her Dowa Do Hah Day, which is how she pronounces "Polly wolly doodle all the day."

I stood up and told her to have a good nap, and she started crying. "I want another song!"

"I already sang you a song," I said firmly. "Now it's time to sleep." But she dissolved into a screaming mess: "I want you Mama! I want another song! I want another story! I want--"

I put my face down to hers and yelled, "No!"

"I want a tissue!" she yelled back, startled.

I gave her the tissue, told her to sleep well a final time, and then left amid her screams. But by the time I'd gotten settled with Maia in the glider, she was quiet. She stayed quiet for the twenty minutes it took to get Maia nursed, changed, and in bed. When I left Maia's room I went into Chloë's to make sure she hadn't choked to death on her own tears. She was lying there, awake but quiet. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Okay. I love you," I told her, and gave her a kiss. She was silent as I walked out. Maia was still murmuring to herself, so I sat up a while before venturing to try to nap myself. Chloë didn't talk herself to sleep, as she normally does these days, but she was asleep when I checked on her again. I worried about the silence. It was what I wanted, but I was afraid I'd broken her heart.

But, as all the parents reading this must already know, she was fine when she got up from her nap, and she started up with the "I want you Mama"s again almost right away. At bedtime, she clung to me tearfully until I promised I'd come in and tell her Goldilocks and the Three Bears, which I introduced about a week ago and have had to tell every night since, and even then was reluctant to go with Eric to get her teeth brushed, even with the new Dora toothpaste. (It's pink. The SpongeBob sample stuff we got from the dentist was turquoise. This is the only reason I can find for preferring SpongeBob.) When I put Maia to bed and went in to her, I laid down rules beforehand: "I will tell you Goldilocks and sing you one song, and then you're going to be ready for sleep with no crying." I've tried this before and she's wheedled and carried on anyway, but this time she didn't argue when I said good-night, even though she's got a cold and was snuffly and obviously uncomfortable.

I made sure she was as cleared out as possible and gooped up with Vaseline and armed with a handkerchief, and then when she woke up extra snuffly around midnight I made Eric bring in some hot water to try to create some steam and rubbed some Vicks on her neck; but I didn't stay, and she didn't try to insist. I don't like that the authoritarian your-feelings-don't-matter route worked better than trying to be patient and considerate, but I guess authoritarian is what a two-year-old needs. Here's hoping she sleeps better with her boundaries re-established.

So this is how we're gonna start the new year.

"What is that?" Chloë says, meaning a Pampers box that's been left in the kitchen, as she seats herself on it.

"Don't sit on it," Eric says.

"It's diapers," I add, and look over from the cutting board to where she's still seated. "Don't sit there."

"I want to," Chloë says.

"Well, too bad," Eric says. "Get up."

Chloë adjusts herself. "My hand is under my butt," she says. I look over again. This is true. So, technically, she's not sitting on the diapers: she's sitting on her hand.

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.