Green Eggs and Ham

We had a video call with Grandpa and Halmoni Saturday morning, because Chloe had been indicating she wanted to see them. (She and Eric were looking at something on his laptop today and she said "Ganpa? Ha-ee?") It was a very nice call, and included a reading by Grandpa of Green Eggs and Ham. We have our own copy, and she asks for it nearly every day, but she was delighted nonetheless. "Ganpa," she said to me several times when we read it Saturday night, and Sunday night, and this morning. She likes to say "Nooooo!" when Sam says "Would you eat them ____?", and especially when the narrator changes his mind at the end and says "Say! I like green eggs and ham!" (Eric and I have agreed that he says this only to get Sam off his back, since restraining orders presumably don't exist in Dr.-Seuss-land.) When we get to the last page, she flips to the very end with a picture of Sam holding his platter and looking rather smug, and says, "Book over?"

I love the way she says her two-word phrases. Each word is very distinct, like listening to a computer recording read off numbers ("Your prescription number is. Five. Seven? Seven? Three." etc.). I admit hearing "Geen? Ham?" is getting slightly old, but it's charming nonetheless.

A mishmash of things maternal

Being a woman pregnant with a daughter (and having another daughter) is depressing this week. Because of current politics, I mean. Otherwise, it's pretty cool. My late pregnancy is pretty mellow so far, other than a pinching pain that the midwife says may be the baby's head pressing against my nerves or may just be general tendon/muscle aches. Either way, it could go and I wouldn't mind.

Also, the hiccups. Our pregnancy book says that babies don't mind hiccups. That does not appear to be true with this baby. She's had hiccups several times today, and she's been particularly active. She's a very squirmy fetus to start with, but today's particularly bad. At my last checkup the midwife confirmed that she's head-down, but I already knew that; the hiccups tend to reverberate in my hips and pelvis and thighs. Hiccups are actually more annoying down there than when you've got them in your airway, it turns out.

I've been doing a little research into how to avoid another OP (face-up) labor, since I'm pretty confident that was the major source of my troubles last time. What I've read says that OP babies are more prevalent in modern times because women have more opportunity to lean back and lie down. Hmmph. So the advice is not to lean back in my chair or lie around with my feet up, but to stand straight and do exercises on my hands and knees. It's also not terribly confidence-inspiring in general. Oh well; I dealt with it before, I can probably do it again. Especially if I get more sleep this time around.

In the meantime, I'm keeping up the gentle reminders to Chloë that there's a baby in my belly, and that it will come out and live with us in a while. She repeats "baby baey" obediently, pointing to my belly (or sometimes kissing it, which is adorable beyond words), though I don't know what she really thinks about that. She does seem to be happy to leave the nursery behind, though. She told me last night she had a dirty diaper, and I carried her into the nursery to change it. "Nooooo!" she screamed, and pointed to the door.

"Do you want to be changed in your room?" I said, and she nodded. We've been changing her on the bed, so I grabbed one of the waterproof pads we inherited before she was born and have never used and brought it along to change her on her bed. I'm so glad she likes the new room, and isn't clinging to the old. We'll see how it goes when a new baby moves in. With luck she'll have forgotten, or won't care, that that used to be her old room. She seems happy with the little reading corner we've got on her bed, and the way she can jump on it, and the moon light and the box of blocks, and the dozen or so stuffed toys that can stay with her on the bed. The other day she took delight in stacking them, carefully, beside the bed rail until they reached their angle of repose and started tumbling down. Then she started sitting on her sock monkey and saying "Munky! Hide!" Then she jumped up and down. Then she made her monkey and her dolls jump. Ah, my little girl and her puppet minions.

The unbearable bigness of being

What a big girl our girl is! Chloë is so much fun at this age. I know, I say that at every age. But seriously.

-She's been playing with the Swiffer for days. "Keen mohr [clean more]?" she says, and grabs it, and pushes it around. Likewise, she took the wet paper towel I used on her drawing table this morning and started to clean the table herself. Then the window, part of the bookcase and the back of my chair. "Keen mohr," she wailed when I tried to take it away.

-Everything is two-word phrases now. When we came home from shopping today and I set her down in the kitchen, she asked "Tee Emmo [see Elmo]?" Then, when I started unzipping her coat, she said, "Ju down," and set her sippy on the floor so I could remove her arms from her sleeves. Then she said, "Shoe off," and lifted her feet before I could ask her. "Stay Mama," was her request at bed tonight, after we refused to let her delay bedtime by "go potty." (Potty training remains at a standstill. But she does come to us and tell us when she's got a poopy diaper.)

-After her bath tonight she started to go into the nursery, then corrected herself and headed for her new, big-girl room. She's now entirely moved in except for a couple of pictures on the wall, and has had no trouble adjusting, except that she's a little harder to get to lie down when the bed is big enough we have to chase her.

-She loves, loves, loves Elmo at the moment. I'm not sure exactly how that happened. But she has a Sesame Street "Color Carnival" book with him in it, and Elmo diapers, and now an Elmo show. It contains a segment with three girls doing a clapping game that starts "Down down baby, I can do karate." She turns to me with the biggest smile whenever I start singing it and says, "Emmo! Kap!" and claps her hands.

We went to Costco Saturday and I found a duo of Elmo/Ernie and Elmo/Grover books, and of course we had to get it. She's asked me to read them a dozen times or more since then, though that might be because she keeps interrupting me when I try to read them to say "Emmo!" or "Hakking [walking]!" or "Grober? Heah?" because there's one page in the one where Grover has a frog on his head.

-We were making dinner tonight, taking turns at the stove, and while I was sitting for a while Chloë came barreling in and hugged me. "Can I have a hug?" Eric said, sitting down in anticipation. "No," she said. Eric sighed and said, "I should have seen that coming," and got up again. In a moment Chloë turned in his direction and said plaintively, "Hu'?" He turned and crouched, and she ran against him and threw her arms around his neck.

-At Kroger today Eric and Chloë were walking the corridors while I got milk. I heard Chloë say something about "ubber ducky," and looked over. She was pointing up to a yellow thing, and I thought it was another duck like her Duck Number One one at home, which she's started calling "rubber ducky," probably because Ernie and his rubber ducky show up in the Elmo DVD. Eric looked over at me and indicated he wanted to get it for her. I thought that was odd, since we're trying to be conservative about increasing the size of her duck flotilla, but I nodded. He handed it down and he and Chloë walked over to me, whereupon I discovered the thing was a yellow bath scrubber with a duck's head and tail on it, small-size for kids, and she was really saying "scrubber ducky." "I couldn't help it when she put that together," Eric said, helplessly.

Tickle monster

Chloë has really started enjoying being tickled these last couple of months. She giggles and collapses and then presents herself so we can do it again. And now that she's got words, she's started asking for it. The other day I was tickling her feet, and her ribs, and her armpits. When I stopped she said, "Ticky more?" raising her foot. So of course we did more, until my fingers started to cramp. On a different day I was doing something similar, and then we stopped because we were in the kitchen and I was sorting bills or something. Not long afterward she raised her arm in the air, and I couldn't figure out what she wanted--a high-five? To be picked up? "Use your words," Eric told her. She got annoyed, and eventually said, "Ticky," whereupon I realized she wanted me to tickle under her arm. "I would have done that right away if you'd said it sooner!" I told her, over her giggles.

She likes to tickle me, too--particularly my belly. She's fond of it in general. I've told her that there's a baby inside and when it's big enough it will come out and live with us, and while I'm not sure she really understands that she remembers it. Sometimes she points to my belly and says "baey [belly], baby," and then to hers and says "baby?" I tell her no, there's no baby in her belly. She points to Eric, and I say no, there's no baby in his belly either unless there are at least two significant things he hasn't told me.

This morning she woke up (in her big-girl bed! She's not completely settled in it--witness this morning's four-thirty wakeup--and we haven't moved all her things to the new room, but the transition is going well) and wanted a story, which I flopped back on the bed to read because I'm all creaky and achy when I get up now. When we finished, she pulled up my pajama shirt--well, it wasn't far to pull since it's not a maternity shirt--and started to tickle my belly, saying, "Ticky baby."

Don't count on it

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

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

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

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

I'm considering revoking his Grandpa privileges.

Maybe you can't see it here, but what Chloë has just put in her mouth is broccoli. Broccoli dipped in ketchup, to be exact. She got the idea from when her Grandpa was here, and tonight, entirely unprompted, that was how she wanted to eat her broccoli. I suppose I should be grateful I'm no longer in my first trimester and can handle the idea without my stomach going into violent revolt.

Status report: Month 19

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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

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

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


This toddler thing is in the bag.