Ahhh, dahhh, zzz

Eric says that Maia giggled the other day. She's certainly a smiley girl. I've had her on the verge of a laugh myself, with belly-raspberries and peekaboo and saying "Boooooo" when she's cooing and saying "Ahhh." I don't think Chloë was this effervescent this early, but I also don't remember playing with her this way this early--not personally, that is. I think Eric did.

Now that we've gotten out of the newborn stage, I'm finding myself enjoying the baby phase possibly more than I did with Chloë, probably because I know what I'm doing more this time around. I like holding Maia; I like having her near me in the kitchen or the bedroom. I like that she'll sit in the carrier and watch, or play with a toy or her hands, while we're making dinner or doing dishes. (She lasts longer if I put her somewhere my back isn't to her all the time.) I like having her sit in the booster seat with us at dinner rather than relegated to the swing (anyway, she's started to twist about so we have to strap her down in it now). I like holding her in one arm while the other is curled around Chloë while we're reading. I'm at least entertained by the fact that she'll squall when I put her in the swing at dinnertime but smile and gurgle when I put her in the chair. I like her development into a real person.

What I don't like is the sleep issue. Theoretically, she should be able to sleep for at least six hours every night. The most sleep I've gotten in a row is four hours. Usually, she gets to sleep, wakes up an hour later, goes back to sleep, stays down for three or four hours, and then rouses about every two. Part of the problem is that I've been relying on nursing to get her to sleep more this time around, probably because I have a 6-7 AM wakeup call every morning and don't want to mess around with what sleep I get, so she expects to nurse all the time, and when I've been woken up twice already I tend to just give in rather than try to rock or bounce or outwait her. I'm trying to decide whether to try the Ferber method, which we did with Chloë, or stick with the gentler approach we've been taking so far. I'm not going crazy with sleep deprivation, but I'm not excited about continuing this way, either. It's a developing situation.

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.

The new winner

"Mama shirt have tear in it from Chloë eye."

(And don't look like that. She was crying because she didn't want to take a nap.)

Why, why, why

Chloë finally seems to be understanding "why" questions. It's been so wonderful to be able to communicate with her, and now that we can ask her about her motivations, communication gets ever more interesting:

Jenny: Chloë, why is this piece of pizza on the placemat?
Chloë: Mmmm...Chloë put it there.
Eric: (chokes with not-silent-enough laughter)
Jenny (teeth gritted against a grin): Please put it back on your plate.

Chloë (looking at a picture of Elmo holding a long, gray stick): Elmo hungry?
Jenny: Why do you think he's hungry?
Chloë: Elmo have knife.

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.

The downfall of please

I've had a tenacious cold for a week, and so far have had success in keeping it to myself. (Knock on wood.) I wondered vaguely the other day why colds last so much longer than they used to. Partly it's because I'm older; partly, I think, it's because MY CHILDREN DO NOT SLEEP. Ah, children, the first best form of birth control:

Last night I laid down with Maia at about 9:30 and, after getting to sleep, coughed and hacked so much I was having dreams about being a series of mini-storms lost on the ocean, with a vague idea that I had an identity and senses outside of the coughs/gusts but unable to find either. (Partly this is because I'm reading a book that contains a sea-battle.) Maia woke me up sometime in there to re-latch. I woke again when she attached again and got up when she finished, around 1, because the coughing was nauseating me, and decided to sleep in the glider. I got settled there (with the electric kettle, bless Eric) and went to sleep around 1:30. At 3:15 Maia woke up to eat. At 3:30 Chloë woke up with a minor nosebleed, and I went in to help her with Maia still attached. At 3:45 Maia went back to sleep and so did I. At 4:30 Chloë woke up with what seemed like a bad dream and I went in with Maia in my arms. At 5:15 Maia woke up to eat. At 5:45 I put Maia in the bassinet and went back to my bed. At 6:30 Chloë woke up and dragged me out of bed. We climbed up on her bed and she actually went to sleep again for a few minutes with her head on my leg, and then again when we cuddled together on the pillows, but that didn't last long. At 7 Maia started mewling.

I got her, changed her diaper and onesie, and went back to Chloë. She was demonstrating an oppressive amount of energy by jumping all around the bed refusing to lie down for the diaper change she requested (she knows she needs a diaper change and clothes on before going downstairs), and when I yelled at her I realized I was not capable of dealing with both of them that morning, so Eric woke up a little early and took charge of Miss Energy while I fed Maia. At least she behaved for it, instead of popping on and off and grinning innocently at me as she's been doing lately. She fell asleep afterward--I was jealous--and I put her in the swing downstairs and went back up to change clothes for work.

Chloë came up to investigate what I was doing--"Koë check on Mama"--and watched me get into my work clothes. "Mama going hork?" she said.

"That's right," I said. "Come on, let's go downstairs."

She walked to the doorway of our bedroom and stopped. "Mama carry Koë," she said. "Pee."

Since she had seen Maia with me every time I checked on her in the night, this was pretty predictable, and mostly I'm happy to carry her if it will make her feel better. But I felt lousy. I shook my head. "No, sweetie. I still don't feel good."

"Pee. Pee. Pee," she repeated. "Koë tay pee." And my heart twisted, because--and here's the point of the story; this wasn't completely gratuitous whining, honest--she's only recently started really applying "please" with the understanding that it's, well, a magic word. If she asks for something and doesn't say please, we generally wait to respond until she does; once she does, we almost always get her whatever she wants with all speed. She knows that when she says "please," we say "yes." Thus, "Chloë say please" really meant, "But I obeyed your rules."

And here I was, refusing anyway. We've worked so diligently to get her to say "please," teaching her that it will get her what she wants. But now that she's learned it, she also has to learn that it doesn't always work. What kind of a crappy lesson is that to teach a child? A useful and practical one, I suppose, but it seemed like awfully sad policy to me while sick and sleep-deprived on a Monday morning. I didn't carry her, but I held her hand as we walked down the stairs, and thanked her profusely when she pulled my work shoes out of the rack for me, and hugged her good-bye as tightly as I could while trying to avoid breathing on her. She skipped off to read one of her new books (from the Borders liquidation sale) with Eric, and I wished she had stopped to wave good-bye to me, as she does most days. But you don't always get what you want, even when you ask, and I hadn't.