Maia is already pulling herself up to stand. She adores Chloë's potty, partly because of the stickers on it and partly because it's convenient for hoisting herself up on. "Sit down!" I tell her. "It is too soon!" Crawling is trouble enough. She's already stuffed various overlooked paper products in her mouth, plus a small foam star that she luckily couldn't quite swallow. I think I need to devote more time to cleaning from now on.
We've determined that if I pump every night, and maybe also on those occasions that she ought to be hungry but is popping on and off and looking around at things instead, we may be able to avoid formula. We'll see how this goes. We've also determined--we think--why she's been so indifferent to food up until now. I offered her some grapes recently (well-chewed by myself, thank you) and she loved them, and Eric decided to offer her some banana from Chloë's banana when it looked like Chloë wasn't going to finish it, and she loved that too. She was also interested in applesauce--the real stuff. And she's loved her introduction to finger foods in the shape of puffs and Cheerios. Apparently she just doesn't like purees.
So we're going to work on giving her more "real" foods, and once we get through the stage 2s we've got--if we can--we'll move on to the stage 3s which have good texture in them. It feels awfully early to be moving on this, but she's getting close to eight months old, which is about the time to start introducing things like yogurt and pasta and bread products, teeth (or lack thereof) allowing. It's just that she hasn't been all that interested in food so far, and I haven't been as invested in getting her on it as I was with Chloë. But with the milk shortage, it's now become more important. Let's hear it for food!
Monday, December 12, 2011
Squiggles
Chloë can draw circles now! And squiggles! She's been good at lines for a while, and would occasionally scrawl across the paper and proclaim it a plane, or a cloud, but when I ask her to draw a circle, or a triangle, she's said, "I can not." But the other day she was doing actual loops and intentional zigzags. She gave me the picture, but I forgot to bring it into work. I'll have to do it tomorrow.
(In all honesty, I don’t particularly admire the pictures she makes. I'm glad she enjoys them and I'm glad that this developmental step has occurred, but the pictures themselves don't move me and I don't actually want one up in my cubicle. That's normal, right?)
She's been very keen on the Christmas decorating. "Mama, want to decorate?" she said hopefully all weekend, even after I told her we were all done. She loved putting the berry picks into the garland on the staircase, and "helping" me put up the snowflake lights. Now she wants them on all the time. She was happy when we picked out our tree from Andersons (a little tabletop tree, which is exactly what it's going to be with the crawling baby and all) and is excited to put ornaments on it.
Unfortunately that won't happen until Tuesday, but that's because today is Cookie Day, when Mimi and Addie and Rae come over to make cookies until dough oozes out our ears. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't say that when toddlers are involved. Anyway, she likes cookies and she likes her family and she likes baking with Mama, so it should be a good night. We're going to make sugar cookies with sprinkles. Usually I make the type of cutout cookie that needs to be iced, but she's not that good at squiggles and circles yet.
(In all honesty, I don’t particularly admire the pictures she makes. I'm glad she enjoys them and I'm glad that this developmental step has occurred, but the pictures themselves don't move me and I don't actually want one up in my cubicle. That's normal, right?)
She's been very keen on the Christmas decorating. "Mama, want to decorate?" she said hopefully all weekend, even after I told her we were all done. She loved putting the berry picks into the garland on the staircase, and "helping" me put up the snowflake lights. Now she wants them on all the time. She was happy when we picked out our tree from Andersons (a little tabletop tree, which is exactly what it's going to be with the crawling baby and all) and is excited to put ornaments on it.
Unfortunately that won't happen until Tuesday, but that's because today is Cookie Day, when Mimi and Addie and Rae come over to make cookies until dough oozes out our ears. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't say that when toddlers are involved. Anyway, she likes cookies and she likes her family and she likes baking with Mama, so it should be a good night. We're going to make sugar cookies with sprinkles. Usually I make the type of cutout cookie that needs to be iced, but she's not that good at squiggles and circles yet.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Status report: Chloë, month 28, and Maia, month 7
Maia is crawling now. I waited to post this update until I could say that honestly. Yeah. We'll go with that excuse.
Ahem. So our house is no longer safe. How do other parents handle having a mobile baby and a toddler who likes to play with small toys? Just forbid them all? Christmas Day is going to be ridiculous, between a girl who's discovered she loves presents (I asked her what kind we should get for Daddy, and she said, "A brown one") and a baby who's discovered she loves eating paper products.
Putting that aside, the girls are bright and beautiful and growing up, up, up. Let's talk about:
Motion. Maia's spent the last couple of weeks working on the whole crawling idea. She tried out going backwards for a while. Then doing a roly-poly method that involved sitting, then getting on hands and knees, then swiveling to sit in a slightly different location. Then getting up on hands and feet. She's still doing that and I each time I expect her to just stand up. Now she's doing a slow classic crawl. We don't expect it to last long. The slow part, that is. The gates are back up.
She's started flipping over during diaper changes, and refuses to leave her socks alone. We were in Babies R Us the other day and I looked over and noticed she was sockless. I spent the next five minutes going back up the aisles we'd just gone down because I couldn't find one of the socks. Eventually it turned out she'd flipped it out of the carrier to the bottom of the cart. I suppose that's not the worst place to discover you suddenly need baby socks, but I was still a bit annoyed.
She's in the big tub now, because she started doing her best to climb out of the little one, and is loving it. She plays with the toys Chloë is happy to throw in after her, and doesn't protest when I lay her down to wash her belly and thighs and delicate bits. (Incidentally, Chloë has started getting interested in her bits. I guess it's that age.) It's ever so much nicer this way.
Chloë was overjoyed by the arrival of new boots from her Grandpa and Halmoni. She put them on as soon as we opened the box and she didn't take them off until bedtime, and was reluctant even then. I didn't think much could compare with the enticement of naked time, but these boots did it. She's now big enough to climb up some ladders at the playground by herself, and delights in going across the monkey bars (which is to say, she touches them as I walk below the monkey bars carrying her along before she steps on my chin in her scrabble to get up on the platform on the other side). She loves to "hang," and does it from anything she can: bars at the playground, my chair and desk, Maia's bouncer.
Sleep. Maia sleeps pretty well now; she goes down easily (except a few nights ago when she screamed for two hours, burped, and then murmured herself to sleep within minutes) and stays down for anywhere between six and ten hours. Chloë has started waking up more during the night. We go and ask what's wrong, and usually she says, "I want you to stay." Then either we do, while she talks and pats our faces, or we don't, and she screams. She's also woken up yelling "I don't want that, I don't want that," or "I want a snack," or "The other one," so I can only assume she's having vivid dreams just like her mama. (I think I dreamed the other night that she called my knitting "needling." It sounds so totally like something she'd say, especially since she likes to ask for a needle when I'm knitting with double-points, and I was doing it the other day to make her a hat, but I can't get her to repeat it.)
Talking. Maia is babbling, babbling, babbling. "Ba ba ba ba," she says. "Na na na na. Eh." She's so happy, most of the time, and has this great rumbling belly laugh. Chloë's language grows ever more sophisticated. "I want a bite of your toast," she'll say, or "We are going to the mall to get a present for Grandpa." She's taken to saying, "What did you say?" and "Where did we go?" and I'm thinking she just wants to talk about it, so we say, "What did I say?" and "Where did we go?" Sometimes when I ask her whether she knows something she says yes, and then I say, "Okay, what is it?" she says "Yes" ("Heth") again. I told her it was okay to say "I don't know" when she doesn't know something, so now when I ask her if, say, she knows what a reindeer is, she says "Heth," and I say, "What is it?" and she says, "I don't know." And sometimes she surprises me by what she does know. So sophisticated.
Food. The innovation here is all Maia's; Chloë is her usual food-lovin' self. Maia is still a bit temperamental when it comes to eating solids, but she loves her puffs, and she's taken to trying to steal Chloë's sippy/straw cup whenever possible. We've given her her own, which she's very interested in. Carrots still seem to be her favorite. In the meantime, she's drinking more in her bottles than I'm pumping at work. We'll see how this situation develops. Especially since she's also developed that clawing-at-the-R.I.N.D.S.-as-though-they're-supposed-to-have-handles thing that Chloë went through, she doesn't have to remain a formula-free baby.
(I threaten her with formula constantly. I don't at all mean it, but with the current pumping/eating differential I'm worried that I'll have to actually go out and buy some formula, and then she'll simply refuse to drink it because she's already repeatedly shown herself willing to starve rather than eat the way she prefers. I'm trying to get up the will to pump more at night and on the weekend. I'm really starting to hate pumping, especially with the added scalding requirement, so this is difficult.)
Chloë does continue to get better at using her fork, even cutting her own bites of lasagna recently, and she can hold a small, firm piece of pizza whole in her hands and eat it that way. (She likes to eat them cold for this reason. Eric says it's because she takes after him.) She's been happily consuming her Halloween candy, a piece or two a day, or alternately homemade popsicles ("pockle") when she's been a good eater. She's taken to knocking her fork against her teeth and lips when she's nearly done, which is annoying.
Discipline. This one is all Chloë's. She's definitely more rebellious and challenging these days. "Don't tell me that!" she says frequently. However, she then generally does (or doesn't do) whatever we've just told her to do (or not do), so it's more bravado than anything else. I get impatient with her at tooth-brushing time--she get the brush to try herself, but generally just bats at her teeth a few times and then sucks at it to get the taste of the toothpaste--and try to take it away from her, and she bursts into tears and wails, "I want to brush my teeth!" She also says she wants Daddy to brush her teeth, but she always says that. If she had her way I would be her slave all day until it came to tooth-brushing time. Then come back to sing her songs when I tuck her in.
We'll actually negotiate the number of songs sometimes. "You can stay," she says. "You can sing a song?" (We're still working on the right way to ask for things; currently she thinks saying "Do you want me to read a story?" is the way to get me to read her The Very Hungry Caterpillar one more time and "I want more pasta," is the way to get a second helping at dinner) I usually say, "I will stay and sing you a song." Then she says, "Maybe three songs!" or occasionally, "Five!" I say, "Two songs," and she says, "Okay." Wait a minute...I just realized that's me doing the negotiating, not her. Dammit.
But she actually knows some songs now. She can sing her ABCs, although N usually gets left out, and knows "Twinkle Star" with help and bits of "Row Boat" and "On the Loose" and "My Star" and a few others. She'll name the one she wants me to sing, or leave it up to me by saying, "Something." She's a funny girl. They're both funny, happy girls.
Ahem. So our house is no longer safe. How do other parents handle having a mobile baby and a toddler who likes to play with small toys? Just forbid them all? Christmas Day is going to be ridiculous, between a girl who's discovered she loves presents (I asked her what kind we should get for Daddy, and she said, "A brown one") and a baby who's discovered she loves eating paper products.
Putting that aside, the girls are bright and beautiful and growing up, up, up. Let's talk about:
Motion. Maia's spent the last couple of weeks working on the whole crawling idea. She tried out going backwards for a while. Then doing a roly-poly method that involved sitting, then getting on hands and knees, then swiveling to sit in a slightly different location. Then getting up on hands and feet. She's still doing that and I each time I expect her to just stand up. Now she's doing a slow classic crawl. We don't expect it to last long. The slow part, that is. The gates are back up.
She's started flipping over during diaper changes, and refuses to leave her socks alone. We were in Babies R Us the other day and I looked over and noticed she was sockless. I spent the next five minutes going back up the aisles we'd just gone down because I couldn't find one of the socks. Eventually it turned out she'd flipped it out of the carrier to the bottom of the cart. I suppose that's not the worst place to discover you suddenly need baby socks, but I was still a bit annoyed.
She's in the big tub now, because she started doing her best to climb out of the little one, and is loving it. She plays with the toys Chloë is happy to throw in after her, and doesn't protest when I lay her down to wash her belly and thighs and delicate bits. (Incidentally, Chloë has started getting interested in her bits. I guess it's that age.) It's ever so much nicer this way.
Chloë was overjoyed by the arrival of new boots from her Grandpa and Halmoni. She put them on as soon as we opened the box and she didn't take them off until bedtime, and was reluctant even then. I didn't think much could compare with the enticement of naked time, but these boots did it. She's now big enough to climb up some ladders at the playground by herself, and delights in going across the monkey bars (which is to say, she touches them as I walk below the monkey bars carrying her along before she steps on my chin in her scrabble to get up on the platform on the other side). She loves to "hang," and does it from anything she can: bars at the playground, my chair and desk, Maia's bouncer.
Sleep. Maia sleeps pretty well now; she goes down easily (except a few nights ago when she screamed for two hours, burped, and then murmured herself to sleep within minutes) and stays down for anywhere between six and ten hours. Chloë has started waking up more during the night. We go and ask what's wrong, and usually she says, "I want you to stay." Then either we do, while she talks and pats our faces, or we don't, and she screams. She's also woken up yelling "I don't want that, I don't want that," or "I want a snack," or "The other one," so I can only assume she's having vivid dreams just like her mama. (I think I dreamed the other night that she called my knitting "needling." It sounds so totally like something she'd say, especially since she likes to ask for a needle when I'm knitting with double-points, and I was doing it the other day to make her a hat, but I can't get her to repeat it.)
Talking. Maia is babbling, babbling, babbling. "Ba ba ba ba," she says. "Na na na na. Eh." She's so happy, most of the time, and has this great rumbling belly laugh. Chloë's language grows ever more sophisticated. "I want a bite of your toast," she'll say, or "We are going to the mall to get a present for Grandpa." She's taken to saying, "What did you say?" and "Where did we go?" and I'm thinking she just wants to talk about it, so we say, "What did I say?" and "Where did we go?" Sometimes when I ask her whether she knows something she says yes, and then I say, "Okay, what is it?" she says "Yes" ("Heth") again. I told her it was okay to say "I don't know" when she doesn't know something, so now when I ask her if, say, she knows what a reindeer is, she says "Heth," and I say, "What is it?" and she says, "I don't know." And sometimes she surprises me by what she does know. So sophisticated.
Food. The innovation here is all Maia's; Chloë is her usual food-lovin' self. Maia is still a bit temperamental when it comes to eating solids, but she loves her puffs, and she's taken to trying to steal Chloë's sippy/straw cup whenever possible. We've given her her own, which she's very interested in. Carrots still seem to be her favorite. In the meantime, she's drinking more in her bottles than I'm pumping at work. We'll see how this situation develops. Especially since she's also developed that clawing-at-the-R.I.N.D.S.-as-though-they're-supposed-to-have-handles thing that Chloë went through, she doesn't have to remain a formula-free baby.
(I threaten her with formula constantly. I don't at all mean it, but with the current pumping/eating differential I'm worried that I'll have to actually go out and buy some formula, and then she'll simply refuse to drink it because she's already repeatedly shown herself willing to starve rather than eat the way she prefers. I'm trying to get up the will to pump more at night and on the weekend. I'm really starting to hate pumping, especially with the added scalding requirement, so this is difficult.)
Chloë does continue to get better at using her fork, even cutting her own bites of lasagna recently, and she can hold a small, firm piece of pizza whole in her hands and eat it that way. (She likes to eat them cold for this reason. Eric says it's because she takes after him.) She's been happily consuming her Halloween candy, a piece or two a day, or alternately homemade popsicles ("pockle") when she's been a good eater. She's taken to knocking her fork against her teeth and lips when she's nearly done, which is annoying.
Discipline. This one is all Chloë's. She's definitely more rebellious and challenging these days. "Don't tell me that!" she says frequently. However, she then generally does (or doesn't do) whatever we've just told her to do (or not do), so it's more bravado than anything else. I get impatient with her at tooth-brushing time--she get the brush to try herself, but generally just bats at her teeth a few times and then sucks at it to get the taste of the toothpaste--and try to take it away from her, and she bursts into tears and wails, "I want to brush my teeth!" She also says she wants Daddy to brush her teeth, but she always says that. If she had her way I would be her slave all day until it came to tooth-brushing time. Then come back to sing her songs when I tuck her in.
We'll actually negotiate the number of songs sometimes. "You can stay," she says. "You can sing a song?" (We're still working on the right way to ask for things; currently she thinks saying "Do you want me to read a story?" is the way to get me to read her The Very Hungry Caterpillar one more time and "I want more pasta," is the way to get a second helping at dinner) I usually say, "I will stay and sing you a song." Then she says, "Maybe three songs!" or occasionally, "Five!" I say, "Two songs," and she says, "Okay." Wait a minute...I just realized that's me doing the negotiating, not her. Dammit.
But she actually knows some songs now. She can sing her ABCs, although N usually gets left out, and knows "Twinkle Star" with help and bits of "Row Boat" and "On the Loose" and "My Star" and a few others. She'll name the one she wants me to sing, or leave it up to me by saying, "Something." She's a funny girl. They're both funny, happy girls.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Chloë's amazing human body
Me: And here's the digestive system, which makes food into energy. And here's the brain.
Chloë: No it isn't.
Me: Then what is it?
Chloë: A ladybug.
Me: This is a dinosaur. It's called Tyrannosaurus Rex. It has long, sharp teeth for tearing into its food.
Chloë: Just like me!
Chloë: No it isn't.
Me: Then what is it?
Chloë: A ladybug.
Me: This is a dinosaur. It's called Tyrannosaurus Rex. It has long, sharp teeth for tearing into its food.
Chloë: Just like me!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
You've got to start somewhere
Maia has finally started showing interest in food. She's been especially keen on...wait for it...green beans and peas. That's right: it took green vegetables to get her excited about solids.
Now that she's showing more interest in food, we've introduced a sippy as well, really more as something to occupy her at the beginning of mealtime when Eric or I am shoveling food into our mouths before we start on her food. Today at dinner, I demonstrated how to drink, and shortly thereafter she was holding it the right way and looked as if she might have actually gotten some water into her mouth.
"Yay! What a big girl you're getting to be!" I told her (she cannot be called "big girl" without modification in Chloë's hearing). "Soon, you'll be able to drink from a sippy without a handle. And then a straw cup like your big sister. And then, you'll be able to drink from a big-girl cup!"
On the other side of me, Chloë spread her arms beatifically. "And then she can play blocks!"
Now that she's showing more interest in food, we've introduced a sippy as well, really more as something to occupy her at the beginning of mealtime when Eric or I am shoveling food into our mouths before we start on her food. Today at dinner, I demonstrated how to drink, and shortly thereafter she was holding it the right way and looked as if she might have actually gotten some water into her mouth.
"Yay! What a big girl you're getting to be!" I told her (she cannot be called "big girl" without modification in Chloë's hearing). "Soon, you'll be able to drink from a sippy without a handle. And then a straw cup like your big sister. And then, you'll be able to drink from a big-girl cup!"
On the other side of me, Chloë spread her arms beatifically. "And then she can play blocks!"
Monday, November 14, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, November 4, 2011
If I ever write a mommy book, it will be called The Milk Diaries. Or maybe The Milk Must Flow.
Late yesterday I was working on something urgent and annoying that had to go out before I left work, so I didn't get my last pumping session in. When I got home, Maia professed to be hungry until she actually got down to nursing for a few minutes on one side and then ignored me, so I decided to pump the other.
When I was building up stock on maternity leave, Chloë would hang around and want to know what I was doing and prod the pump, and I had her "help" me by pushing a particular button when I told her to in the hope of stopping her from pushing it all the time. Last night she wanted to help again, so she held the pump horn and watched while I plugged in the power cord and got otherwise set up. I turned on the pump. "Push button now?" she said.
"Not yet," I told her.
"Push button?"
"Not yet," I said. "We have to wait for the milk to come."
She looked down at the R.I.N.D.S. and howled, "Come, milk!"
Eric, playing with Maia nearby, collapsed in laughter. "Are you okay, babe?" I said after a minute, when he seemed unable to breathe, and Chloë ran over to him and said anxiously, "Are you okay Daddy?" He said he was, and she came back to me, examined the R.I.N.D.S., and said, "Milk!" so I finally let her push the button.
When I was building up stock on maternity leave, Chloë would hang around and want to know what I was doing and prod the pump, and I had her "help" me by pushing a particular button when I told her to in the hope of stopping her from pushing it all the time. Last night she wanted to help again, so she held the pump horn and watched while I plugged in the power cord and got otherwise set up. I turned on the pump. "Push button now?" she said.
"Not yet," I told her.
"Push button?"
"Not yet," I said. "We have to wait for the milk to come."
She looked down at the R.I.N.D.S. and howled, "Come, milk!"
Eric, playing with Maia nearby, collapsed in laughter. "Are you okay, babe?" I said after a minute, when he seemed unable to breathe, and Chloë ran over to him and said anxiously, "Are you okay Daddy?" He said he was, and she came back to me, examined the R.I.N.D.S., and said, "Milk!" so I finally let her push the button.
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