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.

More on milk

Maia hasn't given up the R.I.N.D.S. yet, though I'm slowing down on pumping and today, for example, she only nursed four times (when she woke, before naps, and at bedtime). She also bit me again today, which resulted in her being shouted "No biting!" at and dumped (gently) on the floor, which she seemed to take personally. I've given up reading or playing on my phone while we nurse, partly because she gets distracted by it and partly because I know this isn't going to last long--either the individual session or the activity in general--and I want to be present for it.

It's funny how individual a baby can be in the act of something as supposedly simple as nursing. At this age, as I recall, Chloë was engaged in Extreme Nursing, wiggling and throwing herself everywhere and pushing her butt in the air as she nursed. Maia doesn't do this, though she does tend to end a little early, wiggle around so she's more on her stomach than on her side, and then go back for a last mouthful or two. But when she's lying on her left side, she puts her right leg straight up in the air, sometimes grabbing it, sometimes pushing her foot (so much bigger than it used to be!) into my face so I'll rub it or pretend to eat it or wave it around like a wand to make her smile. But only that side. When she's lying on her right side, her left arm is constantly in motion, groping over and under my shirt and, lately, patting and stroking the other R.I.N.D.S., which is peculiar and irritating and I've been trying to get her to stop it. But it only happens on that side.

She'll grab and play with my hair on either side, which will generally make it swing free and tickle her in the face, which makes her smile. And when she's done she invariably pushes herself upright and reaches for the books, saying earnestly, "Da da da da." I love how her vocalizations are purposeful now, even though I don't know what she means.  She doesn't often demand to nurse, instead getting generally irritable if I'm not getting into position, but if she's thirsty and I happen to be lying down she'll come over and bounce her mouth off the appropriate place a few times to tell me to get a move on.

I'm looking forward to giving up pumping, especially since the lactation room at work is getting a little crowded and will be more so in the summer, I'm told. (I acknowledge this is still better than not having a lactation room at all like last time, especially with the scalding requirement.) I'm not looking forward to giving up nursing, but I think it's going to happen sooner than later, unless I make a special effort. Maia seems to be less interested in it, more independent. It makes me wistful, but it's a good thing, and it's characteristic of her. I'm looking forward to seeing more of her personality, too.

South Haven

For spring break we went to South Haven, MI, with our friends Matt and Carol, their kids Ellie and Zander, and Ellie and Zander's grandma Terry and cousin Tessa. (I felt very grown-up, renting a vacation house and everything.) It was a great time, even though I went sick and we all came back that way. Chloë had fun running around with Ellie and spying on Zander's video games, and loved the beach.



She was afraid of the stairs leading down first, and "the waves," she explained later; but Matt coaxed her down with shells and promises, and when she got there, she was able to dig in the sand, fly a kite, and watch the seagulls and the boats. We didn't go nearly as often as she wanted us to.





She also had a great time with the Easter egg hunt, running around outside, and being exposed to Play-Doh for the first time.

Meanwhile, Maia discovered a love for swings:



At least one of them likes them.

It seems only yesterday

"I'm old enough to drink now. Watch out, world."

Status report: Chloë, Month 32, and Maia, Month 11

Well, let's get the big thing out of the way. Chloë is not potty-trained. Things didn't go as planned with Boot Camp, and we took it down. For now. The potty is in the closet, the underwear and Pull-Ups (actually Easy-Ups) and sticker chart are put away, and Chloë is free to pee wherever she pleases. Though she seems uneasy doing anything other than our old routine, sitting on the potty with the diaper on. I actually took the potty out of storage this evening for her to sit on. I put it away again, but we can't decide whether we should let her stick to that routine and maybe move on when she feels like it, or effectively say "You're not big enough to have the potty yet" and keep it in storage. Anybody have an opinion?

Other than the potty issue, Chloë continues to impress us with her bigness and awesomeness and whininess. She seems to have grasped the concept of counting--where before she'd be faced with five ladybugs and count up until she couldn't count anymore, now she knows to stop when she runs out of ladybugs. We count toes and birds and flies on the window at her instigation. She can sing her ABCs, and most of Twinkle Star, and a lot of "Dowah do ha day," a.k.a. "Polly Wolly Doodle," her favorite bedtime song. She's got a few of her books mostly memorized, and will pull out random quotes from them to keep us on our toes. She loves the park and the zoo, and talks with interest about our upcoming "bacation," asking, "What will be at bacation?" and when I tell her, "What else?" She says things like "You should be more cartul (careful) next time. In the future," and "My toe hurts. Will a bandaid help?" and "Dora and Boots are in the car with us," and, when I inquire whether they're wearing seatbelts, "They are. They will come into the grocery store with us, too."

She's pretty good at please and thank-you, and sometimes astonishes me with her generosity ("Would you like a bite?" she said today, offering me part of the half-cupcake she had been asking for half the night; when eating her beloved string cheese she'll say "Can Maia have some of my string cheese?" and break off tiny portions for her).  She exclaims, "What happened?" when something unexpected has occurred. She asks how my day was, and how I'm doing. When I ask her in return she says, "A little bit bad, but not much." I ask why it was bad, and she says, "Because Daddy told me no we couldn't go to the zoo today because it was raining." I love having actual conversations with her like this.

She's been helping me plant my garden this spring. First she helped with seed-starting; then watering the seedlings; then transplanting, as well as direct-sowing seeds outdoors. She's good at putting beans and peas into premade holes in the ground. Sprinkling carrot seed evenly across a row, not so much. Her favorite part of gardening so far is thinning, as she gets to eat the rejected seedlings. How do you get a two-year-old to eat raw kale and Swiss chard and choy sum? This is how.

She also repeats requests, a lot, even after we've acknowledged and agreed to them, if we don't snap to and get her what she wants instantly. "Mommy," she inevitably calls after bedtime in a droning monotone that drives me right up the wall. "Mommy." Then she wants her door closed, or the moon on again, or says "I'm uncomterble" and needs to be adjusted back to comfortableness. She's saying a lot of "I want X...I don't want X," notably with naps, driving Eric right up the wall. She's been much more reluctant to lay down for sleep (except for one notable night she asked to go to bed at 7!) and so may have switched to afternoon naps, but this past week she's been falling asleep in front of the TV when Maia goes for her afternoon nap, so that's obviously too late. A balance is still undiscovered. She's also saying "I don't like X" a lot, meaning "I don't want X right now."

She has been saying for the past few weeks that she doesn't like baths, and has backed it up by major reluctance and tantrums when we make her bathe anyway. But today, the first day after we packed up Boot Camp, she decided she liked baths again. I'll probably unpack this more in a separate post about how I'm going to have raised the first girl to go out for seventh-grade volleyball in Pull-Ups.

Maia is also a water baby (despite screaming whenever I tried to get her feet wet at the water park), and delights in standing at the tub, tossing in toys. She helps me undress her by stepping out of her pants, and seems to be learning "arms up!" a bit. She crawls around in the tub, chewing on toys, sucking on the peri bottle, and not protesting when I wash her head and face, unlike another little girl I know.  Maia bathtimes are great. Before the "I don't like baths" business, we got Maia and Chloë in the bath together, and they loved it. Well, Chloë loved it. Maia may not have cared one way or another, as long as Chloë let her crawl on by to get to a particular toy, which Chloë did.

She's very big on "putting things in," and has...maybe?...responded to us a few times when we asked her to do it with a specific thing while cleaning up the living room. (I've started weeding out toys from the living room and the girls' rooms. They haven't noticed. I guess I've only removed one box's worth so far.) She loved playing with the potty when it was out, mostly putting things in it; one day we decided to see if a little big-sister shame would help and put her on it. It didn't ("See? Maia likes the potty," said Eric to Chloë. "Well I don't," said Chloë to Eric) but she was delighted by the novelty.

Chloë has started speaking for Maia...sort of...by saying things like "Maia wants that toy," or "She wants to go first," when talking about bath order. She seems to be making assumptions about what Maia wants based on Maia's actions at the time (which may or may not have anything to do with the question at hand), which I could do myself, but it's still pretty cute. However, Maia's showing her own independent spirit. Admittedly, a lot of that spirit is wanting to be held, or to chew her toy in peace rather than having it taken away and used to make a rocketship.

Maia's solidly eating solids now, pancakes and pieces of orange (with the thin skin off) and tiny bits of hamburger. We had Middle Eastern food yesterday and she loved my lentils and rice, and the tomatoes. Good lord the two of them with the tomatoes. She's officially okay to start cow's milk, not that she hasn't already had it in thieving plenty. We're still nursing, but mostly it's fairly perfunctorily. Then she pushes herself up and points at the bookshelf so we can read a Sandra Boynton book or B is for Bear or Llama  Llama Nighty-Night. When I get home she reaches eagerly for me (and I for her) and gets screamingly unhappy about being put down until we've nursed, but I'm not sure whether that's hunger or habit. I know we're heading down the weaning road, but I'm not sure how fast she's going to take us there. I'm okay with letting her take the lead. She bit me once, but she got passed off to her daddy immediately afterward and she really didn't like that, and seems to have learned her lesson. (At least until  I hit "Publish.")

She's making more purposeful noises now. Mostly "dah," with "na" and "muh" and "ba" thrown in for variety, and occasionally her usual birdlike screech or a noise like a car engine. She hates it when somebody nearby has food and isn't giving her some. At the table if there's something she wants, she points and babbles urgently, and if I say "more?" she'll assent...I can't actually say how she does, but I can tell. Trust me.

Still no walking, but much longer periods of standing. She loves to be flipped upside down--I have this shtick where I toss her over my shoulder (holding onto her legs) and say "Now where did I put that baby?" If Chloë is nearby she'll point and squeal, "There!" and I feel up her leg to her back and then flip her back down and say "There you are!" while she laughs. She's still a wigglepuss at the changing table, though the tube of Desitin can occupy her sometimes. I suspect the baby pictured on it helps. She's more interested in baby faces than she used to be. She's a funny baby face herself sometimes.

The neighbors whose backyard abuts ours let their brown standard poodles have a litter, and Maia is fascinated by them. They run around in the backyard most days, all seven puppies and their parents, and Maia stands at the office window, or stares out the kitchen window from our arms, and squeals and squeaks and exclaims. Sometimes Chloë joins her. We also put birdfood in the feeder out back, and they both love to watch the birds come around. They get along fine, and I love watching them watch the world together.

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!