Today

Today A-chan helped fix her breakfast for the first time! And she woke herself up singing the abc's again then moved on to twinkle twinkle little star. She discovered yesterday that it makes a funny sound when I wash her mouth and she's talking. We did a lot of extra face washing after lunch today :) She likes blowfish kisses. We did a lot of those after lunch too!

Here is how our day went:
A-chan woke herself up by singing ABCs and clapping at the end.
She got a clean diaper and then went to wake-up dada.
She let out boober & tigger by self. (translation: she opened the door for two cats to come out of their room all on her own)
I made breakfast with A-chan sitting on the counter beside me. She watched me make my coffee, then poured her own packet of oatmeal into the bowl to help. Breakfast: oatmeal, banana, milk
After breakfast pink paci goes to a safe spot for the day while A-chan plays.
A-chan played on her computer, played with her castle and R2D2.
She watched the 'Brainy Baby: English video' while I took a shower.
The cats wanted petting and Purrpurr needed blankets.
While I made lunch she read books to herself.
Lunch was hot dogs, mac n cheese, grapes and squash.
Then we washed hands and face with interesting noises, and gave each other blowfish kisses.
In order for A-chan to take her after-lunch nap we must: find flatcat and nekobus, get pink paci, change diaper, give hugs and "I love you" whispers, jump on the bed, covers up, turn the light on.

While A-chan napped we did our best to be very quiet, as usual. S&L came by for a few moments and we poor adults whispered our entire conversation.
"mata! mata!" Was her wake up signal today. "time aeri go play"
While I changed her diaper after the nap I explained the schedule for the evening: we would get ready to go, drive me to my dance class, she and dada would go to the grocery store and then come back to get me and go swimming!
She helped us get ready to go: clothes and diaper, shoes and closed the bathroom door.
We went out the door all together. Dada puts her into her car seat and we drive.
(Dada's part of the day)
She was waving at me through the window of the Y when I get out of dance class and said, "Hi mata!" when I came out the door.
We went into the Y where she turned into a shy girl and then we got get changed...she loves her ladybug swimsuit and carried her towel around her neck to the pool.
Swimming was fun with lots of bouncing in the water and blastoffs from the wall, but A-chan still doesn't like the noodle. Her friend Caycay helped her discover kick boards which are way fun.
When Ketu swam underwater for a long way she got very upset.
Out of the pool again she got upset when I wouldn't let her climb the bench after getting dressed again.
Caycay and her mommy rode home with us in the car. A-chan said," caycay let's be quiet, shhh." and " stop that, caycay, that's enough." A-chan isn't used to anyone being in the back seat with her and is very protective of personal space :)
We had bentos for dinner at home with spicy rice, though not much was eaten.
She got upset at caycay, got time out, apologized and watched a movie. The movie was "The Cat Returns" which both of the girls really like. She did hug caycay when they went home.
She watched the rest of the movie in my lap and in Ketu's lap.
When it was time for our bedtime ritual to begin she found my gemstone bags on our bed. She had to look at all the stones on the bed, then helped me put them back in the bags. Apparently the garnets were a hit.
We read the Wacky Goat book on our bed, tickled A-chan and giggled, Dada carried her to her room and changed her diaper, then it was hugs and kisses time then into the bed for jumping and sleeping with the light on.

Remembrances

During dinner yesterday A-chan started teaching Ketu and I some sign-language letters. S and L, her godparents, are both linguists so it's no big surprise that we have a few books on toddler sign-language around the house. What's surprising is that when we did these books with her, we never really thought that she was paying attention to it. And she hadn't seen either of the books in at least two weeks. But in the middle of dinner she started lessons with 'i', 'j', 'k', 'e' and so on. She would tell us 'good job, mata' or 'great, dada!' when we repeated them properly, lol.

It's amazing to me just how well she remembers things. Even things that I'd swear she hadn't paid any attention to. A-chan claims to remember things from a year ago, like being in Thailand. Occassionally she will say something about Thailand and just shock the pants off of us, but it's very rare and usually prompted by special objects that we brought home. But still!

Of course, I look back on a year ago and can't truly get a grasp on how much she has changed. Looking at pictures proves the incredible differences, though. Especially in hair length :) I want to remember all the little things that she did, but I already find myself forgetting and it makes me so sad.

Both pictures are from a little over a year ago. The bottom one was taken in Doi Mae Salong, Thailand.

The Cupcake Incident

Once again it was time for the Star Wars game. There was marathon cleaning and the creation of yumminess. Our girl inoocently donned a grey t-shirt bearing Lego & star wars logos and proudly displayed R2 and C3po. She rushed out to greet all of the guys that attended, monopolizing attention and generally having a grand time. And then...Ketu lifted her up far enough that she could see the layout of the goodies on the kitchen counter. A cupcake was requested. It was countered with the fact of a quickly approaching lunch.

Apparently lunch holds no power over the need for cupcake. She would say almost every minute, "I don't want that, I want a cupcake." And there was no room for bargaining - a bite of my lunch in order to get a cupcake, no thanks. "want cupcake!" We stuck to our guns, despite the yelling and the repeating refrain of cupcake, cupcake, cupcake (while the GM struggled not to laugh as I tried to talk through the toddler encoding mechanism) and insisted that she had to eat one bite of a broccoli bite in order to obtain her prize. After about 30 minutes she gave in, had that one bite and got to share a cupcake with me (yay, bonus me!)

Like mother like daughter? Stubborn sweettooth in the genetics, I swear :)

Words of the Week #8

I too tired, mata feed A-chan
What beautiful A-chan!
want a cupcake.
I no eat any more.
luke light saber green, A-chan light saber purple
I kiss mike?
No, I fine. No, I alright, thank you.
Let's be quiet, rain. Shhhh.
Pink paci hurts my teeth. (this is a refrain for after breakfast when the paci gets taken away until nap time. all we had to do was explain once that the reason we didn't want her to have the paci all day was that it was hurting her teeth and making them grow incorrectly. She now says this phrase each morning)
That's enough!
yeah, sure.

Imagination is a wonderful thing

Last night at dinner A-chan startled us by announcing that she was riding a dragon. She even swayed in her chair as though she were riding. When asked she proceeded to describe the dragon as green and white, big and flying through the air. Ketu asked if the dragon had a saddle for her to ride on like a horse does. She gave him a disbelieving glare and repeated, "It's a DRAgon!" I asked if she had given the dragon a name. She looked down at the floor for a second and the pronounced, "Name is Ember." Our cat Ember had just happened to be walking past her chair, lol. Needless to say we were delighted! We wondered a bit if she was copying a movie or had just made it up herself, and couldn't think of any movie with a flying dragon in it that she might have seen. (We are extremely particular about what videos she gets to see, so we're pretty sure we can remember them all...)

Then tonight at dinner she again announced that she was riding a dragon. This one was blue and red and white. We are completely amazed by how much imagination she already has. I can't wait to see how it develops as she grows! It will be interesting to see if there is a different dragon tomorrow night. And although I think the whole thing is exteremely cool, I do kind of wish that the dragons would wait until after dinner to take my girl on a ride. She really doesn't do much eating while she is riding her imaginary dragons!

It occurs to me that her increasing interaction at the dinner table is probably caused by the fact that we do actually eat at the table now. This is something that has happened only twice before in our entire married life...we usually would eat at trays in front of a video. But A-chan refused to take a bite while the video was on and eventually we decided to try the 'big table'. We've been doing this consistently now for about two weeks, I guess, and there has been a pretty marked difference in our girl's demeanor and her eating after this change. It's amazing how much the tv can suck your brain away and it's also amazing how liberating it can be to take some time and eat together at the dinner table. I have to admit, though, that I do sometimes miss being able to watch a video while we eat. There are so many shows that I would like to watch but right now we only have time for maybe 2 hours of video a week plus a half hour of watching A-chan's videos after dinner.

Towers

A-chan's been building towers. She seems to be enthralled by them at the moment. But our spanish tile floors are not friends to the towers. In fact, one might call our floor the miniature architect's nightmare. There are very few level surfaces. A tower might have a stable base if it is built in the center of a tile, but anywhere else and you're fighting gravity. She is learning how to work with the floor, though and off setting her blocks a little in whatever direction is needed for continuing building. It's a tricky business and is hard to learn, but she's working on it which amazes us. The main danger to her towers at the moment are her knees and bottom. She doesn't realize just how much they protrude, lol.

Library Books #1

We took A-chan to the library for the very first time the other day. Yes, it really did take us almost 2.5 years to get her there! I'm a book store girl, returning books is anathema to me - even though I worked in libraries for a few years :) The biggest obstacle is time, we're always packing as much stuff into our forays out of the house as we can so that we only go out once or maybe twice a week. And then there was the problem of finding sneaky shoes as taking her in her very happy but very loud squeaky shoes was not going to happen. We did finally find shoes that made no noise but had no leather that she liked and fit her properly, w00t!

Here are the books that we checked out for her this first time with ratings in front...

4 I am a Hindu
4 Religions of the World: Hinduism
2 Origami: Myths and Legends
9 Sheep on a Ship
9 Sheep in a Shop
7 Toot and Puddle
9 The Paper Dragon
5 What to Expect When You Use the Potty
5 The Slumber Party
8 Anklet for a Princess

The best part of going to the library for A-chan was the stairs. Up and down, up and down and did you know that stairs go up and down? We tested them several times just to be sure we understood how they work.

The best part of going to the library for me is having new, never before read books to read!!!! We realized last week that I wasn't even looking at her books to read them anymore, I'd memorized most of them - that's when I decided to look for sneaky shoes in earnest.

A perfect Saturday morning

We started the day with a scene directly scanned from my fantasies of an ideal weekend morning when I was pregnant. Early morning Tai chi followed by a happy toddler waking up. She had oatmeal, banana & milk for breakfast, I had hazelnut coffee and a cookie, Ketu had pepsi and a cookie. (At least A-chan had a healthy breakfast, lol) I read A-chan a book right after breakfast, we did our daily computer ritual of email and online comics, then spent time listening to harp music while folding sheets. A-chan got to play in the sheet-parachutes and use them as quasi-jumpropes. The cats looked on in something akin to either terror or jealousy, it was hard to tell which. Man, this was my perfect saturday morning!! It could only have been better if I had made pancakes or muffins.

Below is a picture of the sheets in the laundry basket when I washed them originally, before I re-washed them and insisted they get folded immediately this morning.

Go swimming!

A-chan looking with quiet concentration at her Star Wars "flash cards".

We had quite the weekend with many adventures and much negotiation. It all started last wednesday when I took a trial bellydance class just to see how much my body would protest after not doing any dancing for about 10 years. (It was a nice and gentle class, I'm very excited!!) Anyway, I checked out what else was available for Ketu and A-chan to do while I was dancing...and there were parent tot swim classes starting this week! We'd been intending to do the swim class thing for a while but just not gotten around to it and I decided why wait longer? On Saturday I called and asked lots of questions. We were told that no one else had signed up yet but that the class would be held even if it were just us. So we rushed over and registered, then went out and searched town for swimsuits in february.





You might say that luck was in little supply in regards to the swimsuits. hmmm. It has been around 14 years since Ketu or I has been in water. (Well, there was that one year where I had water therapy, but I don't really count that and it was still at least 8 years ago.) Swimsuits we did not have. Neither did many stores. Target was the only store that had any and the selection there was pretty sparse. We decided to wait and shop around more. A-chan picked out a cute ladybug number at Toys R Us. I found nothing. Did I mention that we found out on Saturday that the class actually started on Monday?





Sunday dawned bright and cheery with an A-chan who kept saying constantly that she wanted to try on her swimsuit. We go to try it on and suddenly have a wailing banshee on our hands. We think she hadn't known that she'd have to take off her socks to go swimming and that set her off? Other than that we have no idea what went wrong but the rest of the day she refused to even look at the suit! Knowing that she was unhappy but that we had already signed up for the class we spent the rest of the day convincing her that swimming was fun and wearing a swimsuit was coolness. (Azu Manga Daioh helped a whole lot. It's one of her favorite anime and episode #4 included the locker room, changing to suits and getting in the pool.) After dinner she consented to try on her suit, all excited again.





Monday. A-chan woke up and said, "A-chan go swimming!" as her first words of the day. We were incredibly relieved that she remained excited all day. An hour before class time we all hopped in the car...to go buy swimsuits for me and Ketu. Yep. An hour. Are we nuts? Yep. So, back to Target we went for the world's fastest swimsuit shopping expedition. On time (incredible, we didn't believe it!) we arrived at the pool, dressed in brand new swimwear with one beaming and raring to go toddler. She looked at the pool, she tugged on my hand, she goes, 'that a pool, Mata! let's go swimming!!!" But the fellow in charge of swimming says, "so sorry you didn't get called, but we cancelled the class for lack of people." If we didn't get in that water before we left there was going to be a ruckus, a riot, a coup! We did end up getting into the water for an hour, the instructor (who is absolutely soooo nice!!!!) came in to give us elementary tips so that we wouldn't scare our baby girl with her first swim.





I think we were all amazed at how well she did. No screaming, no fright, it was all smiles and loving the water and having tons of fun. She did blastoffs from the wall and tried really hard to swim with legs and arms going every which way. We had an awesome time!

A-chan's Bento

A-chan made me a bento! With her Hello Kitty juice sippy, wooden grapes, orange, chocolate, bread, apple, & egg, the red ball sitting on the green circle shape became ice cream with a handy dandy orange fork.

It was so sweet!!!!

Words of the week #7

Mata, you talk.
Banana has bruise, oh no, banana!
Dada wear hat. Hold umbrella over your head.
Not quite. (Referring to a puzzle piece that she had in the wrong direction. I'm pretty sure she picked up the quote from Ketu )
Mata leg hurts? Mata, cookie make feel better
I guess not.
Milk for breakfast? Sounds great!
Look! Little car, I eat it? Yum! (referring to the tiny bites of pizza that I cut up for her)

Repetition

One learns through repetition. But is there such a thing as too much repetition? A-chan seems to just get stuck on something and I am generally put through my paces as we repeat an action over and over and over. And over. I know that she is having fun and I love to play, especially the silly fun games that she invents. However it's also beginning to drive me batty sometimes.

The game yesterday was having her Satsuki doll run (be moved by me) all over her train table calling (as close to the voice in the movie as I can get) "Mei? Where are you, Mei? Mei, wake up!" Then as soon as Mei wakes up (stood up by A-chan), she immediately went to sleep again and we started over with the searching and calling. Now if this had only happened a couple of times it wouldn't have been so bad. But we continued the game for almost an hour. My attempts to get her to continue on with the scene instead of running reruns were completely ineffective. Ketu's attempts backfired with her asking to read the book and then minutes later going back into the routine. I was soooo tempted to hide the dolls today. But she seemed to have forgotten the game already.

Another example: a big floor puzzle that I have to help her put together every morning. It's not so bad, really, and it's a nice time for me to spend with her. But I can only take so much of doing the same puzzle. I feel bad complaining about it now, though. Am I a horrible mother because it's driving me nuts? Or does every mother feel the same way and that is why toy consumerism is as healthy an industry as it is? (please, a new toy will make it all better. something new and different, anything, please?)

Blowing one's nose

I've never realized how difficult it is to teach someone to blow their nose. Obviously that's because I've never had to try teaching it before, but it's not something I ever thought about either. Ketu and I spent a small part of our evening trying to teach A-chan how to blow her nose - an event that would make our lives soooo much better. The actual action involved in this process is completely hidden by tissue and thus impossible for a toddler to see and emmulate. I now know that there is a need for see-through nose tissues! Disgusting, yes. Easier for teaching purposes, yes. There are special products for teaching a child how to tie their shoes, brush their teeth, even how to use chopsticks...why not for blowing the nose? Maybe even a video, lol.

On another note, a good friend of ours taught A-chan the distinctive Fonz "A" thumb sign. He didn't mean to, I don't think, it just kind of happened when she copied him. And she was so incredibly delighted with it that it was infectious. It has now become a daily ritual and she's just so darn cute doing it. Last night Ketu was asking her if she was going to be a doctor when she grew up when she suddenly made her sign. For some strange reason she decided that he was asking her to make the "A" grow up and so she did. All other signs that evening were with her thumb high up in the air over her head and saying "A grow up!" So he asked if she was going to be the Fonz when she grew up and she immediately said yes, lol.

No Winter

They promised us a full day of actual winter today. But they lied! All we got was rain. Lots of rain. There was no snow, no ice, no powerfailure, no eating of cold soup and pbjs and oreos. I was sooo disappointed! A-chan loves snowmen so much, she just can't get enough of them in books and movies, etc....I wanted so much to make her one, even if was just two inches high. Oh well.

It does make me muse on the climate change issue, a bit. I remember as a child we had several ice storms or snows per year. They weren't much - maybe an inch of snow - but we had at least three every year. (yes, I still live in my home town, pretty neat!) It's been almost three years since we had even one freeze, isn't that crazy? Most of the winter we don't even have to have the heat on and putting up holiday decorations was done in shorts and t-shirts. So...how are things going to keep changing I wonder. What kind of winter will A-chan have when she is twenty? It makes me feel very powerless and lost. Even if I continue to do all the recycling and green-earth stuff I can from now until forever, will it make any difference? I can't really comprehend how my little family and I can change anything unless we magically convince 1000 other people to do it with us who weren't already doing so, etc.

In any case, I've been mad all day. I wanted Winter gosh darn it!