Twenty-eight Months: She's The Decider

Dear Miriam,

Your dictatorial leanings are expanding these days, although you wear velvet gloves for the most part. Would you like to clean my nose? is the latest subtle direction, due to your current cold. But the big news is you deciding to wear panties and use the toilet.

Back in February, Mimi encouraged me to buy panties that you would want to wear, and I dutifuly ordered some super-soft floral-patterned numbers from Hana Andersson. They left you fairly unmoved, and you insisted on diapers. So when I fished a pair of $2 panda-printed panties out of a sale bin at Gymboree, I was thinking that they'd be useful "someday." You seized on them the moment you saw them. We had a talk about how you could wear them when you were ready to use the toilet all the time, and when you went a few days without an accident. Lo and behold, the training pants came back out of the drawer, and they're all you'll wear right now. We visit the panda panties occasionally, and it's been two weeks since you've had a full-on accident. You don't always catch yourself in time, but you've learned to hold on till we get to the toilet. And you'll even sit on an adult seat, sometimes preferring it to your folding portable seat. You're doing great! And it's suddenly way less stressful than it used to be.

So you're The Decider. You fly through decisions with jet-like speed. You will say Strawberries, Strawberries, Strawberries over and over again until we bring them to you, only to burst into frustrated tears, shrieking No Strawberries! Clearly half the disorders in the DSM originate at the toddler stage of development, and you are fully capable of demonstrating several per hour. But your unhappiness in these moments is so palpable, I ache for you even while I'm counting to ten to try to keep from running screaming from the room.

You're also continuing to demonstrate a physicality that surprises us. You will climb anything (except your crib, so far...), you love being upside down, tossed and flipped. You've added the occasional backflip to the nightly Want to jump on you sessions, you continue to discover new climbs at the playground, and you love to slide down the poles when your dad is there to help.

Yet there are things you absolutely refuse to do. You will not wear goggles at swim class. You wear flippers and kick solo in a floaty tube, but goggles are out. You will never go down a slide first, waiting till another playmate takes the first plunge. And you are totally disinterested in being a Big Girl. If any of us try this compliment, you're quick to tell us that you're still a baby, and you love to crawl into our arms for a cuddle.

Yet you're experimenting with calling us Mom and Dad, something I'm completely unready for. It sounds so strange coming from you, making the times you call my My Mommy (as in, Uppy up, my Mommy) all the more sweet.

And you've discovered your baby doll. Where you used to carry her by her neck, mostly, now you frequently put her to bed before retiring yourself, and want to go see her first thing in the morning. You feed her, change her clothes, rock and shhh her with a technique straight out of Happiest Baby on the Block, and put her in your toy shopping cart, announcing Okay, see you, I'm going to the grocery store.

Many of your sentences require a complex diagram these days. When Mana and Papa told you they would be gone when you awoke from your nap, you told them You have to play with me one more time before you leave. And you still swear in context, exclaiming Oh shit when you hear something drop. On the way home from swim class one day, you were trying to tell me about the balloons on the cars at the used car lot while I negotiated a tricky bit of driving. Perceiving you were being ignored, you exclaimed, I want balloons on our fucking car. We spent the next ten miles adding more acceptable modifiers to car: blue car, big car, Mommy's car, MZ's car, etc. You were satisfied with the game, returning me as it did to my position of playmate.

And the singing! You continue to string songs together in fabulous medleys, including snippets of the Shabbat blessings. It's not at all unusual to hear you sing Borei pri hagafen I'm a little teapot short and stout or A - B - C... next time won't you sing with me l'hadlik ner shel Shabbat.

All in all, it's been a hilarious, maddening, and very sweet month. We're so proud of your growing independance, even as we cherish these last moments of babyness.

All my love,
Your Mommy

Twenty-seven months: I Make Stuff Up

Dear Miriam,

You are now officially conversational, except that much of what you say is only tangentially related to the truth. We ask you questions, and you respond with answers. It's up to us to figure out if the answer is a) correct and in context; b) correct but something that happened two weeks ago; or c) completely made up, although a correct English sentence.

I suspect that this is because you've caught on to the interplay of conversation, but don't yet have a firm sense of chronology or context, thus you have no reference point for a "correct" answer. However, I'm still slayed when you tell us you went swimming with Mana and Papa when we ask how you liked daycare. Or when you tell us you had a yot of shrimp for dinner when we watched you eat nothing at all.

However, you are trying things again, which is great. After last month's clam shocker, you've been pretty willing to try one bite of most anything, resulting in the discovery that you love grilled meat, siu mai and mosakhan, but are not so much on Ikea meatballs. Also, anything you don't want to eat is a punion. Punions include parsley on noodles, mashed potatoes on grilled meat, and the zucchini in your favorite tamales. Punion is an excellent word.

Unfortunately, your profligate use of words has not prevented our least favorite verbal (or nonverbal) development to date: loud, highpitched shrieking whenever you are bored. You started on the flight out to Florida, and I looked at your Auntie D with real fear in my eyes. Her look told me that she didn't the hell know what to do, either, and I'd better get a grip since you are in fact my daughter. It took us a day and a half to figure out that you do this when you're bored or want attention, and although it is superhumanly difficult to grab your attention when you are screaming the scream of the undead in our faces, this has helped the redirection a lot.

The trip to Florida was delightful, other than the screaming. You were so sweet with your Grandma Little, clearly concerned at her lack of mobility, intrigued by her wheelchair and oxygen tube, and irresistably gracious about the enormous baby doll she gifted you. You cuddled the doll that is almost half your size, and whenever we visited, you told her where the doll was and how you'd bring Baby to see her next time -- without prompting. Nice sense of occasion, kiddo.

You're still singing your way through our days, and we're kicking ourselves that we haven't made a video of you singing The Smile Song. Your Dad asks you to sing it all the time, and sometimes you dignify us with a recital. I want never to forget the way you wag your finger on the "I bet you'd never guess it," or the amazing smile you don for the big finish.

I already posted about Passover, but Easter was memorable this year, too. After my pan-religious-experience epiphany, I welcomed Easter this year as another fun holiday to visit. Your favorite potty reading for the last six weeks has been the Williams-Sonoma Easter catalog -- the one with all the candy. You ask me to read about the rabbits (which never fails to remind me of Of Mice and Men, for which I am truly sorry), and we gaze upon the chocolate bunnies, bunny cookies, candy chicks and decorated baskets. At some point I told you that Mana and Papa would buy you a chocolate bunny and that became a key archetype of our Easter ponderings.

On Easter morning, we went to a small Easter egg hunt in our local park, where you and your playmates looked quizzically at us as we pointed out eggs on the ground, eventually catching on that you should pick them up and find more. In retrospect, this had to be incredibly confusing, since we usually spend a lot of time trying to keep you from picking up stuff from the ground. But by the time you got to your private Easter egg hunt at Mana and Papa's, you were an expert. You knew the plastic eggs from the real, and understood that the fake ones contain chocolate. You surreptitiously scraped off the foil wrapper and ate more candy than you've ever had in a single day. And yes, there was a chocolate bunny for dessert, and you ate the ears, head and neck in one sitting on your Papa's ever-indulgent lap.

Last week we celebrate Auntie S's birthday, and she made cupcakes for you at your request. When she arrived at the restaurant, you marched up to her, said happy birthday, and grabbed the pink bakery box out of her hands and carried it into the restaurant. We were all pretty convinced you would drop it, but you were super careful and they arrived safely. You devoured three mini cupcakes after dinner, and I strongly suspect that the count was actually four but your Papa didn't want to give me a heart attack so he lied.

This wouldn't be a proper report without a potty update. In the last weeks, you've decided diapers are your friend. The trip to Florida, where diapers were a necessity, probably didn't help, but you haven't volunteered to wear panties outside the house for weeks, and often abjectly refuse to use the potty, so we've backed way off. We're in no rush, and the last thing we want is a negative association with the toilet, but I'm clearly in denial because we're almost out of diapers and I can't seem to bring myself to log on to 1-800-diapers these days.

Miriam, it's been another delightful month. We can't wait to see what's ahead.

All my love,
Your Mommy

Twenty-five Months: Sing a Song!

Dear Miriam,

While we've been catering to you for over two years now, lately it's taken a new turn. Your verbal acuity and basic two-ness combine to create a true dictator. Stand up, Sit down here, Take your shoes off, Put on soft pants, Get Puppy -- you have the words for everything and we're at your bidding, apparently. We indulge you, ask you to say please, tell you no, but mostly we just marvel at what a little person you've become, and how large your opinions are in contrast to that little body.

Your opinions stood you well in Tahoe this past weekend, where you discovered snow. We explained that snow would be cold, since all your books make it look fluffy as chenile, but we also explained that you might think it was phenomenal (your new word), and sure enough, you observed both aspects of snow. On the first day, it was bright and sunny and you walked along the road, pulling chunks off the snowplow pile along the road and hucking them ahead of you gleefully. Sledding found you more cautious, willing to go down once or twice, but not really that into it.

But while you don't seem to feel the need for speed, this month saw the emergence of the running, climbing MZ. You've gone from being a fairly still child to something of an acrobat, and you really seem to enjoy activities that test your balance -- you love walking on bleachers, berms and stoops, and have taken a liking to the various ladders and climbing walls at the playgrounds we visit. It seems as though you've stopped working so hard at language acquisition, and have more energy to devote to moving your body.

With Pugawug along, you also discovered the joys of a potty party. In Tahoe, you two spent a good third of your time in the loo, watching and coaching and offering to flush. There were accidents, but also some grand successes. I'm not prepared to push this, we're just going to see where it takes us, but I won't be sorry to say bye-bye to diapers and our vigilance against diaper rash.

And finally, the world is a song. You sing everything, from songs you know to made up songs. You sing about putting clothes on and seeing your grandparents and eating lunch. You sing the ABCs, This Old Man, and the perennial favorite, I've been working on the rainbow. We can't get enough of your singing, we find it endearing and lovely and the way you string your medleys together confirms your utter brilliance in our eyes.

Miriam, you put a song in our hearts always,
Love,
Your Mommy

Pee Me a River

We got MZ a potty several months ago, and at first she was interested, but fairly quickly she stopped wanting to sit on it and we assumed she wasn’t ready for toilet training. But at her two year appointment, her pediatrician told us that two is the average age for American girls to potty train, so we went home and started trying again. Again she balked.

That same week we visited Pugawug, who had just picked out her new toilet seat adapter and step stool, and MZ asked to try it out. She showed more interest and patience than she had previously, if not more pee. So we went out and got her a set of her own, and lo, she’s interested!

The toilet trainer is super-light and has handles, same with the new stool. And she loves to put them in place and put them away. She’s Charles in Charge on the toilet, and she’ll sit for much longer than I would have expected.

After a few days of pre-nap poop-and-pee success, I let her go bottomless before we left the house. Who knew a toddler could pee so much? The puddle on the carpet was deep and wide, and confirmed everything I suspected about my ability to handle a rampantly evacuating child while penned up at home. I just don’t have the disposition for an encampment, and find it a bit hard to great each accident with equanimity when they’re a mere twenty minutes apart. Assuming that my frustration would do more harm than good, I’m resolved that potty training may be a longer process for us than it is for the Potty Party set.

I bought her some cotton training panties. Our friends and neighbors offered mixed reports, some said it was too confusing for the kiddos while others said they saved their sanity. After an accident in her trainers resulted in wet pants but no puddle, I know I fall in the latter camp. These are soft cotton and fairly thin, and MZ seems clear on the difference between these and diapers. And I’m not pulling my hair out trying to manage puddles, piles and the ubiquitous cat barf.

This morning she peed in her training pants, and I told her calmly that she could tell me when she has to pee and we’ll put her on the toilet. Thirty minutes later she told us she was peeing and we said we could go to the potty – she held it and completed the job on the toilet! Thirty minutes later, as I was leaving for work, I heard her telling Bubbie that she had to pee and off they went to the toilet again. Clear progress.

I like the idea of letting her pick out her own undies, but I think we’ll wait on that until she holds it a little longer between trips to the potty. Baby steps…