Toddler Craziness
Ever since The Little Empress became a toddler, I’ve continually marveled at the seemingly random thought process of toddlers. It just never ceases to amaze and intrigue me.
A long time ago, we got a large yellow rubber ducky blow up bath for The Little Empress. She bathed in it from the time she could sit up until she was a little over a year old. Since then, it has been retired to life as a diaper holder in our master bathroom.
For whatever reason, The Little Empress decided on Friday night that Mr. Ducky is the bestest. toy. ever. and insisted that Daddy bring Mr. Ducky downstairs for her to play with. Daddy complied and TLE spent the rest of the night toting this rubber duck bath tub with her everywhere she went. Mr. Ducky is easily just about as big as her and quite unwieldy but TLE still insisted on toting him around.
TLE thanking Daddy for bringing Mr. Ducky downstairs
On Sunday afternoon, TLE was playing on and off with Mr. Ducky as well as just running around like a maniac, per usual. Oddly, she’d chosen a pair of pink footie pajamas as her outfit of the day. (This after wearing mismatching pajamas when we went out yesterday. I let her out in public in the most horrific of outfits but she’s so proud to do so. Who am I to stop her?) Eventually, she settled down (somewhat) to watch a few episodes of Futurama with Daddy while I attempted to wade through my work backlog. It was a nice change of pace as The Hubs ™ has been working 12+ hour days for the past two weeks so I think both of them were happy to have some bonding time.
About an hour into Futurama, I hear The Hubs ™ call out.
“Uh, honey? We’ve got a situation here.”
Situation, huh? I pushed back my chair and started to make my way out of the office when The Little Empress ran out right in front of me. Grinning, she handed me the diaper off of her naked butt and then promptly ran off. According to The Hubs ™, she had suddenly tired of her pink footies and decided that she wanted to run around nekkid. She continued to run around the rest of the afternoon, happily bouncing from chair to ottoman and to the floor again, reveling in the awesomeness of being nekkid. It took me about two hours to convince her to at least wear a diaper. (I’ll defend other families’ decision to EC but we are definitely NOT an EC household!!)
TLE & Mr. Ducky
Oh well. At least I got a few photos to embarrass her with later in life. And really, isn’t that what digital cameras in the hands of mothers is all about??
Read MoreSnippety Snip
I was a bald baby, born with absolutely no hair on my big ass noggin. I didn’t have what one could categorize as “hair” until I was nearly 2 years old and even then, it was thin and whispy. I did not grow a proper head of hair until I was in preschool. And what did I get after that? A rice bowl haircut! Pfft!
When The Little Empress was born, the first thing I asked was “Does she have hair?” I was assured that indeed, my little girl was born with a full head of hair! It went through some wacky stages in her first year of life, going from thick and robust to this weird male-pattern baldness thing around 3 months to nearly completely bald by the time she was six months old! At about that time it began to grow normally and by around late summer last year, I was excited to be able to finally put it into (tiny) pigtails!
But as her hair grew longer, it also grew into her eyes. I kept on getting poked by my parents to get her a haircut already. I was hesitant about cutting her hair because I loved the idea of my little girl having long hair. I would pull her hair into a side ponytail (circa 1980s) as seen here.
Side ponytail
Granted, this 80s ponytail is adorable as hell but really, I couldn’t keep it up forever. I finally decided that enough was enough and it was time to get her the haircut.
So finally, at just a week shy of her 2nd birthday, we took The Little Empress to the local children’s hair salon to get her a cute little haircut. She didn’t like the drape but she loved the Lightning McQueen salon car she got to sit in so that distracted her enough to get her hair cut.
Getting her haircut
Here’s the final result:
New 'do
The salon gave her a really cute cut! Her bangs are a nice, even length and while they did keep the overall length, she’s got some nice layers to keep the hair from getting into her face. In fact, it is pretty close to what I normally get when I get a hair cut!
I’m so proud of what a little trooper The Little Empress turned out to be. I was sure she’d tantrum so this was a nice surprise. Since this was her first haircut, the salon gave us a commemorative certificate with a cute little instant photo of her as well as a lock of her hair tucked away in a little bag. *sniff* She’s really looking more and more grown up these days. Her baby days really are long gone!
Read MoreOn Cosleeping
As part of our nighttime routine, The Little Empress usually enjoys a half-hour or so of playtime in her bedroom before getting ready for bed. It is a great way to help her wind down and allows us to do the essentials such as pick out her pajamas, etc. She’s been playing pretend a lot more frequently now and one night last week, I asked her to “pretend to go night-night.”
To my surprise, TLE happily climbed up into her toddler bed, tucked herself in and made a dramatic show of closing her eyes.
“Are you sleeping?” I asked. TLE’s eyes remained shut. “Okay, Mommy will leave you now,” I said. “Good night.” TLE didn’t make a move. I turned off her light and walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. Not a peep.
I was amazed. Until very, very recently, leaving a room that TLE was in meant that TLE would run behind me, usually wailing. But I did not hear a cry nor even a stir. For a few moments, I was somewhat conflicted — should I let her sleep, for the first time, alone in her room? She seemed ready. After thinking it over and noting that she still needed her evening diaper change, I opened the door and turned on the lights.
TLE seemed mostly okay with her pretend sleep being disturbed but when I told her that we were going to go night-night in our big bed, she protested. She had a taste of independence and it seemed that she wanted more.
I brought up TLE’s “pretend night-night” with The Hubs ™ and we discussed the possibility of moving TLE to her own room. I was surprised at how sad I was at the idea of TLE sleeping away from us. While I know it will happen eventually, I figured that we were still years from that day. Now it seems that the day we no longer share a bed with TLE will come sooner rather than later.
Like our decision to always have a stay at home parent, the decision to cosleep was made long before we ever got pregnant. Both of us came from cosleeping families; it seemed to us that the most natural place for a small child to sleep would be with their parents. Practically speaking, cosleeping was a lifesaver for us. As a newborn, TLE refused to sleep in her Arm’s Reach co-sleeper, only wanting to sleep in the bed beside me. Cosleeping made breastfeeding at night blissfully easy. While I was working, cosleeping allowed TLE to reverse cycle, allowing her to continue to nurse and allowing me to keep the milk flowing.
As she got older, cosleeping has gotten more difficult. As she’s gotten bigger, she takes up more room. (I never knew that a 22lb toddler could take up so much room on a Cal King bed!!) She is a mobile sleeper, thrashing about and kicking off covers. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve woken up with a toddler foot (or butt!!) in my face. And when she’s awake, she’s awake and makes for a very loud, screeching alarm clock.
Even so, the idea of not sleeping with her makes me sad. Cosleeping has meant some lost sleep here and there but it also means that I’ve gotten to wake up to the sweetest babbling in the morning. Ever wake up to baby babble or toddler cuddles? They’re the best.
For what it is worth, TLE hasn’t balked at cosleeping since then. I may try to introduce the concept of sleeping in her toddler bed for her naps before transitioning to fulltime sleeping in her own bed. I know that eventually, she will demand her own bed and when that time comes, she will get it. Until then, I can only hope that I can continue to enjoy our family bed for just a little while longer.
Read MoreMs. Independent
As The Little Empress’ 2nd birthday draws ever closer, it seems that she is growing exponentially more independent by the day. She started walking and standing around her first birthday. Around this time, she also began to refuse to be spoon fed. Rather than fight about every meal, I would simply cut her food into manageable pieces and put them on her tray for her to feed herself.
A few months after that, as she became steadier on her feet, she began to balk at being worn despite having been worn nearly every day of her life prior to that. She was insistent on being allowed to walk and explore for herself. As she gained more mobility, she began to balk at being put in her high chair. We ended up selling off her high chair, allowing her to sit in a booster seat. The booster seat didn’t last long as she realized that the adults in the house didn’t use boosters. For at least the past few months, she has been sitting at a regular chair, just like the adults. (Unfortunately, she also insists on sitting in regular chairs at most restaurants which, as you can probably imagine, is troublesome.)
These days, she’s asserting her continued growing independence by successfully thwarting baby gates and insisting on going down steps on her own. She’s been climbing up the steps for quite awhile but climbing down them, and throwing herself onto the floor if we try to carry her, is a new thing. She now insists on being allowed to walk and explore when we go shopping rather than be content to sit in the shopping cart.
The change in her in just a year has been incredible. She’s gone from an almost excessively clingy baby who screamed incessantly when approached by strangers to this insatiably curious, gregarious and social toddler. She still has her shy moments but for the most part, she’s happy and well adjusted.
The Hubs remarked recently, “With all this breastfeeding and co-sleeping and such, she may be independent but hopefully, she’ll always know that she can come back to us.” And that’s when I remembered that this is why we’ve chosen to parent the way we have. Our goal has always been to meet her physical and emotional needs, no matter what they are. We have always sought to nurture her self-esteem, to let her know that she’s always loved, cared for and adored. The idea is that if she knows that she will always be unconditionally loved and cared for, she will have the self-esteem to explore and learn about her world without worry, knowing that we’ll always support her and that we are always here for her when she wants to check in.
And when The Little Empress begins to negotiate the stairs, she peers to the side and smiles as if to say, “Hey Mommy, look at me! I’m doing it all by myself!” before returning to the task at hand. She is not afraid. She has confidence in herself and knows that I am there to cheer her on.
I smile back and think to myself, “Huh, I guess this whole attachment parenting thing is working out after all.”
Read MorePuddles, puddles EVERYWHERE!!!
When we introduced her to drinking from a cup, we must have gone through all sorts of sippies, including the no-spill ones. While she seemed to like to teethe on the spouts, she never actually liked to drink from them.
But when we introduced her to drinking from a straw, she took to it immediately. The problem was that I found a lot of the “no spill” straw cups tended to gunk up and were very hard to clean. Even when cleaning them immediately and scrubbing them using a Q-tip didn’t get them clean enough for me to trust. Finally, I decided to use a combination of disposable straws with reusable straws (specifically these Take and Toss cups from The First Years) which has worked out well for us except for one tiny thing… they’re not spill proof.
The non-spill proof thing hasn’t been a problem until recently. The past few weeks have been pretty rainy here in the Bay Area but honestly, the puddles outside have nothing on the puddles that The Little Empress likes to create inside. I tend to give her a 2 to 3 oz of milk at a time — such a tiny amount compared to what other kids her age tend to drink! I’d happily give her more milk to drink if she’d take it but she simply won’t. She takes a few sips and as soon as she’s no longer thirsty, she’ll turn the cup upside down and begin to sprinkle it on the floor!!
At first, she only did this every now and then but lately it has been a huge problem. It seems every time we give her something to drink, most of it finds its way to the floor. What is in the cup seems to make little difference; she’ll do this with milk, juice, water. On a few particularly gross incidents, I have caught her dumping the liquid onto our hardwood floors and then attempting to lap it up like a dog! (EUW!!!)
I’m really at a loss for how to stop this. I’ve given her time outs, taken the cup away, etc. Nothing seems to work and she does need to drink. All I can do these days is to keep a stash of paper towels or cloth towels handy to mop up the mess and then take out the Swiffer to try to get rid of the stickiness. *sigh* I am just hoping that this is a phase she’ll hurry up and grow out of. (At this point, I am just so happy we picked out hard surface floors for our house for this very reason! I can only hope the hardwood can survive TLE’s onslaught of abuse!)
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Copyright
Text and photographs copyrighted by Michelle N unless otherwise noted.