Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Nineteen Months

E is 19 months. Currently she:

Is a happy, analytical kid.

Goes to sleep at 10pm and gets up around 5 (ugh). She naps anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours depending on they day. Usually once per week she'll skip the nap altogether.

Sleeps in my bed with two teddy bears. My sisters were hopelessly attached to their teddy bears growing up, and it was a huge problem if one of them got lost. I thought I'd plan ahead and make sure I had two different bears E liked so that we were covered if one got lost. Somehow that turned into needing both at night, thus creating more opportunity for drama should either one go missing. I tried.

Loves to climb.  Onto tables, benches, sofas, beds, people, and any/everything else.

Loves to walk. Serious, all over the city, walks. She can go tirelessly and rarely asks to be carried.

Likes to use the sidewalk curb, retaining walls, and steps as balance beams as she goes. This is extra special because I can remember doing this as a kid and loving it.

Loves to smell flowers. The other day she was smelling tons of lilies on our walk and had a completely orange face by the time we got to our destination.

Is completely potty trained. She still has an accident here or there, but she's doing wonderfully. She's boycotted naptime diapers and removes them as soon as a leave the room. Nine times out of ten she'll wake up and call me if she needs to go during a nap.

Loves shoes! She likes to pick which ones to wear and always pulls a matching pair out of her massive pile of shoes.

Has started wiping the dogs' paws when they come inside, and occasionally when they're innocently lounging around the house.

Has started getting upset when I try to help her out.

Picks out her own outfits, but I'm not encouraging this for my own sanity. She'll empty an entire drawer searching for just the right outfit (um... I still do that!) I can tell her to pick something out and she will go upstairs, find an outfit or two, and bring them down to me.

Would live outside if I let her.

Still loves music and dancing. She can keep a beat and notices immediately when music starts playing.

Likes to boss the dogs around. Her chatty little toddler voice gets super deep and serious. She means business! Usually the dogs comply with her demands and I try to make sure E feeds them treats proportionate to the amount of patience needed on their part.

Can say just about anything, but rarely does. I didn't talk until the age of three, so I guess she gets it honestly.

Still eats pretty much anything. Currently she's loving all berries, tomatoes, and whatever I'm eating.

Can put dishes away!!! All that time spent emptying my kitchen cabinets has paid off. I can hand her anything that belongs in the lower cabinets and she will open the correct door and put it away.

Still doesn't like milk or most beverages. She drinks water with the occasional cup of kombucha or sip of unsweetened coffee if she's lucky enough to get her hands on it.

Loves chairs that are her size. She has an Adirondack lounger on my parents' deck that she adores, and a beach chair she uses daily in my living room... in PA. This morning when she smashed her banana into the beach chair and all I had to do was hose it off, I felt slightly less silly for letting her use it daily.



Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Panties



E's still itty bitty, hovering around the 10th percentile for weight and the 5th for height (I'm 5' tall, and Chou is Asian, so this really isn't anything shocking.) At 19 months of age, she fits perfectly in her 6-12 month dresses, and has plenty of room to grow in 12-18 month clothes. I love that she's getting plenty of wear out of her cute outfits rather than growing out of them immediately. About once a week I still have a stranger come up and ask how old she is, amazed that she's walking "already."  

While being a peanut has plenty of advantages, I know from personal experience that it also can pose some challenges. I always hated how amusement park rides went by height and not age. I have to climb to reach to tops of my cabinets, and I will always have to hem pants. 

The AAP currently recommends that children ride in booster seats in vehicles until they are 57" tall. For me, that would have meant using a booster seat until high school.

We've already had some challenges with E being so petite. She was born in December and had some adorable dresses, but all the tights came in size 0-9 months. They were longer than she was tall. Most standard walking shoes didn't come small enough to fit her feet when she started walking at 15 months. 

Now that she's potty trained, I've searched high and low, by store and internet, and haven't been able to find any underwear smaller than a 2T, which probably won't fit her for at least a year. She generally just goes commando at home because she prefers it and it just makes things easier. When we're out and about, we've stuck with bloomers from all of her dresses, but it's about time she actually has some panties that fit. Left with the options of buying them too big and needing to alter or making my own, I went with the cheaper route. 

I have a pile of old clothes, sweaters, and blankets just waiting to be put to good use. The softest, thinnest article in the pile was an old vintage fit American Eagle t-shirt of Chou's that had a few small holes. Using E's bloomers as a rough pattern, I was able to get four pairs of underwear for her, for free. I love that kind of project! I didn't have a lot of time, light, or patience, so they're significantly less than perfect, but I actually love how they turned out. Chou's only complaint is that they're lacking a tag to differentiate the front from the back, so I need to add a tag or marker of some sort to make them daddy friendly.

T-Shirt turned toddler underwear

So now we can add to the list of phrases I never thought would come out of my mouth, "E, come here. I need you to model some underwear for me."

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Cooking Dinner

I feel like I just accomplished a huge feat. I feel a little like super mom at the moment because I just cooked a delicious and nutritious dinner.

Once upon a time, I cooked frequently and could pull a pretty decent meal together. In middle and high school I cooked somewhat regularly, and in college we had homemade meals most nights.

Then I started dating a cute Asian who liked to cook. Cooking together was one of the first ways I really learned to trust Chou. He did things completely opposite of how I thought they needed to be accomplished and it drove me absolutely crazy until I realized that the end result was fabulous. Well, most of the time. We won't talk about the time he mistook salt for sugar. We learned to embrace our differences and create together. In one of Chou's college classes he was asked to define diversity. His answer was "I cook the rice and Megan cooks the pasta."

My sister lamented that it wasn't fair I snagged a guy who could cook, because I was more than capable of feeding myself. Gradually my boyfriend turned fiance turned husband cooked more and more as I cooked less and less. He eventually even took over the pasta. We still enjoy spending time in the kitchen together, but more often than not I'm doing dishes while he's preparing the food. One of the many things I love about my husband is that he truly loves people. One of his favorite ways to express love is by preparing and sharing great home-cooked meals or desserts. He loves experimenting and creating and perfecting amazingly good eats. E and I benefit from this every night. Chou (mostly) loves the challenge of cooking healthy and delicious meals because he knows how much it means to me. We both love how much E loves healthy, real food and will often choose the healthy food over the junk, simply because it's what she's used to eating. We ordered a plain pizza the other night and topped it with basil from the back yard and sliced local tomatoes. E ate the basil and tomato off the top and refused the touch the rest. We ended up searching the fridge and found some raw peas and green beans that she quickly devoured.

Tonight was one of the very few nights in recent history that I've had to cook without everything carefully thought out and prepared by Chou. He normally leaves us prepared food if he's not going to be around for dinner, or at the very least he has a meal plan and everything put together for me. This time he had some stuff come up last minute and didn't have time to plan for us. He left me with the ingredients for chili (but it's 80 degrees and humid here) and some take out menus to our favorite places.

I was planning on ordering sandwiches but I really wanted something healthy so I had no choice but to open my fridge, turn on my stove, and actually cook. E helped by snatching a tomato before I had the chance to even slice it.





She tried to steal a second one and got strapped down wrapped on my back instead. She had already eaten my entire lunch, I had to protect dinner :) Can you say growth spurt?!

Anyway, here's to all you amazing moms (and dads) who put dinner on the table every night, or most nights, or occasionally... Your family appreciates it!