Comma Dot Comma

Visitors:
Two of Abigail’s favorite people have been around lately: Grammy and Auntie Marie, on successive weekends. Now that she can both remember and anticipate, I tell her of their visits a day in advance of arrival. We do lots of pretend phone conversations with the coming visitors (Gammy? Pane? Coming? Bye bye!) and she rejoices when they finally arrive. It is also clear that the emotional intensity of being with beloved visitors takes a toll. When they are here, she tends to run into rooms by herself, shutting doors behind her. I wish she were a little older so I could just let her have some unsupervised alone time. Sometimes I will go and hide out with her for awhile, and that seems to help. She both wants to be with them every second and wants her space.

Tantrums:
The rise of the tantrum is upon us. Both Grammy and Marie have witnessed a few doozies. Managing emotions is all about expectations, isn’t it? For one meltdown, she misunderstood me when we were driving around town. Every time we passed a school playground, she would shout “Slide! Sand!” So I mentioned the park. She thought I said we could go to the park if it wasn’t too cold, but I really had said we could go after her nap if it wasn’t too cold. She answered by shouting, “Jacket! Jacket!” (Looks like Abi may be one of those kids with an answer for everything). She got herself all excited and then the histrionics started when we pulled into the driveway at home instead of the parking lot at the park.

Her worst one ever was over the computer. I was just getting her set up to type on the laptop when she pushed the off button. Her dad said that okay, she was done, and took her away to do something else. The tears! The writhing! She was rolling across the tile and pushing herself around the house with her feet, screaming. We had to put her in her bed until she calmed down. I understand the feeling of just starting to do something and then being rudely interrupted, but really! She is getting so single-minded. Even after several minutes of crying in bed followed by cuddles and other activities, Abi made a beeline for the computer desk when given the opportunity. Today she spotted a jug of juice when I was putting away groceries and we heard about it for a good forty-five minutes. “Juice? Juice? Find it!” She refused to eat dinner and instead went rummaging through the pantry in search of the juice. The simple redirect just doesn’t cut it with her anymore.

Poopage:
Abigail has pooped in her potty! Directly after the park meltdown and the subsequent failed nap, Abigail announced that she needed to poop mid-diaper change, marched her little bare butt into the bathroom, shut the door, and sat down on her new, smaller potty. She was in there for quite a long time, long enough to make a mom nervous, so I checked on her. I had interrupted something. No poop yet! We told everyone in the house about how Abigail had tried to go poop on the potty like a big girl. “Want to try again?” She nodded earnestly and raced back to her potty, shutting the bathroom door again. She came out a few minutes later, announcing victory. Sure enough, she’d left a sizable deposit! Unfortunately it had lots of little finger marks in it, but she had done it! Hooray! There was much rejoicing and double sticker -giving and showing off the bare butt that had done the deed. Also much hand-washing. She was so pleased with herself that she thought she’d try a few more times today. She left the door cracked so I could see her sitting patiently for half a minute, then jumping up to peek and see if anything was there, then sitting back down, for several minutes. We need to work on timing, I guess. But still! Big girl, eh?

Today Abigail and I tied on our ape-ums (hers a cute little blue and white gingham one that her dad wore as a toddler, mine a long, black leftover from my days as a barista) and whipped up some wah-vle. Or Fah-fuffs. Or Wha-fifs, depending on the pronunciation attempt. We lined up all the ingredients, as follows:
Eggs! Eggs!
Fawer
Mulk
Suh-guh
Bacon Power
Sawt
Ool
Vanilla (she didn’t even try to say that one)

Then I measured each ingredient and passed it off to Abigail to pour into the bowl. She cacked each egg by throwing it quite hard into the bottom of the bowl. If it didn’t cack, then I cacked it myself on the edge of the bowl. After carefully powing in each item, she would stuh it with the metal whisk. “Mama! Abi! Cook!” she exclaimed. Once the batter was ready, I Ope-umed the waffle iron, and Abi cautioned me: “Hot! Hot!” I poured the batter in and set the timer for five minutes. We occupied ourselves with putting things away and tidying up.

“Beep beep! Done!” Abigail informed me when the timer went off. “Ope-um! Look!” We took out our first fah-fuf and admired it. We ripped off pieces and dipped them in maple syrup, munching away while we waited for the rest of the waffles to cook. MMMMMMMMmmmmm!

Abigail loves to cook waffles. She asks to do it whenever she spots our blue mixing bowl or the waffle iron itself, tucked into the appliance cupboard (unbelievably, I have reached the stage of homemaking where I actually have a whole cupboard devoted to appliances).

Abigail wants to poop and pee like a big girl. For three or four months, she’s been sneaking away to do her business behind couches and curtains. And now that she’s talking, she frequently announces her bodily functions in advance of actually going. The other day, while running around in the nude (“Abigail! Naked!”), she announced the need to pee. I told her I would put a diaper on her, but she refused and ran to the bathroom instead. I put her up on the toilet, but that was way too scary. Abigail held her pee until she was safely down and could run back to her room and squeeze behind her crib to make a little puddle on the carpet. I asked the mighty Facebooks if I should start potty training her, and they said yes. She is only 18 months old and doesn’t yet know how to pull her pants up and down, but other than that, she has all the signs of readiness.

So we went to the store together and picked out her own potty. And then we went to the library and got some fun little books about how big kids go potty. She sits on it quite happily a few times a day (she likes to be in there by herself with the door shut, if possible), both clothed and unclothed. Sometimes reading one of her books will inspire her to rush to the bathroom and give it a try. She hasn’t quite mastered the key concept of personal agency, though. Every time she gets up, she peers into the potty to see if there is any pee or poop in it, as if the simple act of sitting down will cause it to magically appear. She’s losing interest a bit now that she’s realizing that no interesting materials are going to make an appearance on their own, and now that she has explained and trained all her key stuffed animals in the fine art of sitting on the potty. Today she sat down with a bare bottom for a few minutes, checked for pee, and then went into my room to pee on the floor in the shelter of my recliner instead. Don’t know what that was about.

Her potty chair is too big for her and she can’t plant her feet on the ground firmly. So far I haven’t come up with a good little step, so I’m thinking I might need to get another chair altogether. This one converts to a toilet-top one, but even with a step stool our toilet is too tall for her. She is quite tall for her age, but it’s mostly torso, which doesn’t help in achieving prime pee position. Oy! the logistics!

Since so many readers of this blog have babies and toddlers of their own, I thought I’d share some of Abigail’s favorites. But turnabout is fair play– what do your kiddos like?

Favorite naptime book: Siesta by Ginger Foglesong Guy, Illustrated by Rene King Moreno. Abigail loves the richly detailed, color-themed illustrations, as well as the rhythm of the book as a small boy goes through the house gathering things for naptime in Spanish and English.

Favorite Library Book: We’ve All Got Bellybuttons, by David Martin, Illustrated by Randy Cecil. Each page shows animals that share a body part with humans, and something they can do with that part. They say, “We can ______, can you?” It only took her two read-throughs of the book to find each body part and do each motion.

Favorite Music Video: Tilly and the Wall tapdancing to the ABC song on Sesame Street. For a couple weeks Abigail would sit through this as many times as I would allow her to.

Current Favorite Song: “Zora,” by the Deedle Deedle Dees on the CD Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti. This CD is generally on all the time in the car, and there are a few songs Abigail especially likes, but she enjoys hearing this one four or five times in a row and trying to sing along. I think it’s because she loves letters and letter sounds. I myself find the song too similar to a fourth grade biography report, with lyrics such as “her ethnographic work took her all over the southern states,” but it is fun to sing “Zuh- Zuh- Zuh- Zora” and shout out the letters of her name in the chorus.

Favorite TV Show: The Wonder Pets. Actually, her favorite TV show is Barney, but, in addition to being terrible television, it is like baby heroin. The emotional highs and lows she experiences watching it and then having to turn it off (15 minutes is her daily limit) are just too much for her skinny little body to endure. The Wonder Pets are just right, though only the first season is available for streaming on Netflix and we’ve been through it three times. Episodes are 10-12 minutes long, involve cute little animals and peppy little songs, and follow a predictable structure with some variation. Perfect for her. And they have jokes for parents, which I like.