Climbing into everything

Week 59:

• Nov 4: Bb’s feet are so long. Today I noticed that they are practically the length of my palm! Need to get a photo of this soon to document it. She’s quite tall for her age even though she’s in the 50th percentile. She’s almost the same height as her 18-month-old cousin and her 2-year-old playdate friend last week..
• Nov 7:  my idea of “fun” these days is watching bb interact with other babies and watching her play and seeing how she interacts with everything and everyone.  There’s so much joy to it as she’s so responsive now to others!  We just had a playdate over at her cousins’ where she met her one-month-old cousin for the second time who is just so adorable, cute, and fragile still.  It was so fun watching bb “walk” between the furniture and holding on and giggling with each step every time she made it through.  She has the cutest smile too.  
• She’s so much sturdier these days when walking along the ledges and her aunt noticed this too!  
• Her aunt and uncle were impressed with how well she “played” the electronic piano too.  Bb sat so well and upfront at the piano bench and had her hands placed perfectly at the keys.  She couldn’t press down hard enough every time for the keys to play the notes, but she watched us press the keys and smiled so much and really enjoyed it.  It’s her first “real” piano experience! 
• We bought another toy from FB marketplace, the Ikea Duktig wooden play kitchen!  It retails for $99 in the store (so $111.87 after taxes) and ever since we had the playdate with the two-year-old last weekend, DH and I have been trying to find one to buy for bb too.  Bb hangs out in the kitchen and likes to find kitchen items to play with and a play kitchen is a very good play item to have too for developmental reasons (hours of pretend play).  We weren’t fast enough to purchase the $30 and $75 ones we saw, but I was lucky enough tonight to be fast enough to message the seller and get one for $60!  (I saw one for $20 but it was all the way in Burlington…) I already partially paid for it via etransfer as per the seller’s preference and DH will pick it up on Thursday.  Can’t wait for bb to play with it!  And honestly, why buy anything new from the store ever again when items from FB marketplace are a fraction of the price and you don’t have to pay any tax either!  Seriously, all parents (and basically EVERYONE) should consider this platform before ever purchasing anything new ever again.  It’s SO good for the environment too.  I am seriously going to keep promoting and blogging about this every chance I get, haha.  
• I’m another week closer to revealing the exciting news we have… 😉
• I’m pumping twice a day now… forcing myself to not pump during dinner time even though by then I’m feeling engorged and a pump session would be helpful.  But to force myself to pump only twice a day will force my body to produce less breastmilk so that I can stop producing BM soon.  
• Really grateful that my mom can look after and take care of bb while we went out to celebrate DH’s birthday this weekend.  
• I bought a few French kids’ books for bb this week.  Will start reading to her in French… and test my French skills again.  Something “new” to learn 🙂 
• And of course where did I buy the French books from?  FB marketplace!  I got six books for $10, making each one only $1.67! 😀 😀 😀
• Paraphrasing what I read recently, but “a young child doesn’t need a lot of toys but needs the RIGHT kind of toys.” Love this idea and hope more parents know about this.  Kids can get overwhelmed with too much “stuff”, so it’s good to make sure that they play with quality stuff instead of too much “stuff”
• The next thing I want to get for her is a “learning tower/kitchen helper”.  It’s been on my list for a while but now that she likes standing and doing stuff on the counter, it’ll be immediately next on the list to get. They are so expensive; new ones cost $150 and above.  I’m looking at FBM ones and the cheapest ones are about 80 to 100.  I’m going to keep my eye out.  I actually remember seeing one for $40 months ago, but I wasn’t dead set on it yet.  Now that bb is standing better independently, it’s a good time to start browsing. 
• Nov 10: Since Monday, I’d been battling what seemed to be a return of mastitis… ugh. I felt warm and my right breast felt tender and warm; there was a clog there. I have been sleeping so late due to two 4- and 5-hour long transcripts due this week that I haven’t been resting well. I also stretched out my pumping to the record 15 hours too! And that’s when the clog happened. Dammit.
• I spent the last 2 days pumping more thoroughly and to try to pump out the clog.. and back to pumping 3 times a day to get the clog cleared. Thank goodness it cleared. I was afraid I’d have to take antibiotics to get rid of the mastitis if it truly emerged. Perhaps this is why my milk tasted salty when I mentioned it last time.. perhaps I have had a mild case of mastitis??
• Still heading towards the direction of weaning though. I’m tired of pumping and I’m not making a lot anyway these days. I want to have more time again.
• Since last week, she’s been flapping her hands/wrists up and down ever since she saw me do it once. I occasionally flap my wrists up and down to alleviate the tension from the pumping squeezes. She copied me and giggles when she does it. She’s so cute.
• She also copies us when we wipe something on the floor or table. She’ll do the wiping motion and say “mat”.
• Also, she’s seen me throw my head back when I take my prenatal/breastfeeding multivitamins. She likes to copy me so she throws her head back too. She actually likes it and does it sometimes on the couch for fun. And giggles.
• When holding her, I sometimes throw her backwards and she lovesss the sudden backward movement. It’s fun to her and she giggles so much when I do it. Too bad I don’t have this on camera.
• She knows when the table is wet, “sup”, and when something is hot, “yeet”.
• She actually says “da gu” a lot and I’ve come to realize she’s been trying to say “gau ju” which means sleep. My mom says it to her a lot and she’s picked it up. When she’s tired, she says that and we try to get her to bed. But she is terrible at day naps these days and always fights them…
• Can’t believe she is almost 14 months old now, a toddler!
• Yogurt every day still! We got the 2.5% one this week.
• I can actually pump with her in the room as she hovers around and plays with various objects. She knows I don’t play with her when I have the pump on (I’m sitting there stationery). She also likes to point to my pump and hear me say “Bellababy”.
• I read some French books to her this week. She liked hearing the words. She must know it sounds different/another language. It was fun for me too to remember how much French I remember in pronunciation. 
• She likes to point at things and tell us to get something for her. Same as when holding her, she’ll point to the direction of where she wants to go.
• She shakes her head and says “no” when the item isn’t the right one and does it repeatedly. Grandma said when she got the right item, bb actually nodded and grunted “yes”. Lolll 
• Brushing her teeth is difficult sometimes.. we are now brushing her teeth morning and night. She doesn’t always cooperate though but when she does, the brushing is great.
• Oh, I “made” a Montessori toy for her this week to play with but she wasn’t too enthused. The Montessori fb groups are amazing. I cut rings out of an empty toilet paper and let her slide the “rings” down the paper towel holder vertically. She could do it but wasn’t excited and didn’t repeat the play.
• DH also made a “coin box” for her to insert cards (coins) into. She didn’t know how to turn the cards so that they’d fit into the slot.
• Thank goodness for all the Instagram accounts and Facebook groups that provide so much parenting insights, tips, tricks, and content for me to read about. I don’t have a mom circle so I’m left to raise bb mostly on the resources I can find online. And they are sooo useful and valuable. Social media is amazing in terms of spreading knowledge to anyone. Like the say “where are you going/what do you plan on doing?” questions instead of “No! Get down from there” or “Be careful”. So much unlearning and reteaching myself to do.
• She has used the spoon a few times to feed herself yogurt and water. She enjoys being independent. 
• As I read somewhere and agree: it’s so interesting to see how this generation of babies will turn out. They’re taught to be more independent (a lot of parents follow the Montessori style of parenting) than ever before. I know I was raised in the “no, don’t touch that/do that” and the “don’t do this or you’ll ____” generation. I feel like I personally was more oppressed and dependent on my parents. They never would have let me learn how to be independent and eat solids like how babies are taught these days. It’s a whole new way of learning and teaching. How will these babies turn out? Probably by age 4 or 5, they’ll know how to fry an egg or cook noodles on the stovetop, something I didn’t do until I was a young adult (shameful). I was too dependent on my parents and they also never initiated the opportunity to teach me certain basic life skills.. I mean isn’t this why most millennials “can’t cook” or “don’t know how to cook”? I definitely want bb to be very independent and to know how to do everything herself. She’ll have so much self-confidence and happiness in life that way. I just want her path to be as easy as I can make it to be. 😌
• Another example is the photo for this week. If bb wants to crawl into the kitchen cupboards and explore and touch all the items and take them out and put them back in, sure! Do it. It’s fun to her and she gets to touch different textures and differently weighted products.  For me in the 90s, I would have been yelled at the first second I even touched the cupboard handle, never mind even being let inside to touch the contents. It’s just a different world now.. Of course too there needs to be supervision and knowledge that the contents are all kid-safe (no sharp or dangerous objects).