Week 134 motherhood – undivided one-on-one attention, hair yanking

Peg dolls around a table eating a lemon

Week 134 of motherhood of a 2.5 year old and 3.5 month old:

April 7, 2023: I could tell the baby was getting over her RSV finally because she was nursing for longer than 5 minutes. She was back to her old routine. Yay!
Apr 9: The baby has been holding onto my hair during feedings and thus yanking it sometimes… need to tie it back or push it out of her reach.
Her voice is coming back loudly and clearer again.
She has only been able to sleep about 2.5 hr stretches during the night these days… nooo :(. It’s been so tiring to wake up at night to feed her. DH is still the one who pops awake first and gets her, changes her if necessary, and then wakes me up for the feed. What happened to the progressive 4 and 5 hour stretches of sleep, baby? 😦
The toddler is all well too now. Coughs have receded and she is back to her talkative, sometimes obnoxious self. 😆
Ever since I dedicated at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time with her daily a few days ago (and feeding her myself during dinner), the toddler has been sleeping through the night. She needed me to fill her cup. Hallelujah for the adults who don’t have to tend to her during the night!! The nighttime tantrums were so difficult.
Yesterday, we walked as an entire family to the nearby plaza to pick up a TGTG bag, check out the new BBQ shop there, as well as pick up some groceries. It was such a simple activity but so fun and fulfilling. I guess not having to travel by car for once was quite nice.
Apr 12: The toddler’s new thing this week is putting moisturizer on herself. She likes asking me to pump out some lotion on her hand so she can rub it into her hands, face, neck, arms, belly.
It’s so unfortunate that after catching RSV, the baby isn’t as heavy anymore. She weighs just about 13 lbs by our scale at home. She definitely is lighter than before. The plus side means that she can still fit into the size 1 diapers which is what we are using for her right now. Might as well use them up before we move onto size 2 😁✌.
It’s been so nice out that we have been going on walks to the playground again. The toddler loves the swings, merry-go-around, climbing up the ladder and rock climbing ladder. She can climb up independently.
She is quite clingy to me these days, always asking me to be with her.
The baby is starting to hold onto my hair when she nurses and not let go… I have to move my hair out of her grasp, otherwise I risk getting my hair pulled.
The toddler is getting more creative in her open-ended play. She used a yellow bridge-shaped block as a “lemon” for her peg people to eat. She made a table for them out of the same bridge-shaped blocks.
She also made a table using the bigger shaped Legos. So creative!
She also has been liking to play with the plastic laundry pegs by attaching them to the plant shelf and pretending they are people. She likes to assign them as certain people too like the green, pink colours are a man or woman.
One thing I forgot to mention from last week is that DH opened the playdoh-looking container for her to play with (gifted to us as a goodie bag from a birthday party last year). I didn’t know until I sat down to play with her myself that I realized it wasn’t playdoh; it was kinetic sand!! I have no experience with this much-talked about toy before this and so I was surprised with how messy it is. The new green colour that we opened was stretchy and “magnetic”. It wasn’t until I looked at the orange remnants inside of the wipes container (mixed in with the bananagram tiles and dimes and nickels) that I realized the kinetic sand had been rolled into balls and dried up and covered all of the small loose play bits. Ugh. If the coins and tiles hadn’t been placed into the box, the kinetic sand could have been gathered easily. Instead, I had to spend 10 minutes to take out the kinetic sand bit by bit, as much as I could, from the tiles and coins. The kinetic sand had dried up a bit too.. All to say we packed it away after and I’m not going to let her play with it anytime soon. The worst part is once the kinetic sand dries up and is separated from its other parts, it turns into just sand and is all over the place (but with some plasticky parts too).
The toddler loves the colour game during the virtual EarlyON class where the facilitator asks the children to bring an object that matches the colour of what is on the screen. The toddler is able to bring to the screen what the correct colour is.
She’s so much more comfortable appearing onscreen now and even asks where she is if I didn’t turn on the camera. She even chose songs when the facilitator asked them. She likes the “Wheels on the Bus” song and chooses that often. She also likes the “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom” song. She seems to be over the “If you’re happy and you know it” song this week 😆.
Been decluttering my digital clutter (deleting old promotional emails) and it’s been so addictive and satisfying and a personal challenge to clear out as much as I can.
It’s so funny that the baby has such a “strong” sturdy personality already that when I clothe her in some of the same “feminine”/girly clothes that her older sister wore before, it doesn’t seem to fit her at all. By “fit”, I don’t mean physically not a good fit. I mean the outfit looks out of place for her.:/ It’s so interesting how that works… Maybe this child will be a “tomboy”?
The smiling and cooing is at an all- time high. The baby loves interacting with us and giving us half-moon eyes 😄.
By now, the toddler is able to open the fridge door by herself, choose a cup of yogurt (she seems to like the tropical fruits/pineapple one), and tear off the top and scoop the yogurt herself. She can’t tear the top all the way off and needs some help with it, but her independence has definitely grown.
She gets annoyed if we don’t let her do something by herself and also when the wrong person not of her choosing does it.
To counteract potential escalation of tantrums, I will acknowledge and confirm verbally something she wants to do even if it might not be the best choice. Then I’ll tell her the correct or better option. She usually is okay with the alternative thing as long as you don’t reject her at the outset. Toddlers.. lol.
Because of the daily twice-a-day EarlyON virtual sessions and all the songs that the toddler hears from them, she is constantly singing songs these days. The songs are also stuck in my head too lol. It’s so cute the way she sings them because they’re not full encapsulations of the lyrics as she doesn’t remember every word fully. But what she does sing out loud and remember is quite impressive. I should try to get her singing on video for memory sake. She also has a Cantonese accent too lol.
She resumes to ask me this week what words in Cantonese are in English. She asked what some body parts are like eyeball, eye, belly button, knee, hair, toes.
Very grateful for this season of life where I get to stay home and play with these babies. Grateful that it’s a full house and I can order TGTG baked goods and be able to share with everyone and I’m not the only one stuck with a box of cookies, for example. This is one of the blessings of having a large family. ❤
The toddler’s favourite snacks recently are: mini durian cakes (restocked after a Costco trip), shrimp crackers, chocolate chip cookies, yogurt (always), grapes, dates, dried garlic green beans. She’ll also always want to eat whatever we’re eating too (especially when it’s fresh. I notice she doesn’t go for the old stuff lol).
Many times, she’ll ask for a snack but not always carry through with eating it which means someone has to finish it. Usually, it’s DH who is her garbage can 😅.