Toddler’s drawings at 2.11 months old

Week 156 motherhood of 2 year 11.5 month old and 8.5 month old: 

• September 7, 2023:  I took the kids to another session of the Rhymes, Stories, and Songs in Mandarin.  But first, the toddler had half an hour of play in the “Loose Parts” session.  It was good for her to play with some small hourglasses, stick wooden sticks in the playdough, and small plastic animals.  The facilitator came up to us to chat and the toddler was a little shy but didn’t move away too much.
• The Mandarin class was similar to the first one we attended.  Lots of Mandarin songs and stories.  Lots of young infants.  The toddler was the oldest one in the room.
• I forgot that there was a rainstorm coming down and left our car windows open a bit for some air and the rain ended up pelting into the car.  Everything was so wet afterwards!
• I took the toddler to the supermarket by myself for the first time!  (Grandma and the baby waited in the car as the baby was sleeping.)  The toddler is easy to take to the supermarket because she loves riding in the shopping cart and going along for the ride.
• September 11, 2023:  We celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary!  We weren’t able to leave the baby with anyone (we left the toddler with grandma at home and it would have been too much for her to look after both kids.  Besides, the baby is still nursing too), so we took the baby with us for a lunch celebration.  It was really nice that the baby was sleeping in the car seat/stroller for the majority of the meal and didn’t wake up until we were close to dessert.  Yay!  This meant that DH and I were finally finally able to have an uninterrupted meal and talk without being cut off as well.  The time felt so short as we had to rush back home since grandma had an evening outing.
• Some moms, when they’re away from their kids, say they miss them the moment they’re gone.  But not me lol.  I’ve actually never felt that.  With the firstborn, if I was out by myself or with DH or had a break, I didn’t think about her at all.  I never missed her.  I actually really need the break for mental clarity and just to do things without her and not think about her.  And same thing with the secondborn — I never think that “I miss my baby so much” that I need to verbalize or express it.  I’m like the odd one out?
• Both kids did join us out for our evening meal on our anniversary.  DH and I were able to juggle both of them successfully (without grandma’s help for once).  Yay!  It really helps when the baby is sleeping for a while by herself so we only have to tend to the toddler.
• The baby has been continuing the gymnurstics this week.  She has even fallen asleep while sleeping on her belly and while still being latched.  DH has not slept in the bed continuously for many nights now.
• We attended a dear friend’s son’s birthday this past weekend!  It was held at an indoor playground.  There were over 80 to 100 attendees and so well-planned.  There were tons of great food and so much for the infants and kids to do!  A large area for gross motor play, building blocks, fine motor play, a reading nook, etc.
  • The toddler wasn’t shy about approaching the areas to play and jumped into the trampoline right away.  She enjoyed it a lot.  She went from toy to toy — pikler triangle, cars to ride on, climbing on to things.  She attempted the jungle gym too.  Interestingly, she didn’t even go to the kitchen area to play with the fine motor skills toys.  I was glad because she rarely plays with the gross motor play things, so this was a great treat and opportunity.
• The baby got to ride on a Thomas train too and sit in the plastic castle.
• The toddler enjoyed the party foods like lumpia, pizza, sandwiches, blocks of cheese (her fave), and cupcakes.  The baby had a bit of the spaghetti and mum mums!  When the toddler saw the baby eat the mum mums, she wanted one too.
• It’s always funny how when we come back from an event or even at home napping that the toddler will pass out and continue sleeping for an hour or two.  But then the baby wakes up so quickly and their sleeping times don’t coincide with each other.  DH and I can never get in movies anymore because of this.  (Or we could stay up really late to watch a movie but DH is usually puckered out and sleeping by then.)
• We visited IKEA and the toddler remembered the white arrows and liked to step on them as we were walking through the store.  She enjoyed the touch screen games.  Again, there was another girl who wanted to play with the games while the toddler was playing with it.  It’s like previous times when kids tend to barge in and take a turn without asking.  This time, I told the girl that the toddler was still playing with it and that she had to wait.  The dad overheard and came over and did tell his daughter to wait for her turn, thankfully.
• We were going outside for a walk (we haven’t been doing enough of that this summer because we’ve been attending so many EarlyONs and I don’t like to leave the house again after coming home and showering lol) and the toddler requested that we bring the “new new” stroller out (the Joovy one).  She usually prefers the Graco double stroller (the “new old” stroller).  She actually was fine sitting in the back while her sister sat in the front.  Yay!  She likes this stroller now.
• The toddler also says she likes the new car.  We do too!  It’s so easy now getting the kids in and out and grandma is more comfortable too.
• I actually had to sit in the middle seat of the minivan the other night because the baby was crying hysterically when we were coming home from dinner.  It was dark outside and the moving street lights must have been scaring her.  I sat in the middle and calmed her down.  I had one arm over the baby and one arm over the toddler lol.
• September 12:  We got a new bed for the baby!  It’s not practical to have DH sleep on the sofa every night, so we got a twin size bed for the baby to sleep on.  So this way, I can continue nursing her to sleep and then leave her sleeping there.  And DH can sleep in our regular bed again.  Yay!  Hope it works out.  (The bed frame is actually the one I used when I was an adult.  We got a brand new mattress for the baby.)
• We attended a Creative Chefs EarlyON in Richmond Hill.  The kids made fruit yogurt parfaits!  (Another one lol.)  At this session, it was a self-serve process where the kids took a plastic cup, put 3 scoops of yogurt into it, put 6 blueberries, and then sat down at the table where they cut 2 strawberries and grinded up a graham cracker with a rolling pin and added it to their yogurt.
• The toddler is very adept at cutting fruits now.  She knows exactly what to do.  She needs to practise more at holding the knife to have more control at it, but she’s getting there.  (I also think they should have provided more toddler-friendly-sized knives.)  She enjoyed her fruit yogurt parfait a lot.  So much satisfaction because she made it all herself.
• For the rest of the class, she actually played at the playdough station the entire time.  I was shocked and impressed.  The playdough held her attention the entire time.  So good!  She used the plastic knife tool at first to cut the playdough.  Then I showed her how to use the tool which squeezed playdough out into little strands, and she picked up the strands and started placing them on to the table and flattening them.  She did it one by one and started expanding what was on the table.  She said she was making a floor.  She was so focused.
  • We sat there playing from 10:20 to 11:05 a.m.-ish — that’s 45 minutes on just one single activity!  I played with some of the playdough too.  I haven’t played with it in so long.  I made some figurines and a snake and bridge and squeezed more playdough “hair” out from the tool.
• I liked that the facilitator remembered both kids’ names.  It’s the first time that a facilitator at an EarlyON remembered their names.
• The toddler enjoys painting at her little art station that DH set up for her.  The plastic trays that I got from IKEA is perfect for her to paint on as a protective border.  She knows to be careful and doesn’t get any paint outside of the plastic tray.
• DH also found the toddler drawing at the chalkboard this week and was shocked to see her produce some high-level drawings.  She drew a shape and coloured it in completely without going outside of the lines.  She also knew a circle and more circles within it with some vertical lines.
• The baby started to scoot forward this week!!  She’s basically crawling forward in short bursts now.  She was spinning around in circles before and now can inch forward.  She’ll be 9 months old next week!  Good milestone to achieve by 9 months.
• The baby loves standing too and has super strong legs.  She is always kicking me and hurting me when she’s in the bed with me and moving around (before she finally nurses again and falls asleep).
• She is also vocal and exclaiming a lot now.  She has said “ma” and “na” and lots of other nondescript sounds.  She also says “skeek” like a hiss but she does it like a word.  She will exclaim towards grandma or DH or me when she sees us.  She doesn’t know how to say a specific word consistently yet, but it’s the beginning for sure.
• The baby is losing her chubs because she’s so active these days.  She also eats a lot but not enough to sustain her chubs.  I’m fearful that the pediatrician will say she’s not gaining enough weight next week at her appointment, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.  The baby loves eating noodles, congee, bread, egg yolk, chicken, fish, mangoes — basically anything that we’re eating, she’ll eat it.
• I’m sad to see her slim down and lose her chubby rolls. 😦  When I hold her, her chest area doesn’t feel as meaty anymore.  She used to be so full of rolls!  She still has chubby thighs (for now).
• She is also breaking a tooth on the upper gums.  I saw a little white part on the roof of her left top part.  No wonder she also wasn’t sleeping very well for a few days this week.
• The toddler knows when her diaper is full (wet) and needs to be changed.  She’s the one who says, “Ah, oi yui wun peen ah” (“Ah, my diaper needs to be changed”) before we even remember sometimes to change her.  She has been desiring to poop in the toilet these days as opposed to in the potty.  I just hope she wants to pee in the toilet/potty too.  Why is she still wearing a diaper when she already can recognize and vocalize her own bowel movements? 😣
• The toddler always says she doesn’t want to be “older” or “big” and that she wants to stay little and be “small”.  This is part of the reason why she perhaps doesn’t want to upgrade to the toilet — it’s because she wants to stay a baby and use diapers.  But I guess eventually she will when she tires of a wet diaper on her all the time.  She already poops in a toilet, so the peeing part is hopefully not far off. 🤞
• She doesn’t like being called “jei jei” (older sister) nor “little kid” (siu peng yau).  She likes being called “ju jai” (piggy) or “lo su” (rat).
• Hard to believe but this is the last week before the toddler turns 3 years old!  We will be out of the “terrible twos” and into the “threenager” stage (whatever that means!).
• Because the toddler has been attending many more EarlyON sessions now, she has been picking up lots of English.  She was recalling and singing parts of English songs and even repeating certain English words.  She knew how to say the colour “green” in English as well as “Monday” (which I was shocked about and didn’t know where she picked it up from).  DH and I naturally converse in English often at home too and so she’s been picking up things that we say too.  She repeated the words like “chicken breast” and “maintenance and meetings” when she heard me say them.  She didn’t pay much attention to what we said before, but now she does.
  • She still has a Cantonese accent when saying English words, but I know soon when she attends school full-time that she will lose the accent and begin to speak fluent English.  It’s a bit bittersweet for me because I want her to preserve that Cantonese flair and language.  I don’t want her to lose it.  It’s cute that she has a Cantonese accent too.
• I joked to DH that we have to find another secret language to converse in because now the toddler is starting to understand our conversations in English.  (We were in the car and talking about dinosaurs in English and the toddler asked us why we were talking about dinosaurs.)  And there’s just things that we say under our breath sometimes that we don’t want the toddler to hear (things in passing or things we comment on) and now we can’t do that if the toddler is starting to understand English.  Ahhh lol.
• The toddler continues to ask me what certain things are in English.  She already knows what the colour “green” is called in English.  She asked me what other colours like red, yellow, pink, purple, orange were as well.  She pronounced yellow like “yel o”.  I don’t know exactly how to replicate how she said it but it was so cute.
  • Sometimes when she repeats English words, the Cantonese accent is so strong that it sounds so cute that I can’t help but laugh out loud.  These aren’t moments I can film or record at the spur of the moment unfortunately.  How do I save these little moments forever?  They’re certainly fleeting because she picks up on language quickly and her accents will fade very soon.
• At the Creative Chefs class, the facilitator sang the “I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas song” which was a new one for the toddler.  I sang it again for her at home and she enjoyed it.
• Another food-related song she really liked this week was the “banana” song which we first heard at the Creative Chefs class in Stouffville.  She randomly thought of it and asked me to sing it.  It goes like this “peel, banana, peel, peel, banana.  Cut, banana, cut, cut, banana.  Eat, banana, eat, eat, banana.  Go bananas!” with the movements to go with it too.  The toddler loved watching me sing it and giggles at the end when I go “go bananas!”
• The baby is so social all the time.  When we are out at a restaurant or at the store, she always seeks out people to look at and people will smile and talk back at her.
• There were multiple occasions where people have gone to her to touch her, which we don’t like at all.  We were at the checkout line-up at Walmart and someone came up to touch her face.  What the heck!  Our baby is not public property.
• September 13:  We attended the Musical Babies EarlyON class — finally, an EarlyON class just for the baby!  All the other ones were either intended for 0 to 6 years or 2 to 6 years old.  This one was exclusively for 0 to 12 month-old-babies, which meant that the toddler couldn’t attend.  I actually inquired about this and they said the toddler couldn’t attend because they’ve had instances in the past where the older sibling jumped over the little ones and it’s a safety hazard.  The second reason is even if my toddler is quietly sitting in, it wouldn’t be fair to other parents who want to bring the older sibling in as well.  I completely understand.  It’s too bad that the toddler never experienced these classes as an infant (during the COVID early pandemic era).
• There were lots of musical instruments and books on the carpet when we arrived.  The baby took to a small rattle right away.  She always loves holding the rattles and items that make noise.  There were a lot of babies attending the class too!
• The facilitators didn’t officially begin the class until about 15-20 minutes in because they wanted to wait for more parents to arrive (and I guess to allow the kids to play with the musical instruments and toys).  I was surprised that we started off not with the choo-choo train song but with asking everyone going around the circle to introduce themselves and their child and child’s age as well as one parenting advice they received that they wanted to share.  I immediately felt like this was a time waster.  But in hindsight, it’s something different and memorable for the parents.
• One of the advice that 2 moms mentioned was “sleeping while the baby sleeps”, which I was shocked about because I’ve heard of moms saying how it is terrible advice because we rarely have the luxury of sleeping while the baby sleeps because there’s usually a mountain of chores or other things to do while the baby is finally sleeping.  (I remember when the firstborn was a baby and she finally slept, that was my dedicated time to either pump milk for her or eat or finally have some me time to myself.  I was lucky enough to have DH and my mom help me, but even then it was rare for me to be able to actually sleep when the baby slept.)  When I heard this, I thought, “Wow, that mom must have a rich village to help her out if she is able to sleep while the baby sleeps”.
  • This Instagtam video nails what I’m referring to: “When they tell you to ‘sleep when the baby sleeps'”“When they tell you to ‘sleep when the baby sleeps'”.
• Other advice that I heard and remember was “be kind to yourself”, “don’t sweat the small stuff”, “embrace all the moments”.
• We did a number of songs with the babies — lap songs, row row row your boat, an elevator song where the babies were lifted from the floor to the sky and down all the way down which was fun, the “more we get together” song with sign language, a hello song with different languages, and then the “zoom zoom zoom” song before we sang the good-bye song.  I was surprised that we ended 15 minutes ahead of the intended end time.  Why did it finish so early? (On the other hand, it worked out for us because the baby needed a diaper change, but it meant that the actual singing time was only around 20 minutes given that we had started late too. 🙁)
• I plan to attend again in the next two weeks that they offer this class so that I can have some alone time with the baby in an EarlyON class for once.  The toddler and grandma were just next door in the library, which I found out had so many toys and play things for kids!  Such a great educational library.  The toddler enjoyed sticking magnetic letters and animals on to the white board and playing with the magnetic slide (you form slides for a rolling spin to slide down from — it was more fun for me because the toddler didn’t know how to play with it yet).  Grandma said the toddler played with a lot of the other toys already.  Such a nice space!  Libraries definitely didn’t have these toys and play resources when I was a kid.
• The baby took to sleeping in the new bed quite well!  She couldn’t move and roll around as much in the bed because it’s a twin versus our queen-sized bed, but it meant that she fell asleep easier and faster than before.  Win!  I was also able to get a bed rail for the bed right away the day after (thanks to FB marketplace for $25; it is $53 on Amazon currently).  We still have the pregnancy pillow in the bed to keep her from rolling out the other side (I’ll have to get bed bumpers).  I sleep in the bed with her too until I have had enough and then try to crawl out without waking her.  I’ve left the plastic cover on the mattress (because we’re Asian and it’ll prevent the mattress from being dirty in the future from accidents).
  • Pretty interesting that the 8-month-old is sleeping on a full-sized bed whereas the toddler is sleeping on the floor.  The toddler prefers it though.  I asked her if she wanted a bed and she said that she likes to sleep on the floor.