Watching our new fence get built

Week 204 motherhood with 3 year 10 month old and 19 month old. 

August 8 to 14, 2024:

• August 13:  Basically, the 3 year old can do it now; she can stay dry and pee outside of a diaper finally.  Yay!  With three-ish weeks to go before kindergarten starts, at least now she doesn’t pee in a diaper anymore.  However, the next step now is to get her to pee in a toilet or potty.  She still chooses the steel bowl to pee in and she does it naked on the bottom and doesn’t want to wear wear pull-ups or underwear so we still have to put her diaper on afterwards (her diaper is dry the entire day).  Very slow progress but at least she knows not to pee in the diaper anymore.  Even when we were dining outside or at the park, she knew to tell us and we brought her to the washroom/porta potty (grandma/DH would hold her over the toilet to pee).  Such baby steps.
• The 19 month old has basically weaned herself (just a few days ahead of her turning 20 months).  She hasn’t latched or needed my milk in more than 36 hours.  Even though I offer it to her and I still sleep with her at night, she doesn’t need it. 😭  It’s so bittersweet.  I can’t believe how quickly this happened.  Although we were waiting for this to happen, now that it has, I’m actually sad about it.  Now I can’t be the only one who can comfort her immediately with the boob or have her sleep easily next to me.  She falls asleep quickly after babbling and moving around in the bed and sleeps in a deep slumber.
• The baton has been passed on to DH where if she cries during the night, he will get her milk — she’s had a habit of waking up around 5 a.m. and drinking milk and downing an entire banana before going to sleep until 8-ish a.m.  I no longer have to be responsible for the nighttime feeds since I can crawl out of the bed once she falls asleep.  I can actually sleep in my own bed for once for more than a few days at a time!  Unfortunately, it seems that after a 1.5 years of breastfeeding on demand throughout the night, I can no longer sleep straight through the night.  I sleep about 5 to 6 hours and then will wake up wide awake for at least 2 hours.  I’m tired during the day though and will sneak in a nap to rejuvenate myself (if there’s time to do so).
• Having her latched would help me sleep.  Now that I don’t have that, it’s hard for me to fall asleep. 😪
• So with the firstborn, I pumped milk for her until she was 15 months.  With this secondborn, I nursed her for just under 20 months.  What a journey.
• When I offer the breast to her during the day, the 19 month old will “play” with it rather than latch on lol.
• The 19 month old has a good appetite and probably eats more than her sister in one sitting at times.
• We finally got our backyard fence fixed on two sides.  The kids, especially the younger one, enjoyed watching the workers from the kitchen window during the two days they were here.  It was educational for them to see what tools they brought in to dig holes for the new fence posts and how the entire process unfolded (removing the old fences, digging the holes in the ground, putting in the posts, putting in the lattice part of the fence, the cap part, etc.).
• Every night during the week and every afternoon during the weekend, DH and I attended the longevitology class.  That’s 3 hours plus 1 hour of commute time away from the kids daily this week.  It was a nice break but also exhausting and mentally draining because it was 3 hours sitting in a “classroom” listening to the lecturers.  Grandma had to look after the 2 kids by herself entire time we were out of the house.  Kudos to her.
• We finished up watching the Paris 2024 Olympics with the older one always proclaiming she was the only “Canadian” in the house and then the second one pointing to herself to say she was Canadian too and then pointing to me and the rest of the family members lol.  Too cute.
• Also battling a cold still with the younger one having very runny noses.  She will go “ooooo” and scrunch up her nose when excessive snot drips out.  She says it exactly the same way as the 3 year old and the 3 year old doesn’t like her copying her.  She will say she is the only one allowed to say “oooo”.
• The 19 month old, unlike the older one, doesn’t wait for us to wipe her nose.  Instead, she will wipe it on the back of her hands and then on her shirt. 😒
• The older one looked forward to drinking the Sambucol black elderberry extract with me twice daily the past week.  She liked to “cheers” the small cup with me.  Her cold symptoms are not as severe than me and the younger one’s.  DH has some symptoms too but he doesn’t seem as sick.  Grandma seems to be spared completely (maybe because she already was sick two weeks ago and got the immunity?).
• When DH was working at the office this week and grandma had to be out for an extended class and dinner activity from 1:30 p.m. onwards, I deemed it “TV day” for the kids.  It’s true that once you have your second child, more rules fly out the window to maintain sanity (they were watching for about an hour, tops).  The 19 month old technically shouldn’t be watching TV before 2 years old, but if the 3 year old is watching, how do you separate them or prevent it from happening?
• Anyway, this week, I’ve put on the kindergarten videos from YouTube again for the 3 year old to get used to seeing what it’s like to go to school.  I think it helps because she saw a child get ready for school, eat breakfast, say bye to his mommy, get picked up from school later that day.  It helps her understand what is going to happen soon.  So I mean the programming is “educational”.
• We veered into other videos like ones where she watched Caitie (“Caitie’s Classroom”) go to the doctor for a checkup, go to the dentist, and watch some people make popsicles using lots of varieties of fruit.  She requested for the same videos the next day and I think it helps her understand the doctor and dentist visits more too.
• I also let them watch Number Blocks on “TV day”.  This is a show I’ve put off the 3 year old from watching because while I know it helps her with numbers and mathematical skills, I didn’t want to have her dive into it too quickly for fear she might request it all the time.  While Number Blocks is very educational and it seems to have helped my friend’s child and friends of friends’ kids with number concepts (my friend’s 3 year old is already at a grade 2 math level), I don’t like how fast the screens move.  Slower programming is better for their young brains (and better for their eyes).  The Caitie episodes are slow, which I like.
• I wanted to attend the August summer camp programs with the older one on the Monday but since we were still unwell, we stayed home.
• The younger one continues to like provoking the older one.  Even when a few of us tell her to stop touching her sister, she will take one more jab at her by pulling her hair or bopping her head.  She must get a kick out of it lol.  Meanwhile, the older one starts crying and is inconsolable for good chunk of time.  She doesn’t like being touched or someone in her close proximity when she’s not in the mood.
• The 3 year old is so much taller now.  She no longer looks like a toddler but a little child.  The younger one definitely is a little toddler now.  Her little footsteps in the house when she runs through the rooms and hallways is super cute.  She likes to run super quickly too.
• As such, when she falls sometimes, she will get up and then point to where she got hurt like her knee or elbow or head.  And then I’ll tell her to rub it and that it’s okay.
• The kids have been pushing back their bedtimes (mostly due to us adults sleeping later too because if the class ended at 9 p.m., they have to wait for us to get home and bathe them before — but we also bring back a nighttime snack to eat and they want to eat too) that they sleep currently around 11 to 11:30 p.m.  This means that the older one doesn’t get up until 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the mornings.  Sigh.  We need to desperately readjust her sleeping schedule soon in time for school.
• This week, the 3 year old also learned to spit out after brushing her teeth.
• August 14:  The 19 month old has been fighting bedtime recently.  Ultimately, she sleeps with me and falls asleep quickly as mentioned.  She likes to have milk or yogurt or some bedtime snack before she is satisfied; goes downstairs with DH multiple times before she is willing to sleep.  Tonight, she actually refused to sleep in the bed and actually slept in her own crib for the first time!  (A few times, she fell asleep in her sister’s floor “bed” too.)  Wow, what a first!  Sleeping in the crib is much safer than her sleeping in the bigger bed despite it having rails (the rails don’t extend to the very end of the bed).  A new chapter has begun if she is happy to sleep in the crib.  Funny she never slept in the crib until now.
• When she gets up around 5 a.m. for her usual milk and banana, she likes to eat it sitting on the bottom of the stairs with DH.  It’s too funny.  She is soo vocal about what she likes and doesn’t like.  This one amuses me all the time with her personality. 💗