Guajolotita #1 general update at 17 months

Weaning

The Guajolotita#1 still cries for "pecho" every morning when she wakes up. Sometimes other times too. I have become more hard-core about denying her the boob. Per a friend's excellent suggestion, we offer her a bottle of water for middle of the night or otherwise early wakeups. Right now, she's downing 20 oz of water overnight. The idea was that water would not be enough to wake up for, so she'd start to sleep through instead. Hasn't quite worked out that way.

Abuela took away her bottles cold turkey two weeks ago. That was a really rough 5 days or so. That first night, THCSITU and I were arguing about it as he had the bottle in his hand in front of her while holding her - then set it on the counter and handed her to me. Oh, the outrage! That was the last night she got the boob, I think. Now, she drinks milk out of a straw cup with no problem (or objection - there was some objecting for a bit over a week). She drinks water from any sort of vessel, straw cup, steel bottle, open cup, cups with handles, whatever. She'd drink milk from other cups too, but there is usually a bit of spillage and that gets sticky with milk. And, of course, her overnight water bottles. We wanted to wean her from the bottle, and otherwise she is, but as a kid very prone to constipation, being well-hydrated is important. So I won't fight about that one anymore right now.

Speaking

The number of new words, in English and Spanish, each day is amazing. I can't count them. Today one was "panqueque". Two weeks ago she finally learned to say "camión" which made her SO happy. She LOVES buses, I mean loves them, so she pretty much repeated "camión" from waking up till going to sleep for a few days. Interestingly, she's stopped saying "avión" correctly and has generalized to "amión". She also stopped saying "pan" and changed it to "pam".

THCSITU noticed that she's more conversational. Since she has 2 and 3 words sentences now and enough vocabulary, you can talk about things with her. It's noun-verb, with the inclusion of one or more of these to make a 3-word phrase: "no", "aqui", "más".

Also in the last two weeks, she's started saying "Sh!" to situations she deems need quiet. "Papi's sleeping," I tell her when she tries to go into our room after she wakes up. "Sh!" she says, with her finger to her lips. The babysitter said that she woke up during her nap this week, and she asked her if she needed to potty before going back to sleep. The Guajolotita looked up, said, "Sh!" with her finger to her lips, and then conked out in her arms again.

Another cute recent gesture is the finger wag for things that are "no". Especially in the book mentioned below, Joshua initially has an accident. There's poop and pee on the floor. She looks at you very seriously and wags her finger back and for at Joshua. "Eso no se hace" is the phrase we use to describe such things, which now elicits a the little finger motion - and just today she says it, as well: "no se hace."

Potty training

Last week was nearly accident-free. I know she had four consecutive days without accidents. In the last week or two, her Abuela has gotten her to love "Juja" (Joshua) in Once Upon a Potty. I got it, along with the much more entertaining Everyone Poops, to help her cousin potty train. This morning, however, she was demanding I read "Juja" to her while also demanding one of her tunes. As I looked up the song to play while we would then read, she peed all over the floor. We have had more accidents than successes this morning, I think in part because of the 20oz of water she drank between 3-7am. She's got the urge more frequently than she or I can predict. It seems that, while she rarely warns that she needs to potty, her interest in Juja may correlate. For now, we've got a bit of a rule that we read "Joshua" only while she's on the toilet. At least that gets her sitting there pretty darn frequently.

Pooping in the toilet is now finally an every day occurrence. This is in part because we did change from whole milk to 2%, I think. And Joshua sure helps.

Sleeping

We're at the same place sleepwise as we have been since she moved to a floor bed in mid-July. She goes down easier and easier - THCSITU puts her to sleep, to avoid the crying for the boob, and sleeps till 4:30-6 or so, about 4 nights a week. Then she gets her bottle of water, some time on the boob maybe, and usually sleeps again for an hour or so. The other 3 nights a week she wakes up twice, sometime between 1am-2:30. Recently THCSITU started going to her at that time, which is a huge relief for me.

Breaking: Blog Title Now Accurate?

Today I had my annual PAP exam scheduled. Since I couldn't totally rule out pregnancy, I took the one leftover pregnancy test from the pack of three we used 2 years and 8 days ago. Probably scraping your cervix is not advisable during pregnancy, so I figured I should check.

The test was expired since March 2012, around 4 months ago.
Well, you can see what I saw:

I kept the pee in a ziploc for the midwife to test. I showered, emailed, etc. waiting for everyone to wake up.

Just before 8, the Guajolotita opened her own door and came out of her room. No tears, no accident - just like a big kid, but with her sleepy toddler face and all her hair in her eyes. It was the cutest thing!

So we went to wake up The Hottest Computer Scientist in the Universe. He hugged her, and we all went to pee (potty training is a long process at this age!).

I brought him his glasses, and he says, "What."

I hand him the test. He looks and says, "You're pregnant?"

I sorta rock back on my heels, and nonchalantly say, "Yup."

His response: "What are you, Irish?"

** astute friend observed that Mexican-American people are a rather fast-growing segment of the population! Why'd this Mexican guy decide to lump me with a different bunch of Catholic breeders?

Big Day!!

She woke up late. I was laying near her, reading email when she began to stir. She sleepily sat up, blinked, and in that just-woke-up croak (that even little kids have, who knew?) said, "Pee-pee?"

I grabbed her and we ran to the bathroom. It was tough to get her onesie open and diaper off since she was too sleepy still to stand up. Hopefully she didn't get too manhandled. I sat her on the toilet while we leaned forehead to forehead, all the while I had a pro-pee-pee patter going on.... and she did it!! First time ever!!

I knew it wasn't the whole contents of her bladder, but after several attempts to elicit more pee, I washed our hands and started to get her some breakfast. During which time, she went back to the bathroom and squatted next to the toilet and peed there. Ah well, she tried! It was my fault for not paying attention, really.


A couple hours later, we went to swimming lessons. Which is just dance-around-in-a-circle-and-hope-your-kid-doesn't-cry time. But this kid loves the water. Loves it. She spends the entire half hour floating on her belly, her legs floating straight out behind her, with my hand under her chest to keep her head out of the water. Her favorite thing is "jumping" into the water, which we do with a big "A la una, a las dos, a las tres!" and a huge splashy entrance. She will sometimes blow bubbles in the water (or drink it) but I haven't been able to get her to kick. Today she did this frantic bicycle pedal though!