Sickness: pregnancy

Being deathly freakin ill for 7 weeks while caring for a sick toddler in the nights.

She spent her first fall sick the whole time too - 24 hrs of totally healthy before the next wave of boogers/flu/whatever hit. This is a fully vaccinated kid who plays outside EVERY day and eats all her veggies voluntarily. Fall is just her season to get sick I guess.

Her sleeping patterns had improved greatly - even occasionally slept through the night. But the stuffiness and attendant coughing and inadvertent waking up means *I never sleep either* so I haven't recovered at all.

It doesn't help that while pregnant there's not too much you can take for just plain ol sickness. Vit C drops and a humidifier. One of those nose strips and a box of kleenex to go to bed with. One day I stayed home even though the sitter came and just slept whenever she took the kid out of the house.

By the end of this illness I started to cry in the daytime just out of sheer exhaustion. No one at work ever caught me though, thank goodness.

Baby talk already being left behind

The Guajolotita #1 has said "co-co" for "conejo" (rabbit) since July. In the last week or two she's increasingly switched over to "conejo". New rabbits seem to be "conejo" but old rabbits, which were already "co-co" - like in Pat the Bunny - are usually still "co-co".

She calls the baby bunny in Goodnight Moon "co-co" but the nanny bunny "conejo".

More sentences and toddler logic

Sep 27th:

She says "edificios" like this:

"Vicios"

which is hilarious.

Oct 1st:

She's in the bath and I've just turned off the shower head after rinsing her hair. She reaches up and says,

"Ahi viene la lluvia!"

A favorite catch-all term of hers now is, "Pone!" to put together a lego car, to put a sticker on her belly, to wrap her up in a towel or blanket, to assemble a puzzle. Sometimes it's "Pone this!" or "Pone... this one!"

Oct 3rd:

"No tienes zapatos."

She got real shy right after she said it, she knew she was trying something new I guess? Totally impressed by appropriate use of "you" instead of 3rd person. Usually she says "No tiene zapatos" as in, "Mama no tiene zapatos" but today she branched out.

She used "yo" correctly once last week too, I forget the sentence though.

Despite those grammatical leaps of progress, she still calls me "tu mama". Since about 2 weeks ago, she learned from everyone else to say "tu mama" instead of "mama". I presume between my suegra, the babysitter, and THCSITU telling her "Tu mama esta trabajando" or "Daselo a tu mama" or what have you, she rechristened me "tu mama". When she pulls out my license, which she loves to do, she points at my picture and tells me proudly, "tu mama!"

The talking never stops!

We noticed some new things in the Guajolotita's speech: She is making short sentences. Two of today's sentences were:

Vamos a la calle!
*Aunt's name* toma agua!

Last week, she started to say "a la calle" as separate words (probably in her mental grammar it's all one thing, but she pronounces them with the appropriate separation). And then today she put the verb and the rest of the predicate together: Vamos a la calle!

Tonight, at dinner at "Gappa"'s house, there were 9 of us including her. There was a pause in the conversation, and she called out across the table to my sister. Then she continued her order: "*Aunt's name* toma agua!" This time as well, she put the appropriate amount of pause between the words. She was instructing her to do it, and watched until she did. None of us had offered her water in the last couple of minutes, or been talking about water before hand. I guess she just decided that her aunt needed a drink?

Then tonight, this one I especially loved. She asked to read "Tu Mama" which stands for "Éres tu mi mamá?" which is the Spanish version of Are you my mother? a very nice P.D. Eastman book which has been a favorite for months. I took the opportunity to read to her sitting on the toilet, so she could get that done before her bath, and I'd be able to strip her from the waist down, making the bathtime transition easier.

We were reading, and she was skipping around in the book. She grabbed all the pages and started letting them slowly flip by with her thumb, as she usually does when she's looking for something specific ("El gato!" "La lancha!" etc.). She was letting them go pretty quickly, so I laughed and just stated,

"You have to be a speedy reader, 'cause there's so, so much to read!"

She stopped flipping the pages and looked at me. She was thinking about something and looking at me intently. Then it came to her: "Eyes Shut!!" I was absolutely tickled that she recognized the line and said yes, of course, she could certainly have another book given the fact that she'd called it, so to speak.

So I went and got I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, as she sat there on the toilet with her bath waiting, and she turned each page and waited for it to be completely read (instead of skipping ahead) up until we got to the page with the line I'd quoted earlier. She looked up at me when I read that one, and smiled sort of perhaps to say, "See, there it is!"

My toddler is so big!

Darn canines are making sleep difficult. She's up for the second time tonight. I tried waiting her out but she got up and left her room - guess she WAS really awake!

She asked for agua, so I gave her a bottle. Also I turned on her humidifier, this dry fall air is making THCSITU snore more and kiddo seems a bit stuffed up too. And I think she was chilly, so I put her plush blanket on her mattress to be more snuggly, since she won't keep any blankets on.

Now we are snuggled in the rocker, under a blanket her Abuela knit her. She's clutching her bottle in one arm, but her face while sweet and sleepy is not that of a baby. She's so big and smart and in charge of herself, even when she wakes up crying at 4:30 am. She wants Agua and she wants Up and she will direct you to one room or another with words and pointing.

D'oh she just stiffened up in her sleep with a sharp inhale. Darn canines!

Telling everybody

As I mentioned, we did end up printing announcement cards this time too. And I ordered this shirt for the kiddo:

The announcement cards came Saturday, so I stamped and addressed them. Since the tshirt shipped the same day, I mailed the cards Monday morning, figuring I'd get the tshirt later that day & we could tell both my suegra and my dad that night.

However, the dang shirt didn't arrive until Wednesday! I was so nervous that the nearest snail-mail receipients of the cards, my grandparents, would call my dad and tell him before we had.

So we got home Wednesday night and both kids, the Guajolotita #1 and her 3-yr-old cousin, were running around like lunatics. So we went outside in the dark to play with flashlights, which they loved. I called my dad and asked him to come over because the kids were being nuts (just an excuse, in this case). Then I popped the shirt on the kiddo.

When he got there, I handed the announcement card to the Guajolotita #1 and told her to bring it to Grandpa:

Which she did, and he recognized it right away. Then I told him to check out her shirt, and apologized for not telling him sooner... that dang shirt took forever to arrive!

Next up, is telling my suegra. We were supposed to meet at lunch time today, so I'm armed with a picture of the kid in the shirt, plus one of the announcement cards. The back has this text:

"The invasion continues... Alien #2 expected to land in early April, 2013."

Then a picture of Guajolotita #1 holding the ultrasound picture, with the caption:

"First Wave approval still pending."

Anyhow, she can't make it so I'll text her the picture of the kid, then email the link to this video. I got a heartbeat check this morning at the midwife since the midwife-in-training couldn't find the heartbeat last week. Before my suegra starts telling every animate and inanimate object she encounters, I wanted to be sure there really was still something to say. Sounds good to me:

I just have to get her to keep her trap shut so we can call THCSITU's family in Mexico and tell them ourselves. They're getting the cards in the mail but probably they'd prefer the call anyhow.

More language

The Guajolotita #1 is adding new words and phrases about every 10 minutes. It's totally crazy. When something falls - like her bochito falling onto her face as she drives it up the bathroom walls during her bath - OR she deliberately dumps something out, like THCSITU's soda that he left on a side table last night - she throws her hands out and exclaims, "Se cayó!"

Tonight after THCSITU got home, he saw her playing by herself with a ping-pong ball. After a while, she disappeared behind her play kitchen, then came running towards him. "Se fue! Se fue!" she told him.

So he went hunting for it, and she'd dropped it between her play kitchen and the wall. So he got it out for her... and she promptly threw it into the bin with her stuffed animals. "Se fue! Se fue!" she told him again. I think he told her to go get it herself, so she did, and she played like that for some time, "losing" it and then retrieving it herself.

Other favorite phrases, though not new ones, are "Donde esta?" "Busca tus zapatos para salir" (look for your shoes to go outside) and she'll wander around, hands upturned, repeating "Donde esta?" until she finds them. "Ahi esta!" once she locates something or also when she comes out of "hiding" during hide and go seek.

The other adorable thing is the counting. She's had this one in hand for a while now, but it's evolving. Now, she counts like this:

• 1 uno
• 2 dos
• 4 quatro (cat-o)
• 5 cinco
• 7 siete

And she does it again, and again. She'll count to "siete" 4 times going down our six front steps. Or she'll turn the pages of this wonderful book a friend gifted her, and "read" it to herself, counting to "siete" again and again.

And then, going along with the other post from this evening, there's singing the alphabet. We sing it to her (per her constant demand) in English (ABC!) and in Spanish (el abecedario), though tellingly when we sing it in Spanish she *usually* interrupts demanding "abc, abc!" (Because, in her opinion, we are doing it wrong, I think.) She does a great job of singing along. Below are the letters in red that she supplies as we sing:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY (and) Z 

Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me.

Sometimes she sings them in the pause and I can continue the song with her filling in her "part", but othertimes she doesn't provide them unless I keep going, and she sings along with.