Dara seems to have grown into a toddler overnight. That's usually how it goes around here. I don't notice that she's gearing up for a growth spurt like some of my friends (who are also parents) do. It's not like I think to myself: Dara seems to be eating more, hmm...She's napping more/less—I wonder if she'll go through a growth spurt soon? It's more like: Oh, so she's talking now and all her pants are too short. Time for mama to catch up.
She likes to identify everything. Bird! Book! Chair! She'll look at me waiting for me to acknowledge and repeat it back to her. Yes, that's a bird! Yes, that's your book! Yes, mama and Dara are sitting in chairs! It is thrilling and exhausting.
She knows how to pry off the battery cover from the remote control, Xbox controller and how to unlock my phone. She freaks out with excitement when waiting for her favorite TV show to load on Netflix (Pingu!) She knows when she's not supposed to be doing something and will usually stop if I ask her nicely. Sometimes she'll look at Cam or I while she's being naughty—as if she's waiting for us to catch her.
She likes to pick up minuscule bits of trash off the floor (grains of rice, fuzz, produce stickers...) and give it to me. I usually tell her to go throw it away and she'll walk over to the kitchen and throw it in the trash. No playing in the trash. Just throw it away. I think that's a pretty neat trick.
She has always taken two naps a day, two hours in the morning and at least and hour or two in the afternoon. Now it's more like 90min in the morning and maybe nothing in the afternoon. She continues to shut-it-down at 7:45pm every evening.
Lately she's been waking up at 5:45-6am in the morning, calling out: "Mama. Mama? Mama!" I drag myself out of my bed, into her room and she yelps: "Hi! Bo-bo?" (Her word for nursing.) If I try to put her back to sleep she cries: "No! Out dere" and points to our bedroom. Usually I don't fight it, because I know it's a loosing battle. I just hug her close and carry her back to bed with me. There she nurses, and hopefully falls back asleep under the covers, sandwiched between her mama and papa.
Both Cam and I have limited working hours right now, so all three of us are together often. Cam and I have both noticed that Dara will ask for the missing parent when they're not there. She likes all three of us together, as do we. We both realize that we're incredibly lucky to have had all this time to spend together. Both of us have been able to enjoy her infancy and early toddlerhood with her. When I was first pregnant I hated the idea of sending her to daycare as a little baby and I am so happy we've been able to nurture her this way. I know it's not right for everyone, but it's felt so right for us. We're a close knit gang.
0 comments:
Post a Comment