Quiet Christmas

Well, we've done it. We had Christmas by ourselves this year.

And it wasn't too bad!

Christmas Eve day was cold, cloudy and misty, making me almost feel that I was in Indiana for Christmas. However, why Televisa thought a Chucky marathon was fitting for Christmas Eve is beyond me.

Christmas Day was beautiful. While waiting for the pancakes to cook, I tried to get Clara to put the baby Jesus in his place in the nativity scene. She was into it until I told her to be careful holding him, and then she wanted me to do it. We wrapped him up well so he wouldn't be cold. ;)

Since we did not celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I really wanted to have a turkey. I threw that into the oven after mass, and while we waited for it to bake, we turned on the radio where they had a constant stream of Christmas music playing, and the four of us danced the afternoon away. We skyped with my family just before taking the turkey out of the oven.

The table was set, the sides dished out on serving platters, the wine was poured, the candles were lit. Mario carved into the turkey . . .

and it was raw.

Oops.

So we threw the turkey back in the oven, ate the sides, watched Bambi II on the TV, and at 8:00, just before throwing the children into bed (actually, I think the smaller one was in bed) we finally ate that turkey. It was glorious--crunchy on the outside, juicy on the inside, everything a Christmas turkey should be. Well worth the wait.

Lesson learned: when the Joy of Cooking says that the turkey only needs to cook for two hours, turn it over and then cook it for another vague 30-90 minutes more. . . they're WRONG! (The only Joy recipe to fail me so far--I'm not trying to trash Joy! Usually I'm its biggest fan.) However, sticking to the standard 1 hour per kilo of turkey rule worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, I was only informed of said rule as the hubs was cutting into the raw turkey. I'm never able to remember the minutes per pound rule. This one I think will stick.

It was another interesting Christmas on another front, as it was the first Christmas I've experienced without presents. We didn't intentionally not buy presents for each other. (Although Santa Claus did intentionally not visit Clara because she'll be getting a visit from the Three Kings in a few days.) Truth be told, I had been planning on buying Mario a juicer (the one thing I know he wants and hasn't bothered to get yet himself) for quite some time. And I know he needs some pretty heavy hints if I expect him to get anything for me--which I had not been throwing out. December just flew by and I just never got him anything and never threw out any hints. No problem. Just keeping things simple, which is generally the rule we live by in this house.

It probably won't happen again next year, but I'm glad we tried it at least once. Even if it wasn't on purpose.

However, next year, I am really hoping to have a few more people around! THAT is what we really missed!

Thoughtfulness

Remember that post when I wrote that The Boy was sleeping through the night?

Yeah, that was short-lived. The last two nights he got up every 4 hours and did not go back down easily. That, combined with my stupid habit of spending too much time on the internet at night, makes for one tired momma.

So imagine my surprise when, this morning, I woke up suprisingly well-rested. An even bigger surprise when I looked at the clock and saw that it was 9am!!! At that moment, no small people were clamoring for my attention, I just woke up because I had slept enough.

Surprise #2--this was the scene that greeted me when I opened my bedroom door:



















In a hushed voice she told me, "I waitin' for you, Momma."

Awww . . . can a day be started any better?

******************************************************************************
Clara opening her door on her own was no surprise--she's been getting better and better at it for the last two weeks. However, she's normally pretty noisy and spends a good 10 minutes rattling the door knob before she meets with success. But the fact that she did not freak out when she found that she was the first person awake in the morning, PLUS not demanding that I get up to read to her immediately were pretty impressive feats for this two-year-old.

So, when she asked for a cookie as we headed to the kitchen, I thought it a sufficient reward for being so stinkin' thoughtful.

Yours, Mine, and Ours

If you're not used to talking with her, conversations with Clara can be pretty tricky. (That's how she'd phrase it.)

Yes, sometimes she doesn't pronounce words right.

But the real trick is that, in Clara's mind, she is always You. I (or whoever she's talking to) am always Me. Because, of course, when I talk to her, she is You and I am Me. So it makes sense just to repeat things that way, right?

So when she says, "Help you!" she isn't saying that she wants to help you. She's saying that she needs help. When she says "Sit with me!" what she's saying is that she wants to sit on your lap.

This confusion has been going on for a few months now, and I've gotten used to it. But now we're beginning to coach her as to what she should really say.

So now, every once in a great while when she wants help, she will say "help me!"

And I'm left wondering if it's me she wants to help or if she needs the help.

"Sheesh", as Kermit would say.

The Boy and Harry

When I found out that I was expecting a baby in the first week of August, it didn't take me long to think, "what if he comes a little early? Say, July 30th? Then he'd share a birthday with HARRY POTTER!!!" (And JK Rowling, of course.)

And he very nearly was born on Harry's birthday! (But, I really am more excited about the fact that he was born on my grandma's birthday.)

And, while we picked out his name simply because we liked it, I have found a number of ways to justify it to him. My favorite being that we named him after JK Rowling, as he was so very nearly born on her birthday. (hehehe--poor little guy!)

And, popular opinion has it that he's the spitting image of his father. But he's clearly got his mother's eyes--just like Harry.

And he has crazy, stick-out-in-all-directions hair, just like Harry!

And, being a product of both me and Mario, the likelihood that he'll probably need glasses one day--just like Harry!

However, I'm quite certain that he is just a muggle.

Not like Harry.

*********************************************************************

Yes, I'm still up at 1am, waiting for my flan to bake. This is what happens.

The Lowdown

I'm feeling the need to update and know that I've had a number of ideas that I should blog about.

However, now that I'm in front of the computer, all those ideas have flown out my head.

So here's the low-down:

The Boy

• no longer screams through baths. I finally wised up and remembered that Clara stopped screaming when I'd sit her up in the tub and--low and behold--that works for this guy, too. That and slowing down enough that he's not freaked out by the water and splashing and rushing (for a mom that's usually not in any kind of rush).
  

• is almost sleeping through the night. Last night he work up at 3:30, but usually he makes it to 4 or 5 and then goes back to sleep for another 2 or 3 hours. Of course, now that I've bragged about it, he'll be waking up every two hours tonight.
  

• Lights up whenever Clara walks in the room. I melt every time.
  

• He likes to bat at the Elmo that I've hung by his "play" space, and I think he's starting to grab things voluntarily, too.

• For the last three weeks, I've sent him to the nursery during the Bible study I attend on Wednesdays, and he hasn't made any fuss that couldn't be cured with a bottle. Bronte even got him to take a nap in a pack 'n play this morning!
  

• In general, he is still the smiliest, happiest baby I've met. I just can't get enough of him.
  

Clara

• is still obsessed with airplanes. She gets pretty excited about trains and buses, too, but airplanes come up in conversation at least once an hour.
  

• She loves, loves, loves her babysitter. She's got some telephone-shaped blocks and whenever she finds them, she pretends she's talking on the phone. When I ask her who she's talking to, 90% of the time she replies, "Bon-te". (Yep, same Bronte who got The Boy to nap today.)
  

• She was really interested in the trick-or-treaters that came to the door on Monday. When I mentioned going trick-or-treating next year, she thought that was a great idea. However, she does not want a costume and will not paint her face. (I bet she'd change her mind if I made her an airplane for her costume.)

• She really is mostly potty trained (while awake). We've gone to the Alameda 3 times without diapers and no accidents. The first time I was running a number of other errands and while we were standing in a huge bank line I remembered that she had no diaper on. No problem, though. Whew!

• She's finally getting over her rabid, whiny phase that emerged sometime around the end of July (wonder why?). I think it's been about a week since she's thrown a fit, so here's hoping that we're through the woods with that one. Or maybe she started to learn consequences from her second-to-last fit. Every Sunday after mass, we go to the convenience store next to the church and Mario always buys a newspaper and lets Clara pick out a small chocolate bar. Two weeks ago, she got mad about something, started crying, and Mario had to take her out. It wasn't that she was crying in church, but that she wouldn't tell us what was wrong. While they waited for me, Mario kept telling her, "if you just tell me what's wrong, you can still get your chocolate." She never did. All afternoon she kept talking about how she didn't get her chocolate. I think it was the first punishment that she really understood and felt as a punishment. So that chocolate habit that's been irritating me finally did have a purpose.

• She's been getting braver at the park and is FINALLY going down the slides by herself. Her favorite slide is a fairly tall one, made of gloriously slippery concrete. I thought it would be fine for her to do by herself. However, when her butt landed at the bottom, her head kept right on going and smacked the ground like a ripe melon. So, after two-and-a-half years of life, Miss Careful has her first real owie. She did recover after about 10 minutes and did go on other slides that afternoon. Whew. I was afraid that fall would scare her off for a few months. Thank goodness that's not the case.
  

Wow--that's enough blabbing about my kids (even though that IS what this space is for).

Not So Serious (whew!)

When Clara was a baby, whenever people met her, they'd inevitably comment, "what a serious baby." They were no doubt saying this as baby Clara was giving them the Evil Eye. She was very, very good at that. Thank heavens, she's gotten friendlier.

The other day, I was given yet another clue that The Boy will be a whole different ball of wax. We were at the checkout at the OXXO and as the cashiers were oohing and ahhing over him, he busted out his award-winning grin. Not once, but at least twice.

I was a little taken aback. I'm just not used to my babies smiling at strangers.

I kind of like it!

The Little Liberated Woman

Clara's Tia Patty and Abuela have a tendency to tease Clara.

And she takes the bait every time.

They like to call her, "Clara Bella!" "Clara Hermosa!" "Clara Preciosa!"

And Clara's ornery, two-year-old self retorts back, "No. No 'mosa. No pe-ciosa. Clara."

And I thought to myself, "Wow--what a liberated little woman I'm raising! She refuses to be called nicknames based on her looks! Way to go, girl!"

This phase lasted for a month or so. However, it has mutated a little within the last week or two. Now when Patty and Mago call her Clara Bella or Clara Preciosa, she's got a different retort.

"No. Clara Hermosa." [toothy grin] [Translation: Beautiful Clara]

The other day when we were asking her to tell a friend her brother's full name, we then asked her to say her full name. Apparently we need to change her birth certificate, because she's still insisting that she's Clara Hermosa.


I'm glad to know that she's got no shortage of self-confidence.

The Boy in Action

OK, I know he's only a month old (two weeks in the video), so there's not really much action going on. But check out those turtle eyes! And wait around for 40 seconds--he smiles! He really does!

Random Observations at 2 Weeks

A lot of random things have crossed my mind the last two weeks that I've wanted to blog about, but I haven't gotten it together. Until now.

The difference between boys and girls:

• One night I had gotten the baby undressed and ready for his bath when I picked him up with my hand under his butt. Immediately I felt something suspicious. Panicked, I turned to Mario, asking, "Did he just poop on my hand?"

Nope. It was just his boy parts. Whew!

• I always thought people exaggerated when they talked about their boy babies peeing on the changing table. After all, Clara's done this once or twice. It's just more dramatic with boys, right?

No. Boys really do pee All. The. Time. While Clara has peed on the changing table once
or twice in two and a half years, The Boy pees on the changing table once or twice A DAY.

Now I know--it's no exaggeration.

Sibling Rivalry

My biggest worry about having a second child was Clara's reaction to him. Fortunately--so far--all my worries were for naught.

• They both wake up a little earlier than we had been accustomed to, but early morning with both kids is one of the best times of day. The Boy is alert, wide-eyed and wondering, and Clara just loves to get in his face and stare back at him. On these occasions, The Boy seems to enjoy her as much as she enjoys him.

• However, she does get upset when he spits up. He spat up in the car seat the other day (which was Clara's until 2 weeks ago). For the rest of the week, whenever she saw him it was an endless litany of, "Baby? Spit? Carseat?" with an ever-increasing note of panic in her voice.

• She already protects him, too. Patty and Mario's mom were teasing The Boy at breakfast about whether he wanted to eat bananas with us. Having been warned that the baby can't eat anything besides boobie and bottles (in case she had the bright idea of feeding him a banana), Clara piped up, "No! Baby eat boobie!"

Way to lay down the law, kid.


For my mom:

Echoing a constant refrain from my own mother, Mario's mom needed my opinion the other day. "Doesn't Mario speak really fast when he speaks in English?"

Mario does have a tendency to speak really fast. In any language. But I can't say that it's much faster than average conversation.

So it's not just you, Mom. ;)

Am I Jinxing Her By Saying This?

I think I can stop holding my breath and finally announce out loud that Clara may just be mostly potty-trained!

July 6th, I wrote on the calendar, "Clara went pipi on the potty!" It hadn't happened for a few weeks, so worth documenting. Then she did it again the next day. And the next. And even some times in those days she'd feel the urge, run to the potty, and sit there before realizing it was a false alarm.

But she knew what was going on.

The last couple of days, she's even gone poo in the potty, so I think we're really onto something. And now she'll go two or even three times a day (although wetting the diapers while sleeping seems to be an automatic reflex . . . I get it). But she generally runs around naked all day and hasn't had an accident for . . . I can't remember how long!

Of course, I realize that she's likely to take a BIG backslide in the next week/month, given the imminent upheaval in our lives. However, since she's come this far, I'm sure she'll hop back on that horse, once she's OK with relinquishing her spot as "the baby" (I'm just hoping that won't take the better part of the rest of this year).

I am really nervous to take her any farther than the butcher's across the street without diapers on. But, these days, we don't go much farther than the butcher's, so it's really not an issue.

But, for experienced parents out there, when do you know that she's ready to go out in public without diapers? (Like, long enough for a drive to the grocery store?) I have a feeling that Clara is pretty far from that point, but maybe I'm just being too cautious.

Two-Year-Old Chores

I've heard that it's never too early to involve kids in chores. And, with Clara, it's often more work to try to keep her from "helping" than from just letting her help in her own way.

• She loves sweeping. She's no good at it, but she LOVES it. We'll have to go to the market and get her a child-sized broom.
  

• I schedule laundry time around the times she's awake, as she loves loading the washer, closing the soap drawer, turning on the machine, unloading the washer, and bringing me clean clothes from the hamper to hang on the line. She really is pretty helpful with laundry. Particularly when we do her clothes, and I don't have to worry about her dragging shirts that are way too big for her through the dust in the laundry patio. Plus, her clothes hamper is just her size, so she can completely load and unload the washing machine on her own. It's great! Then again, she thinks she's capable of folding laundry, too. She'd be wrong on that one!
  

• My mother-in-law mentioned that her kids all learned how to make their beds when they were two or three. Since Clara's bed just got converted into a daybed, I'm in the process of showing her how to pull the sheets tight over the mattress. As it's so stinkin' hot outside, she sleeps with no sheets or blankets, so this is an excellent time to teach her this, right? She's got a long way to go before she'll ever pull those sheets even remotely tight, but she refuses to let me make her bed by myself. So I guess I'll let her learn how to make the bed. She is starting to get helpful at helping me make mine, though.

• Watering the plants has always been high on her list of priorities. Whenever she takes a bath, I now give her an empty yogurt container and ask her to water the plants with the water left in the tub (I've been bathing her in the patio--it's wonderful). She likes having something to do, and it gives me time to clean up her other bath things. Also, it's better for both of us if she's bending over to get that water out, rather than me. =P Sure, she often gets more water on the concrete than in the planters, but she's learning.

• If I make pancakes in the morning, she'll nearly throw a fit if I don't let her stir the batter. And again, she's getting pretty good at that, too.

Since she's so zealous to help, I really can't say no. And, let's face it, in a few years I'll be really grateful that I've already taken the time to teach her how to do these things.

In a few years, here's hoping that she's got a fraction of the enthusiasm for helping out around the house as she does now.

Conversations with Clara (Part II)

Being the things that pass (or, better put, evolve) all too quickly, I'm recording yet another Clara conversation here.

This afternoon we were in the pool. Clara likes using the skimmer net to fish out stray leaves and bugs, just like I do. This afternoon, she decided to fish out her ball and rubber puppy.

Every now and then she accurately counts to two or three. But we seem to be missing something, somewhere.

When she got both the puppy and the ball trapped in the net, she triumphantly exclaimed, "two puppy! Two balls!"

I pointed out that she had only one puppy and one ball in the net. "You have two toys. But only one puppy and one ball."

She seemed to seriously consider this information for awhile. But, for the rest of the afternoon, as long as she was playing with her toys and the net, she had two puppies and two balls.

It'll come.

Conversations with Clara (Part I)

Patty left for vacation this weekend. Clara saw Patty's suitcase waiting in the living room, and now has enough recent experience to know what THAT was all about.

"Patty. Airplane?"

In vain, I tried to explain that Patty was going to take a long bus ride to visit her mom and dad. However, Clara's only experience with buses are city buses (clearly no need for a suitcase). She kept insisting and insisting that Patty was going to the airport to go on an airplane that I just had to give in.

Thinking that I wasn't understanding, she even used the GERMAN word for airplane to make sure she was getting the message across!

This is even funnier, as whenever Clara and I read her German word book, she usually points out the pictures in English and I read them in German (sometimes she'll repeat the German after me). However, whenever we get to the airplane picture, she gets all stubborn and insists that it's an airplane instead of a Flugzeug. Never mind that she's content to hear all the other 999 words in the book pronounced in German. To Clara, an airplane is an airplane and that that's all it ever should be.

So imagine my surprise when I hear, as Clara is insisting: "Patty. Airplane. Tacky [taxi]. Airpope [airport]. Airplane. Airplane! Flugzeug! Airplane! Flugzeug! Airplane" It kind of took my breath away.

So how much will it fry her brain (or mine) to insist that it's an avion in Spanish?

Another Hurdle Crossed

Clara's naps have been rather hit or miss lately. Somedays she'll sleep solidly for 2-3 hours. Other days I shut her in her room for an hour and a half, and she spends the entire time pretending that she is both the audience and comedian at a successful comedy club. Either way, at the end of "nap" time, she's happy.

So, after a silent hour of naptime on Sunday, I was a little shocked when I heard her crying. As crying is out of the ordinary for her, I waited a bit to see if she'd fall back asleep. No dice.

Upon entering her room, I found her torso on TOP of the changing table at the foot of her bed, her legs dangling off (on the bed side, thank goodness), and her little hands clinging with all their might to the table top to keep her from falling. How she got into that position, I'm not sure, but it sure scared her!

It scared me too, so after declaring naptime officially over, I busted out the screwdriver and took the drop side of her crib off. I'm assuming that she climbed that high by using the folding side of her crib as a foothold to reach that fascinating top of the changing table. No more. Whether any of us really want it, Clara is now the resident of a daybed.

I was hoping that this transition could wait a few months, until the baby would have a more predictable schedule (and Clara would be used to said schedule). I sure wonder how those nighttime feedings will go with a two-year-old who's free to roam the room.

But so far, she's been really good about staying in her bed. The first night she cried twice because her teddy bear fell out of bed. Better the bear than her, I thought. Last night everybody stayed in bed, just fine.

This afternoon for naptime, she was caught playing with her Weebles treehouse (which, fortunately for me, makes noise, so I can tell the difference between her OUT of bed and playing and IN bed and talking to herself for hours on end).

This was a hurdle that I had been dreading, but so far, so good. Here's hoping it continues that way!
***************************************************************
Note: picture was re-enacted.

Officially Bilingual (I hope!)

Despite the fact that we've got Tia Patty living with us and Clara finally gets an adequate dose of Spanish every day, up until yesterday, she was decidedly monolingual. And the sole language she spoke was Spanglish. Fabulous. (OK, OK, she does seem to understand everything quite well in both languages. And I realize that is a HUGE accomplishment.)

For instance, a recent conversation with Clara went like this:

[setting: the patio, looking at the sky]

Clara: Moon. (pointing at the moon)

Mama: Yep, that's the moon.

Clara: Moon se cayo.

Mama: The moon fell?

Clara: Yep.

Mama: Really?

Clara: Moon se cayo on Papa.

Mama: The moon fell on Papa?

Clara: Yep. Se cayo on Papa. [Note: Clara hasn't seen Mario for a few days, as he's been working some crazy hours, so I'm really curious what's going on in her head here.]

Mama: Is Papa OK?

Clara: OK.

Apparently she's sneaking crack into her diet somehow. I'll have to keep an eye out for that one.

But, as noted, until yesterday she speaks English with a few words that are consistently in Spanish (agua and cayo). I usually repeat them back to her in English, and she'll repeat them to me in Spanish. No problem. I've always felt that speaking Spanglish fluently is an important step to becoming bilingual.

Yesterday I saw a sign that she's bridging that gap. For the last few weeks, she's been fascinated with lids, so before preparing anything, I have to let her take off the lids to the milk jug, her sippy cups, the peanut butter, or she'll suffer a meltdown, screaming, "li, li, li . . . LID!" (not a battle I feel is worth the fight).

However, as Patty was pouring her milk for breakfast, Clara noted the lid and told Patty, "tapa", in an effort to get the lid herself.

Huh. I didn't know that she knew how to say "tapa" (lid).

And besides knowing the two words that mean the same thing (and sound very different), she knew to use the English word with me and the Spanish with Patty.

That's pretty impressive for someone who isn't quite two-and-a-half!

Noise

The lack of posting was due to our three-week absence from our home. Clara and I went to visit my parents in Indiana for three weeks, and blogging just wasn't a priority.

Clara transitioned well to living at my parents' house for three weeks, and is transitioning to being back at home just as seamlessly.

However, at coming back home, we each seem to have our hang-ups. For the first few hours I'm back home, our white tile floors strike me as a real oddity. They're so . . . bare. So stark. So cold. Then I go to bed, my clock readjusts itself, and I wake up very, very happy to have the cold, bare, easy-to-clean floors (especially with the potty-training toddler).

Clara, on the other hand, just can't adjust to the noise. My parents live on the quiet end of a suburban cul-du-sac. We live on a fairly busy street. The noise doesn't really bother her, but she keeps up a constant litany of, "noise . . . noise . . . noisy" in her serious, quiet voice.

Yep. Get used to it, kid.

Be grateful that we don't have the horrible neighbors that we did in Metepec, who used their car horns instead of a doorbell. THAT was noise. I'll take trucks and motorcycles any day over that.

Big Baby

Mario rented Toy Story 3 on Friday night, and we would have watched it then, except we had no electricity all night. And as we had to get the movie back to the store by 9pm the next day, we decided to watch it in the afternoon with Clara around. After all, it's Toy Story and a number of my friends have commented that it's their toddlers' favorite movie. Sounded like a good "first" movie for Clara.

[Clarification: yes, she's two and has watched other movies. She saw Snow White after Thanksgiving when she was sick (and slept through half of it). As I was searching for the royal wedding on TV on Friday, she saw quite a bit of Balto. And she watches a variety of videos with her babysitter at the gringo church every Wednesday . . . so she's not totally deprived. But, except for Snow White, we've never just sat down with her for the express purpose of watching a movie . . . until Saturday!]


She was really into the first half of the movie. I was surprised she lasted that long. Then the novelty began to wear off. Then, [Toy Story 3 spoiler!] when our heroes were caught escaping from Sunnyside on the dumpsters and Woody reminds Lotso and Big Baby about Daisy. Big Baby croaked out a beautifully pathetic "Mama?" (yep, brought tears to my eyes) and then Lotso punched Big Baby in the stomach, and Clara just couldn't take any more. Why was the bear hitting the baby? NO ONE should hit babies!

She cried out, "No, baby, NOOO!" and burst into inconsolable tears.

So, word to the wise: if you've got a sensitive, baby-loving two-year-old, Toy Story 3 may NOT be a great movie for her to watch.

Maybe next year.

Day 119

Yep, we're on Day #119 of potty training . . . or something like that.

Just kidding. I'm not really counting. But it sure would be nice to get her out of diapers before we've got another one in them for another 3 years.

However, this last week, after months and months of ZERO interest in the potty, we've had a breakthrough! When I change her diaper I ask her if she wants another diaper or if she wants to go naked on bottom. More often than not, she chooses to be naked. Why? Because, in Clara-ese, "naked" or "nakey" equals "bath". And lately, "bath" means that she get to sit in the tub in the patio and play in the water and sun for roughly an hour. This is, hands down, the highlight of her day.

How did "nakey" come to equal "bath"? Every day, for her entire life, when we tell her that she's going to get ready for a bath, we say (pretty much verbatim) "it's time to go get naked for your bath!" Yep, naked=bath. But so far that's working out to my advantage.

Breakthrough #2: she's agreeable to sitting on the potty. Why?

1) I moved it in the hallway, where it's more visible. Also, more practical when someone is in the shower and the potty would normally not be accessible.

2)But, in Clara's mind, the potty is now closer to the bookshelves. And since I initially tried to get her to sit on the potty for an extended period of time by reading her books while sitting on the potty, she sees potty time as book time. And books are her absolute favorite pastime. This now means lots of potty time.

But has she actually put anything in the potty? No. But sooner or later, she will.

Better Video

This video is a bit more fun than the last one.

I had noted a number of friends of mine who post on facebook that their 2 and 3-year-olds have been reading them bedtime stories. Yes, this is a wonderful accomplishment (whether memorized or actual reading, it IS reading, and therefore pretty cool).

But I couldn't leave well enough alone and just had to share how Clara reads a book.


Sorry it's a little long. If you're not that into Clara, by all means, don't watch.

But if you're not all that into Clara, why would you bother to read these posts in the first place?

Probably Shouldn't Post This, But . . .

This is probably one of those things I shouldn't post, but I just can't help myself.

Note: if you can't stand seeing/listening to crying children DO NOT play the following video.


In case you didn't catch it, Clara is expressing her dismay that we're not letting her watch any more Top Gear. (It was time for bed.)

Yep, we're bad parents and let our kid watch TV (OK, YouTube).

The F1 season started yesterday, so Mario of course had to watch the highlights of the race, courtesy of YouTube. Alas, we no longer have cable. Can't say I'm broken up about this, as I do not miss the races at 6am. But Mario does. Thank goodness for the magic of YouTube.

After the race, he and Clara still had not gotten their full car fix, so he pulled up an episode of the BBC's Top Gear. (Those of you in Mexico, yes, I have heard your ire about the show. We agree. But we love Top Gear anyway. Plus, it gave Mastretta plenty of free publicity.) Despite the manifold similarities I note between myself and Clara, it can't be denied that she's pretty "into" vehicles of any kind, race cars in particular.

Hence, the angst when we told her it was time for bed.

Funny thing, though. I don't remember actually telling her that we were watching Top Gear. Certainly, the show itself mentioned its name enough, and Mario and I no doubt said the name in passing.

And Clara certainly internalized it. As soon as we began to understand her, it became clear that she was shouting, "no more Top Gear! No more Top Gear!" And in Clara-ese, that means that she's really sad she didn't get to see any more.

Do you think that if we sent this video to Top Gear we'd get free tickets to the show?

March Mayhem

Are you familiar with the book, Harold and the Purple Crayon?

Today we had Clara and the Blue Crayon.

I was talking to my parents on the phone when Clara waltzed down the hall, dragging a blue crayon along the white wall at her side. Immediately, I got loud, exclaiming, "Clara--we DO NOT draw on the walls!" and then took the crayon away. I examined the wall in the living room where I caught her and as there was no blue on it, I wasn't too concerned. Between taking the crayon away, speaking sternly, and in a voice louder than usual, I was sure Clara would be on the floor, sobbing. She doesn't take chastisement well. However, she just toddled contentedly off to Patty's room.

Why? She must have known that she deserved real punishment.

After I got off the phone with my parents, I went to see what she and Patty were up to. On the way, I glanced at the hallway wall and noticed a distinct blue line, which apparently had its origin with some rather large circles by the door to Patty's room. Blast. It had been about an hour since I caught her with the crayon. I tend to think of two-year-olds like puppies, and if much time elapses between the crime taking place and getting caught, I assume that they have very little memory of having caused any mayhem.

However, she is two. Her memory is getting longer. And even at two, she does need to take some responsibility for her actions.

So I got a bucket of water, a sponge, and two small scrub pads so Clara and I could both clean the wall. Once I took away the water, realizing that very little is necessary for cleaning a wall painted with water-soluable paint, she chore suddenly turned into punishment for Clara. Excellent. That was my point.

Or, better said, washing the wall wasn't quite as much fun without water. But she stuck with it to the end.

Not that her attempts at scrubbing really got much blue off (I had to keep reminding her to stick to scrubbing the blue line, not just whatever parts of the wall struck her fancy), but she did "help" to clean up her mess.

And maybe next week when we repaint the wall, she'll help with that, too. It needed to be done. I was just hoping we could put off the painting for a few more months. D'oh!

**************************************************************************

On a side note, after initially noticing the blue wall I took a moment to turn off the laundry machine and opened the machine door, realizing that I needed to go to the bathroom before I put the clothes in the basket to hang on the line. So I left the clothes in the machine while I went and did my business. When I returned to the laundry room, Clara already had half of her clothes unloaded and in the basket!

So, now that she's getting bigger and giving me more grey hairs with new hijinks (OK, this is the first time), she's also getting more independent, accepting more responsibility, and actually being useful! That part I can get used to. Unfortunately, I realize that it all goes hand in hand with being able to cause more mayhem.

So it is. *sigh*

Fork!

Clara's getting pretty good when it comes to works for her utensils. She particularly likes talking about forks.

Except that's not how she pronounces it. Think of another 4-letter word that starts with F.

A REALLY inappropriate word that begins with F.

Yep, Clara's new favorite word.

She'll get all excited about her utensils, and chatter away so the entire neighborhood can hear, "fork, fork . . . fork . . . FORK!" Thank goodness the neighbors don't know English.

But yesterday she decided that she can be all-opportunity inappropriate.

We were eating spaghetti and she had accidentally dropped some on her boots. She says boots perfectly well. I don't know if she was trying out her Spanish or saying "shoe" instead, but she was really upset about it and, using this new word, I couldn't figure out what she wanted.

Because, instead of "bota", she was crying about "puta". (Not quite as offensive as the f-bomb in English, but almost!) So, imagine if you will, in the most pathetic two-year-old voice, getting increasingly desperate for me to wipe the spaghetti off of her boots.

"Puta . . . puta . . . puta, puta--PUUUUUU-TAAAAA!"

Yep, she'll find a way to offend everyone at Danyel and Cesar's wedding next weekend.

Thank goodness she's so stinkin' cute.

Go to Sleep, Kid

For at least the last month (and off and on since . . . well, longer than I can remember), Clara has made it a nighttime routine of talking to herself for around an hour before she falls asleep. It doesn't matter if she goes to sleep at her normal bedtime, or if we get her to bed a bit late. Last week, when it was pretty late, I still heard her going full-steam at quarter to ten.

Good heavens--go to sleep, Clara!

Generally, we just ignore her, as she always does fall asleep, sooner or later.

This week, I borrowed my friend's "Touchpoints" book, by Dr. T Berry Brazelton. On his tiny little section about two-year-olds, he mentioned this phenomenon of kids talking themselves to sleep. Some well-known researchers recorded a number of kids' monologues between 20 months and three years. After listening to hundreds of hours' worth of toddler babble, they were able to make sense of it and noticed that most kids needed to talk to themselves, rehashing their day, in order to put their world right and fall asleep. Basically, they talk to themselves about their day, focusing on the parts they enjoyed and the parts that upset them.

Huh.

I had a feeling that it helped her fall asleep, or at least expend the last of her energies, but she's really making sense of her day? Wow.

I'm glad someone understands what she's saying!

But if she's still babbling away past nine o'clock, she's still going to get a loud, "GO TO SLEEP, CLARA!"

New Things

I've been noticing a couple new obsessions with Clara, and I wanted to write them down and share before they got old (or she drops them entirely).

• She loves listening to the traffic, especially those with either bigger or smaller engines than regular cars (in her words, "vrrrrr"). She can now identify and tries to say motorcycle [mo-TOR], and still gets excited about trucks.
  

• Despite that, her new favorite word is "stuck". It's usually either pronounced "duck" or "'tuck". We first started playing a game where I'd trap her hand under my leg. But now anything that she can't get easily is quickly decided to be "duck".
  

• We live just a block away from our church, so when the bells ring twice a day, we hear them. The evening bells get her attention, as we're usually eating at 6:30 and 7 when they go off. When she pointed out the door towards the bells, I let her know that they meant that there would be mass soon. "Do you want to go to mass?" She shook her head no. Then she said, "ni-night!" Right! The bells do ring right around the time of your 7 o'clock bedtime! What a sharp kid!
  

Birthday!

Below is a video we took on Clara's birthday, two weeks ago.

Of course, we taught her how to show her two fingers when someone asks her how old she is, and with prompting she'll happily say that she's either two or dos (depending on the prompt).

The Expectation Game

Ever since I first learned of Clara's existence, I've lived in fear of myself putting too many expectations on her. Or just expecting her to be somebody she's not. I don't want to define in my head who she is, or who I think she should be. I want to discover who she is, along with her.

My experience working with kids and education classes emphasized not labeling children. So when those first labels began rolling in about Clara ("she's such a serious baby!"), I cringed inside. I still do. And every once in awhile, I catch myself labeling her myself.

Now, this hang-up with labeling kids has nothing to do with any kind of rebellion against the way I was raised. Really, my parents were among the best I've ever met about letting us be who we were. Other people's parents would nag them about getting a boyfriend, while mine would sit back and say, "hey--it's your life." In essence, saying, "do it your way."

That's the way I want to raise my kids, too. However, the stars were misaligned when I was born. I'm a first-born Virgo and for a very, very long time I possessed so many of those type-A characteristics that define first-born Virgos. Slowly, I've fought them off. And I thought I had tamed the first-born Virgo curse.

Then I had a kid.

Before Clara was born, we'd sit around and wonder, "what will he/she look like?" We started to plan her out, like she was a made-to-order baby. "Let's hope she's got your eyes and my nose." (Mario has amazing eyes, and he's always complimented my nose.)

But what if she had MY eyes and HIS nose? Poor kid.

Beyond the physical description, I'd sit and wonder about her character. Back to my order form, I wanted her to have her father's endless confidence (minus the infrequent bouts of arrogance) combined with my drive to be a good student. So when those "she's so serious!" comments came rolling in, we took it in stride, as we were both very serious babies. She was right on track to be as practically perfect as ourselves. [Yes, my tongue is stuck WAY inside my cheek!]

However, yesterday, as we were walking to the park, I came across another sign that my made-to-order-baby form may not have been delivered properly. Clara was walking block after block like a trooper. Up ahead, we noticed a small dog sitting in the doorway of a corner store. As Clara is fascinated with puppies, I pointed the dog out to her.

She froze.

In Clara's mind, dogs are the best thing ever--from a distance. But on her own two feet, they are fearsome creatures indeed. Nevermind that this dog was simply sitting in the doorway and remained parked on his butt the entire time we walked past. He didn't bark. He barely glanced her way.

But she put the brakes on those little feet and we dragged her past the dog with her knees locked rigidly. I could just about hear the squeals from the soles of her shoes on the sidewalk, like in a cartoon.

A block later, there was a cat in front of another store. Clara is usually equally fascinated by cats as she is dogs. For months, she's been able to distinguish the difference between the two animals and tell us all about them. However, yesterday fear overtook reason and as soon as she spied the cat, she burst out with, "NO PUPPY! NO PUPPY!" and again refused to move.

*sigh*

I was hoping this would pass her by.

My mother is afraid of dogs. I'm afraid of dogs (petrified of them was a better way to describe it when I was young . . . fear is just not strong enough of a word). This is where I was hoping that Mario's innate confident genes would kick in. He's not afraid of anything.

But she's my daughter, too. Perhaps she's picked up on the way I jump when dogs bark at me when we take our frequent walks down the street. Maybe it's just hereditary. Either way, it's official.

She's more like me than I care to admit.

And maybe that's just why it's so easy to hold these expectations for our kids. It's not that we want them to be just like ourselves--it's more that we want our kids to be inherently different from ourselves.

Why We Don't Remember Things Until We're 4

Two years ago today, I decided that I had finally had enough of at-home labor and called the doctor, telling him that we were going to the hospital.

Not that I wanted to spend much time at the hospital.

I just wanted drugs. Right then.

Did I get them? No. Not until about 5 minutes before Clara was born.

(Granted, this may not have been entirely my doctor's/the hospital's fault . . . it is one of the risks of delivering a baby in the middle of the night, and I know they did have trouble locating the anesthesiologist. However, given comparisons between my experience and my friends' experiences giving birth in Mexico, they do tend to put off the epidural until the very last minute. I'll be much more explicit with my doctor about my wishes for as many drugs as possible this time around. And I'll keep in mind that I probably won't get them.)

Last year, when Clara turned 1, a friend of mine told me that her mother told her about how she was born every year on her birthday. She remembers these recollections fondly.

Apparently, even a year later, I was still a bit shell-shocked, so I began my story to Clara last year with, "A year ago today, I woke up at 6am thinking, "oh shit--this is going to hurt." It's possible that I elaborated even more.

I'm so glad she won't remember that.

This year I was able to tone it down a bit, saying, "two years ago today, I knew you were going to be born. But you waited until tomorrow, so we could call you Clara instead of Angela."

Much better.

And yes, January 27th is St. Angela's Day (one of my favorite girls' names) and January 28th is St. Clara's Day. We had already decided to name her Clara, regardless of the day she was born on. However, according to my thoughts, if she was born on the 27th, I might just be able to convince Mario that she was really meant to be called Angela.

I guess she decided that she'd rather be called Clara.

Today revealed to me that time really does heal all wounds.

Thank goodness . . . just in time to do it again.

Puppy or Papi?

Clara has finally graduated from calling all animals "baby" to getting a bit specific. Dogs are now universally puppies (as are squirrels, racoons, or anything else "dog-like"), whereas cats are something that sounds like "titty".

My neighbor ladies, however, don't know much English. I have a feeling that Clara will teach them quite a bit in the next few months, at least until she becomes truly bilingual and it dawns on her who she should speak Spanish to and who she should speak English to. She's taught them "bye-bye" already. (Of course, they very likely already knew that one.)

Every week, as soon as we walk in the front patio of Rosario's house, Clara gets all excited because she can see "Muneca," Rosario's German Shepherd, fenced off on the side patio of the house. Muneca no longer barks at us, but Clara knows she's there nonetheless. She always greets Muneca, pointing her finger at the dog, happily shouting in her high-pitched, breathy voice, "Puppy! Puppy!" She'll often continue to comment on the dog for a few minutes while we're inside.

But, as I've said, the neighbor ladies don't understand English. So when Panchita saw Clara pointing out the door, shouting "Puppy! Puppy!" She heard, "Papi! Papi!" This is the Spanish equivalent of Daddy. Right above Rosario's front door is a picture of Jesus and his sacred heart. This brought fits of glee to Panchita's very devout Catholic heart.

"How precious! She's calling the Holy Father, 'Papi! Papi!' How beautiful!"

I just didn't have the heart to explain that was not at all what Clara was going on about.

However, at the end of our Bible study, Rosario commented that she saw us at mass on Sunday, and how cute Clara was, walking in with her hands clasped in front of her in reverence.

Had to think about that one . . . is she really talking about MY kid?

Oh, yeah . . . now I remember. And I couldn't let this one slide.

"Yeah, sorry Rosario, but that wasn't reverence. Her hands were stuck together because I had just given her a big squirt of hand lotion before we left the house."

While sure, I really do hope that some day she'll enter a church with reverence and come to see Jesus as one who is every bit as dear to her as her own father, at this point she is not quite two years old. The happy spaces in her heart are filled with puppies and hand lotion. And at this point, that's how it should be.

Update of Miscellany

Every now and again Clara will do something or say something, and I think, "ooo--I've got to write that down!" And, invariably, I never do.

So what is a fairly accurate snapshot of this 23-month-old? Random thoughts and milestones as they come to me:

* While still not able to run, she does enjoy walking fast. One of these days she'll be able to keep up with her friends!

* She still really enjoys walking around everywhere with her princess bag around her neck. She was very put-out this afternoon when I claimed (as always) that she could not take it with her to bed.

* Whenever she comes across a ponytail holder, she'll trot over to me, put the ponytail holder on her head as a sign that she wants a ponytail. If she finds 5 ponytail holders, then she wants 5 ponytails.

* Her vocabulary really is expanding, and she's beginning to include some Spanish. I've been impressed for a long time that Papa and Mama are consistently pronounced in Spanish, with the accent on the last syllable. This is particularly astonishing, as Mario and I usually refer to ourselves with the accent on the first syllable, rendering Mario into a potato in Spanish. Thank goodness Clara knows the difference and corrects us.

*She shows random interest in the potty, but almost always prefers to sit on it fully clothed. I always ask her if she'd like to take off her pants and diaper, and 85% of the time she refuses. And sits on the potty nontheless.

* She is fascinated with her underwear though. If she spies a pair, she must have it with her, preferably on her. At the moment, she's napping with a clean pair clutched in her fist. The other day her friend needed to borrow a pair, and as soon as Clara saw Katya wearing underwear, she insisted that she needed to have on a pair as well. As I knew it wasn't a good day for potty training, I just scooted them up on top of her pants. She was satisfied. Lord, I love toddlers!

And now she's woken up, so that's it for this update!

All's Quiet . . . For Now

We just returned from a 3-day (really 2 1/2 days) car trip to visit my parents. That's 6 days round trip. With a toddler. And we all survived, trauma-free. How did we do it, you ask?

Chapstick.

I've noticed for months that Clara has a fascination with chapstick. She'll happily walk around the house, chapstick clenched in her chubby fist, liberally applying it to her mouth area for 10 minutes at a stretch.

So Sunday afternoon when she began to get fussy in the car, what did I slip back to her to get her quiet? You got it--chapstick. And now I know that she'll happily smear the stuff all over her face for hours at a stretch if permitted. At each rest stop, we'd scrape pink wax off her face so she'd be somewhat presentable. By three o'clock, the tube was empty (this was after a nap or two, clutching the chapstick all the while). I'm quite sure that towards the end she was digging it out with her dragon-lady fingernails (yeah, we forgot the fingernail clippers at home . . . bad call). Still, it was a small price to pay for a few hours of peace, right?

Despite the enormous balls of wax that we shaved off her face, I feared that we may have come up a bit short on accounting for all the chapstick that disappeared in those hours. She didn't possibly eat it, did she? Not being the kind of parent that freaks out over much of anything, I just figured that if some was ingested, it's made of wax, which IS edible in small quantities. I hoped that the worst it would do to her would speed things up along her digestive track. And as she's more often constipated than not, didn't figure that would be a bad thing.

Fast forward a few hours and we've stopped for the night in Texarkana, making a pit stop at the Waffle House before checking into a hotel. As I finish my waffle, I notice that a horrible, horrible smell is radiating from the direction of Clara. However, as I had left the diaper bag out in the car, my jacket in the car, and it was freezing cold in between the Waffle House and the car, I decided that we could wait twenty minutes to change her once we checked into the hotel.

As I took Clara out of the car at the hotel, I noticed a brown lump the size of a quarter on the label of her carseat. Oh no. This is not good. Gingerly, I held her well under her butt and high on her back, so as not to get any poop on me. Mario, who freaks out about most bodily functions, promptly declared her to be poopy ALL OVER!

Thank you, Mario. I hadn't realized.

Actually, he was right and I hadn't realized how very bad it was. After all, she had been wearing her very long winter jacket over her clothes in the carseat, so if poop managed to get on the carseat . . . yeah, there really was poop ALL OVER. So while Mario checked in, Clara and I bolted for the nearest restroom, and I did my best to clean her up without making the bathroom appear that the toilet exploded. Thank goodness I did have the foresight to pack an extra set of clothes in the diaper bag. After using roughly 10 wet wipes, all traces of poo were cleaned up--even off the winter jacket! The clothes had to be washed in a sink in the room and then quarantined to a plastic bag for the remainder of the trip.

So will I be using chapstick to entertain the child on long car rides in the future? I just don't know. Was the exploding poo related to the chapstick or had a completely different cause?

Perhaps we'll try it on another road trip to test this theory.