Potty training foreshadowed?

I thought it was worth noting that yesterday, for the first time, Melina asked to be changed. She looked at me and said, "Change? Change Mina?" and let me to the foot of the stairs and up to the changing table. This is the first time she has ever seemed to actually notice or care that she was wet. Good news on the potty-training front. (Not that I've even given that much thought yet).

Timba-tim

"Tim" is Melina's word for "some." In the past several months she's used several variations on it, like Tim? Tim? Tim? and then Timba-tim? Timba tim-tim? Tim timba-tim?

I just wanted to record this before she gives it up. It happens fast. Now instead of saying "oatie" she says "horsie," which really just isn't as cute.

Putting words together

Melina has learned so many new words lately that I can't even keep track. Now she's begun putting them together. Her very first sentence was "Old bobble." As in, "this milk tastes sour and I think it's been sitting around a lot time. How could you let me drink this?" Other memorable sentences include "kitty night-night," "daddy broken" (not sure exactly what that one means), "more quesadilla" and "play toys? Play wadu (water)?"

Her two great obsessions right now are playing with water in the sink (standing on a chair topped with a phone book - good thing she's coordinated) - and drawing on things, preferably with a felt pen. She seems very disappointed when she opens up the can of crayons and doesn't see any pens. She will write on ANYTHING and likes to try writing on different textures - Tupperware, walls, cat fur, wooden toys, etc. Luckily, they make washable ink felt pens these days. They *usually* come off.

She has also started learning words about concepts. The first one was "scary." She thought the pumpkin face on her old Halloween candy basket was scary. She also thought that my friend's poster of Jake the Alligator Man was scary, which it is. Then came "funny" (lots of things are funny) and today she's using "broken." Pretty much anything that doesn't work exactly the way she wants it to is broken, like a yellow crayon drawing on brown cardboard. You can't see much, so it must be broken. Or a pen that doesn't come apart like pens are supposed to do. Broken.

Preschools!

The other day someone asked me if I had started thinking about preschools yet. Uh, preschools? Isn't it a little early? No. The very next day, our nanny (part-time) announced that she was taking a job with Google, and I was thrust into a new nanny search and a quick education on daycares and preschools.

Turns out there are a lot of cool preschools in Portland. Some of them are co-ops, where parents work one day a month or so doing various odd jobs. Some of these charge very little and some of them charge a whole lot ($750 a month for three days a week of care). There are also lots of private preschools. Some have gardens, some have chickens, some teach your kids new languages, some focus on science, some are organic, some seem to be completely unstructured. Others have lots of rules. Most of them won't take kids under three, which was a problem since Melina is only 21 months now.

After a lot of research, I found both a nanny who I like, who will begin working with us in February, and a preschool that Melina can enter next fall. (I had to sign up this week to get a spot!). They have a garden, and organic food, and a guinea pig, and an emphasis on arts and reading and playacting and child-led activity (apparently this is the Emilio Reggia approach - or something like that. It was new to me last month and I haven't quite figured it out. Emilio Reggia is a town, not a man named Emilio.)

Anyway, it looks like Little M's environment will be changing quite a bit in the next year. I'm going to miss Youngsoon and Norah, her 2-year-old, and I'm sure Melina will too. I think our new nanny is going to work out great, though, and I think that she will really enjoy the preschool when she gets there. She seemed right at home when we went to visit, and spent most of the time threading beads onto pieces of wire, and pretending to pour tea.

A new adventure!

Garage progress!

Just before we went to Hawaii, Jeff finished the foundation for the garage. Here are some photos.

This is the full-size cement truck with its hose running back to the garage. If you click on it you can see the clever name of the cement pump.


Here is Jeff with his friend Simon.






It takes a village to raise a foundation.







The actual pouring of the cement.







Eventually I will post some photos of the final product - an actual foundation. Now he just has to build the garage. The scary part is that even as I write this he's in the den looking over house plans, planning to add a second bedroom to our upstairs.

Hives!

Well, it's good to know that at least one person besides my parents is reading this, so I am inspired to write again (so soon!). Melina woke up this morning with a huge red blotch on her face. At first I thought maybe it was from a blanket she was sleeping on, or maybe she had gotten into my makeup bag. When I saw other blotches all over her body I started doing research on the web and came up with Fifth Disease (a very common, benign baby problem) or rubella, which also isn't a big problem unless you've been hanging out with pregnant women, which in fact we have. So I called the doctor, and over the phone she diagnosed it as hives. Apparently rubella was wiped off the face of the earth (or at least the US) last March, and Fifth Disease looks different. The interesting thing is that Melina was hanging out with another baby with hives a few days ago. I didn't think hives were caused by a virus, but apparently they can be.

This evening I decided to give Melina a bath because I thought it might make her feel better, and she loves baths. Bad idea. Apparently the warm water made her itch even more, so she started crying miserably, and then when I took her out of the bath she cried even more because she wanted to stay in. Finally I gave her a little Benadryl and she spent the rest of the evening looking slightly dazed.

Hawaii

We spent ten days in Maui over Christmas, just north of Lahaina. We rented a condo with my parents - a very nice condo, although perhaps a little small for five people. All in all, it was a great trip, with much snorkeling, dining, walking Melina around, playing on the beach, taking surf lessons, swimming with turtles, driving up to the top of Haleakala (the volcano), and whale watching. Melina did great, except for a brief period where she learned that screaming in a restaurant could get her a lot of attention. Christmas dinner (at a very fancy restaurant) was kind of a low point for that reason. Actually, it was just weird to spend Christmas in Hawaii, where it doesn't seem like Christmas at all. I think next time I would go for New Year's instead, or go in January or February when the rates are lower.

I usually write more details about our trips, but I was too busy during this one to spend much time in contemplation. Also, since I was with my parents (and I always think they're the only ones who actually READ this blog), it seemed kind of redundant to write more here. But maybe there are other people out there reading this? If so, please let me know!

I am fighting off some sort of cold right now, so if this post seems listless, that's why. Maybe I will post more details later. For now, here's a photo of Melina with her big pineapple.

Bloggers' guilt

OK, so I haven't updated this blog in more than a month - a month full of Christmas preparations, stress, travel, adventure, visiting parents and many errands. I guess that's why I haven't updated. December was really a pretty overwhelming month. To top it off, Melina got chickenpox on the day we were having a Christmas party, three days before we were scheduled to fly to Maui. I had a complete meltdown thinking we wouldn't be able to go to Hawaii, and I had to call all of the party invitees to tell them about the chickenpox. Turns out it was a VERY mild case of chickenpox, and we DID have the party anyway, and we went to Hawaii, and I DID survive December although at times it felt like I was going to blow a gasket.

Uh-oh

Today (while eating a surprisingly spicy dish of Thai fried rice) Melina let out a well-rounded fart and lit up with a big smile. "Noise?" she said. "Yes," we said, that was a noise. A fart, to be exact. Not to be done at the dinner table, but apparently humorous enough to be repeated. For the next five minutes she kept screwing up her face and trying to push out another one. Jeff was in hysterics. Finally she succeeded and just beamed with pride. I can see an embarrassing moment in our dining future.

A personality develops

It's really interesting to see how Melina's personality has developed over the past six or seven months. She's really starting to be her own little person. Compared to other kids I've read about, she seems pretty easy (not many tantrums at all - I can only remember one that would have embarrassed me in public). At this stage, she's very mechanically inclined. She spends a lot of time trying to figure things out, and practices certain skills until she's mastered them. Because of that, she doesn't have a lot of accidents or falls.

In the past month her obsessions have been plastic buckles (like the kind you find on luggage or backpacks), keys, jumping, and shoes. For a few days she spent huge amounts of time trying to fit buckles together and then demanding that they be opened again ("Open? Open? Open?"). Now she has pretty much mastered that skill and is trying to figure out what she can open with my keys. I set up a chair next to the front door so she can practice putting the key in the lock, but she's also happy trying to open the cat's red plastic travel-carrier or, sometimes, the cat himself. She also enjoys trying to fit my keys down the heating grates. Often she will abscond with Jeff's keys and pretty soon you'll hear the car alarm going off because she's pressed the panic button. Oh, the joy of hearing that beep-beep-beep!

And that shoe thing. This kid has a lot of shoes, mostly because she got a bunch of hand-me-downs that are her current size, and her mama discovered that Marshall's is a great place to find baby shoes. Melina just learned the word for "boot" and has figured out how to get her boots on by herself. She gets annoyed and says "no" if you try to help her with this process.

So far, she doesn't seem too interested in creating art (unless you count music and dance). She would rather chew on crayons or take pens apart and put them back together. She's amazingly good at taking off and replacing pen lids. Yesterday we spent half an hour trying out every pen in our pen jar, but she was more interested in figuring out how they worked than actually drawing anything with them.

She does love music, and she has always been into dance. She likes drumming on my doumbek (a middle eastern drum) and has a very unique way of rolling her shoulders around when she dances. In general, she seems very physically oriented. She loves jumping up and down (she just learned the words "up and down") and also just figured out how to jump up in the air, which apparently is a two year old skill. She likes to jump off the bottom step of the stairs, climb up the narrow ledge along the grass in the front yard, and walk down stairs by herself without holding anybody's hand. (She'll say "no" if you offer to help). I think that's pretty impressive for a 19-month-old. She also loves being swung around by her arms. She'll always ask for more, saying "'gain? 'gain? 'gain?"

She's pretty cheerful most of the time (unless she gets really tired) and gets over disappointments and upsets pretty easily, if you distract her. She's definitely sociable, and isn't usually very clingy except around strange men. Once she warms up to them, though, she starts flirting like crazy.

If she continues on this current trajectory, she will be a beautiful, flirtatious, independent mechanical engineer who loves rock climbing, dancing, and collecting fashionable footwear.

Garage Update

Here's a recent view of our "garage," which Jeff has really started working on now that it's freezing and pouring rain all the time. He thinks it's better to spend the weekend cold and miserable than to waste a beautiful summer day on manual labor. (This picture was taken during one of the last sunny days of October). Actually he HAS made some progress on it lately. He is done digging (and refilling) the foundation and has laid out the wood and rebar that will be needed in order to pour the concrete. The next step is to add some "forms" (more wooden things) and have it inspected before the concrete truck comes. Note the fully grown vegetation on the pile of dirt.

Polio vaccination

Let it be noted for the record that Melina got her polio vaccination today and didn't cry at all. What a brave girl!

Who's this Tim you keep talking about?

For some reason every time Melina wants a snack (especially one that's not very good for her) she says "Tim? Tim? Tim? Tim?" It's very strange. I've asked Youngsoon if it's some Korean word, and apparently it's not. I have no idea where it came from.

The Abominable Snowbaby

The search for a Halloween costume

I had a really hard time trying to come up with a Halloween costume for Melina. I'm not really into all the cute little pumpkin, princess, and kitty costumes you find on the web (thought I did find a very cute hedgehog costume that cost $60). Since she had a little fake fur coat, I thought of dressing her up with that, some big sunglasses, and a tiara, and having her go as Princess Di. The only problem is she rips off the glasses and tiara every chance she gets. Then I tried making her a little dress out of a silver emergency blanket and duct tape - she could go as a Martian Queen. Unfortunately, the crinkly sound of the emergency blanket seemed to scare her, and she wouldn't even let me put it on. I spent an entire evening searching the web trying to find cool baby costumes, but nothing grabbed me (or if it did, it cost over $50 or was unavailable in her size). Finally I went to the fabric store and found some fluffy, fake white fur. Last night my friend Sue and I made her a little fur dress and hat, which I put on her this morning. She didn't rip it off! And the Abominable Snowbaby is born! I will post pictures when I have them.

The nickel saga

Last Sunday Melina was playing by herself with an old teapot when I chanced to look at her and see something metallic in her mouth. It was a nickel. I put my finger in (trying not to get bitten) and suddenly she gulped it down. It stuck in her throat for a second, I patted her on the back, and down the esophagus it went.

I'm not usually much of a worrier (except when it comes to poisoning... that's my #1 fear) but this kind of freaked me out. I called the doctor on call and left a message; then I called the nurse at Providence Hospital and left a message; and then, not hearing from either one for way too long, I asked Jeff to call his friend who is in medical school. When we finally heard back from them all, they said the same thing - wait for it to come out. The Providence nurse had me give her food and water to make sure everything went down alright, and the naturopathic doctor recommended giving her roughage to move things along in the digestive tract. Meanwhile we had to sort through her poop (with wooden chopsticks) and wait.

After 36 hours, Youngsoon was the lucky one who found it. It had turned blue during its trip, but was otherwise unscathed. Apart from the scary swallowing incident, it didn't bother Melina at all. I cleaned it off (and sanitized it) and I'm going to paste it in her baby book.

A few days later, Jeff said, "you know that flashlight she was playing with the other day? I think she might have swallowed the light bulb." Here we go again. Fortunately, he found it on the floor a few hours later.

Melina's 18-month stats

Melina went in for her 18-month checkup last week. Her percentiles are still the same, which is a good sign. She's at the 20th percentile for weight (21.9 pounds), 50th for height (31 inches) and 90th for head circumference! Apparently that means she is going to be smart. Time to bring out the infant flash cards. Just kidding.

New words

Melina is picking up a lot of new words lately. Here are some of the ones I remember:

Egg (and it's not like we talk about eggs a lot)
That (dat! dat!)
Toy
Bike
Hat
Pumpkin
Apple
Pear

I know there are a lot more, but I can't remember them now. I have them written down in the kitchen so I'll update this when I'm back at home. She has also been counting to three ("wun, too, twee") as we go up and down the stairs, and - which is pretty scary - she is starting to walk upstairs without holding onto anything except the wall.

Melina's running preferences

I have been running about three days a week for the last two and a half months, and Melina has accompanied me (along with my friend Isabel) on many of the runs. I notice that she gets bored at the track (as do I) and prefers going in neighborhoods, where there are lots of squirrels and doggies and kitties to look at. She likes to chew on an apple (or other snack) while we run, and bumpy roads (like Leif Erickson in Forest Park) sometimes put her to sleep. If she cries, I have to hang back and let Isabel push the stroller so Melina can't see me, and if that fails we start singing Old MacDonald, which sometimes helps. She also likes to watch high school football players, who practice at Grant Park. I think she must be getting used to being strapped in the jogging stroller, because now she climbs up into it herself and tries to strap herself in.

Miss Fussy

Little M is approaching her half birthday, which brings her closer to the Dreaded Age of Two. Although my mom says she enjoyed my "terrible twos," and I have been trying to keep an open mind, I can see that little meltdowns and full-on tantrums are a thing of the future. On Tuesday I had to pry Melina off a toy at a used-clothing store (we were leaving) and she had pretty much the biggest tantrum so far. Screaming like a balrog (that's the big fire-breathing dragon that nabs Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings), arching her back, kicking out with her little feet... I was glad I was the only customer in the store. I guess this is completely normal and predictable, but I feel I need to learn more about dealing with tantrums when they arise. Also, Melina needs to get more sleep.