Toddlerhood

It is difficult to believe it is already September 29th! Fall has arrived & Thanksgiving & Christmas are going to be here before we know it. Today was the 3rd time Gerritt & I have attended the 1st year toddler class through Bellevue College. The class is for parent education as well as for child development & stimulation. It takes place on Tuesdays 9:30 am - 11:30 am at St. Peter's United Methodist Church. Our 1st class was outdoors at the Crossroads Community Park & Gerritt was so overstimulated, he refused to nap upon returning home & finally collapsed on the couch while watching Word World at 4:30 pm. The following week was not any better. That class was scheduled indoors & Gerritt started crying as soon as we walked in. He probably thought it was new daycare again with so many small kids running around. Gerritt wanted me to pick him up & held my hand most of the time. He did not want to part with his stuffed dog, bear & a blanket even for a minute. He was pretty insecure so he couldn't really enjoy any projects or interesting toys. By the time Gerritt started to relax & have fun, it was time to go home. Today, however, went much better. When we walked in, Gerritt immediately ran to the play area he remembered from the last time. He sat in the middle of a large red bowl & wanted me to turn him around over & over. He then proceeded to the main playroom where he spent most of the time playing with the wooden rail & train set. He still didn't want to part with his dog, bear & blanket, however, left them laying on the floor for brief moments of time (some improvement from the last time!). We were in the class for full 2 hours today & enjoyed the following activities: using molds to create shapes out of home-made playdough; washing plastic babies in a soapy water; pouring rice from one container to another & using broom & dustpan to swip the rice that fell to the floor; trying on various hats in front of a large mirror; creating art using various rubber stamps & ink; drawing with crayons & chalk; assembling plastic puzzle pieces on illuminated table; attaching butterflies & other insects to a sticky paper; having a pretend tea party; observing a ball run down a wooden tower, & some others I probably can't remember. Gerritt certainly had fun & I enjoyed watching him have fun. I myself felt like a kid again! There was no way I could create all of these experiences for him at home. It is possible, but who has the time, resources & energy (unless you run a daycare center yourself)? It is sure wonderful to have 3 early childhood development professionals dedicated to educating your child. Gerritt especially enjoyed the circle time. He was shy & hid behind his stuffed animals when we were singing about each child including him, however, he came alive when all of the adults were moving a parachute circle up & down. He ran underneath it laughing & had the best time hiding from us!
I am enjoying the toddler class even more knowing that I can drop Sophia off at the church's daycare upstairs. It is very reasonable priced at $6/hour & open 3 times a week from 9am - 12:30 pm. It is a great resource to have if have some errands to run. Most of the time Sophia goes everywhere with me (it's so easy with only 1 baby!), but sometimes I can't take her like if I am at the dentist's office or getting a haircut.
This week at home we've focused on learning colors. Gerritt has several cars of different colors, so we make sure to point to each one & ask him what color it is several times a day. He was confusing the colors so often, we were wondering whether he was color blind. However, I was reassured after reading a milestone chart on www.babycenter.com that naming colors is an advanced skill demonstrated by only a few kids at about 29-30 months. We were pleasantly surprised to read that recognizing ABCs is also an advanced skill demonstrated by only a few children at ages 27-28 months. Gerritt has known all of the alphabet letters for about 2-3 months now (age 21-22 months). Every time he took a bath, we played with the foam alphabet letters & made a point of naming each one clearly & often. We made a big deal every time Gerritt named a letter correctly, clapping & praising him loudly. Gerritt thrives on positive reinforcement so he learned the letters over a period of about 1 month. We have already moved on to learning numbers & it is a bit slower process. So far Gerritt's favorite numbers are 3, 6 & 9 (he gets the last 2 mixed up frequently). It reminds me of the time he used to call letter M a W & vice versa. The next set of skills to look forward to are washing & drying his own hands, drawing a vertical line & a circle, jumping with both feet, balancing on 1 foot, opening doors, & putting on a T-shirt. Gerritt has started to pretend-play last week by attempting to change his bear's "diaper", trying to feed it & put it in Sophia's jumperoo (apparently another milestone).
I have recently discovered that Gerritt has excellent memory. He really enjoyed playing with another boy's little car at a playground one day. I've been so proud of Gerritt's ability to relinquish new & interesting toys found at someone else's house or a playground after being told "they were not ours," however, he refused to give up this little boy's car this time. I had to wait for Gerritt to look away & hide the car in boy's mother's purse so we could leave without tears. Gerritt & I made a trip to the Rite Aid that night to buy him 4 cars just like that (of various styles & colors). The next afternoon Gerritt had his check-up & shots with Dr. Yam & I promised to buy him more cars after the appointment for being brave since the shots made him cry. So we bought 2 more cars that evening. Little did I know that, in Gerritt's mind, I was setting up a routine. For the next 2 evenings he stood by the front door pulling on the door knob & asking to go to a "stoh" to buy cars. We were barely able to hide our smiles when we told him that buying cars was something special & not something we did every day. :-)
When my Mom was here we bought a little tent from Ikea for Gerritt to play in. He just loves hiding in there or laying down & snuggling with his dog, bear & boo-boo. I cut out a few stars using a colored paper & put them up on the tent's ceiling, so Gerritt & I would lay down & look up at the stars in the "sky."
Gerritt is definitely enjoying his new daycare more. He even brings home projects: a drawing of a car; multicolored petals glued on to paper creating a beautiful flower; & his favorite - a cut-out of a green car glued on to a yellow sheet of paper with the sun shining up above. He was so proud of it, he showed it to us several times a day for about a week. We made a big deal every time, of course, & asked him, "Wow! Did you make this???" Gerritt would beam & smile in return.
I was too busy recovering from Sophia's birth to plant a garden this year, but we did manage to put a few cherry tomato plants in. Since we planted them so late, we are just getting some tomatoes now. It is one of Gerritt's daily rituals - to go out into the garden to inspect the tomato bushes. Any tomato with even a hint of pink gets picked immediately. :-) Gerritt is not color blind after all since he has never picked any green tomatoes...
For the past month we've been playing "Your Baby Can Read" DVDs to Gerritt. They are a series of early language development videos teaching children to associate each object with a word, its pronunciation, & eventually word recognition. The videos are pretty low-budget & can hardly compete with the Word World cartoons, but he does watch them a few times a week. It is recommended kids watch them exclusively twice a day, bowever, we vary the videos so Gerritt would not get bored. It has only been a few weeks & so far he can read the word "Hi."
We have a large back yard & Gerritt loves to watch squarrels & birds (he especially likes blue jays). We also have hummingbird feeders so we have a chance to observe hummingbirds several times a day. They come in various shapes & colors &, surprisingly, spend all winter here. Gerritt also gets really excited when seeing a raccoon. We have a raccoon nest up at the neighbor's tree, so we often see a whole raccoon family use our fence to get to the tree. Once Gerritt stood underneath that tree for about half-an-hour waiting for the raccoons to come down (those of you who have toddlers know it's a significant amount of time to be focused on one task).
Gerritt's language is more complex now. He is using 2-3-word sentences (e.g., "Baby go bye-bye," "Mommy, come!"). Our favorite one is "I you, Mommy!" (I love you, Mommy!). We elicit as many hugs & kisses from Gerritt as we can. It is not difficult since he is so affectionate.
In the beginning of September I changed my per diem RN status to a 50% classified position. I now work every other weekend (Saturday & Sunday) & every other Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. No more random schedules or being cancelled, so my life is more predictable. Since per diem RNs are the first ones to be cancelled in case of overstaffing, I was cancelled up to 3 times a week sometimes. It was a big inconvenience since Gerritt was already dropped off at his daycare & Sophia was with her Korean grandmother, & here I was staying home yet again & not earning any money. I also work every Saturday morning as a Nurse Practitioner at Planned Parenthood from 9 am - 1:30 pm to keep up my ARNP license. So twice a month I work 12.5-hour days. They are long & tiring & it is difficult to be away from my family almost every weekend, but such schedule helps us to minimize Gerritt's time in daycare & to avoid daycare all together for Sophia. I feel that working 25 hours each week on average is just perfect. I have my financial independence & get to spend a lot of quality time with both kids. I am not so eager to pick up extra shifts or overtime at work any longer since I value my family time more. Gerritt & Sophia are growing up fast & there are many precious moments to savour every day. Toddlerhood is my favorite time in a child's life so far (I've yet to experience others). It is like Gerritt is being transformed from a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. The changes are sure remarkable & I feel so privileged to be a part of this process.

My Mom's visit

Our August has been very busy. My Mom has arrived from Russia on August 4th. After recovering from her long flight & a jet lag, she made ambitious plans to visit as many stores as possible: The Dollar World, Costco, Trader Joe's, Ross Dress for Less, Safeway, Walmart, Ikea, Origins - to name a few. She had a long list of client orders to fill including various types of cosmetics & facial creams, diabetic supplies, & clothes. If you work as a cosmetologist in Russia, do NOT tell your clients you are going for a visit to America.
After sleeping by herself for a couple of nights, my Mom took over Sophia's care completely, including nights, allowing me to sleep undisturbed for almost a month. I don't know how I got so lucky again. I have taken care of Sophia at night for only 2.5 weeks since she's been born. My Mom has such an abundance of energy that she washed all of the windows, painted our bedroom, weeded the garden, rearranged landscaping, painted flower beds, ironed a huge pile of laundry, & reorganized some of our kitchen shelves - all while tending to Sophia. I don't know how she does it! She is not showing any signs of slowing down at her age of 59.
One day my Mom, Sophia & I spent a whole day at Ikea buying furniture & accessories for Gerritt's bedroom remodeling project. It all started with me removing Gerritt's crib sheets for washing & finding several small black spots of mold on the mattress. I've decided right then & there that he needed a new mattress & after referencing a few resources in the Healthy Child, Healthy World, I've settled on the one by Vivetique. Here are some of its descriptives: pure natural latex core (naturally mold & dustmite resistant) wrapped in Pure Grow wool (naturally antibacterial) & organic cotton; no innersprings; a good choice for those who live in a damp climate; & a 10-year warranty! $320 plus tax was more than I expected to spend on a crib mattress, but after being reminded that we spend half of our life sleeping & noticing Gerritt's recent watery eyes & coughing spells, I've decided I wasn't going to save at a cost of my child's health. Plus Sophia is going to inherit the mattress in a few months! I removed the single adult bed from Gerritt's room & put natural wood shelves of various heights instead for Gerritt to arrange his toys & have his own place to play. The wall paint colors were inspired by the Ikea rug my Mom & I bought. I painted the whole room including the ceiling in just 1 day using the low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint. I felt unbelievably tired after I was finished, but I really wanted to minimize the number of paint-drying days.
On August 15th my Mom, Sophia & I have traveled to Wenatchee to visit Chris & Gerry. We stayed with them for 2 nights: had fabulous dinners, went swimming at the pool, visited our old friend Natalya & bought some fruit at a Farmer's Market.
On August 20th Gerritt had his surgery. There were some scheduling issues. Our surgery was scheduled for 9:30 am, but the surgery scheduling coordinator could not get a hold of us the night before the surgery (she apparently used our old Mountlake Terrace address), so they ended up working us in the OR schedule later that day. We've arrived to the Children's hospital about 11:30 am & did not have surgery until about 3 pm. Long wait! The hardest part was that Gerritt could not eat or drink anything. We kept him busy looking at aquariums (Gerritt loved watching the fish!), reading books, going outside & exploring the hallways. This surgery was pretty much the same as the last one in January, however, I've noticed 2 differences at Children's: The anesthesiologist took crying Gerritt away instead of allowing one of us to be present with him while he was drifting off to sleep, & we were not allowed to be in the 1st phase of the recovery. By the time we saw him, he has been awake for a while & probably cried longer than I would have liked. Also, the nurse did not allow Gerritt to eat crackers or apple sauce (for fear for post-operative nausea & vomiting), so he had to suffice with juice. Good thing I grabbed a handful of crackers from cafeteria. I fed those to Gerritt in the car on the way home. Again, Gerritt bounced back quickly. He was playing, laughing & eating the same evening. His legs were wabbly for a few hours until the caudal anesthesia has worn off. His penis was swollen for a couple of days, but nothing like the last time (probably because there was no constricting dressing). We did not need to use liquid Tylenol with codeine for pain relief since round-the-clock children's Ibuprofen worked so well. We were so relieved to be done with surgery & safe at home. Hopefully, this is the last surgery Gerritt will ever need as a child.
On August 30th we had a 100-day celebration for Sophia. We traveled to Tacoma to my husband's Mom's house & had a small family gathering with Korean dinner. We also took a few photos. We've decided to skip a large crowded party we've thrown for Gerritt's 100-day celebration remembering how stressed out we all were (including Gerritt). Sophia had a peaceful afternoon after finishing her milk bottle & taking a nice long nap. She'll thank us later for sparing her the "joy" of being handled by a dozen or so people in one afternoon.
At the end of August we found a new in-home Russian daycare for Gerritt. Even though the one he went to only charged $45/day, we weren't satisfied with it anymore. Gerritt seemed really bored, which was painful to see knowing how bright he is. He needed more intellectual stimulation in a fun, supportive, & caring environment. The new home daycare charges $60/day, however, serves organic food; the kids sleep in their own individual beds (not on thin mats on the floor); the teacher is very motivated & has many fun & stimulating projects lined up. It also helps that she is the owner of this business & not a hired substitute, which makes a huge difference in her motivation. We found this recently-opened daycare unexpectedly when talking to a Russian woman we met while visiting the playground at the Robinswood Community Park with Gerritt. She raved about it, so we've decided to give it a try. My husband, Gerritt, my Mom & I all met with the daycare's owner Tamara & liked her right away. Gerritt clung to me at first & wanted to be carried, however, relaxed after finding a large table with railways & trains as well as noticing 2 cats. We've settled on September 9th for Gerritt's first day there.