Twenty-Two Months

It's that time again already...

The big news of this month, of course, is Punky's language boom.  Since my post two weeks ago, she has continued to spew new word after new word.  I still can't get over the transformation.  She's a whole different kid than she was a month ago.

She tells us when she's hungry...tired...wet.  She tells us what she wants and when she wants it.  For the most part, the guessing game is over.  And life is that much easier, yet more difficult at the same time.  Now that she's learned the art of expressing herself, we need to work on the concept of patience.  She seems to think that just because she can say it, we need to do it...immediately.  If we don't move fast enough, she just keeps on repeating over and over, louder and louder, till she sees some action.  Geesh.  Demanding little shit.

She also started counting this month.  For months she has pointed and gone through the motions while I counted things in her books, but now she can recognize the numbers one through ten say them...with the exception of seven.  Seven seems to stump her time after time.

Her monkey-like antics are still going strong.  She is about three attempts away from being able to stand on her head and balance, completely unsupported, in the center of the floor.  She's been practicing that trick for quite a while and I think she'll master it soon.  And if that isn't scary enough, now she's trying handstands as well.  She still sports a minimum of five black and blue marks at any given time due to her antics.  Thankfully no broken bones...yet.  

She is all about helping these days.  Whatever we're doing, she needs to be right there with us, lending her assistance however we'll let her give it.  Without giving it much thought in advance, one night I pulled a chair over by the sink and let her help with the dishes.  I washed in one side, and passed the soapy pieces to her to rinse in the other side.  She was absolutely thrilled...and soaked.  As was the floor.  And the cabinets.  And the countertop.  I had to take her shirt off and wring it out in the sink.  Now she wants to do the dishes sixteen times a day, and cries when I tell her there aren't any dirty dishes to wash.

First Lollipop

Last weekend Punky's godfather came for a visit.  He brought her a pumpkin for Halloween and, of course, candy.  She really hasn't eaten much candy of any kind thus far and, given her parents' terrible dental histories, I'd like to keep it that way as long as possible.  One of her sets of flashcards has a picture of lollipops so she knew the word but had no clue exactly what they are.  There were some in her pumpkin so I decided to let her experience her first one.  It was actually quite comical.  She didn't know what to do with it at first, but she got the hang of it once I demonstrated how to lick it.  Twenty minutes later her mouth was blue, her face and hands were a sticky mess, her shirt sported sticky blue drool drips as well, yet the lollipop didn't really shrink at all.  I thought she'd be at it for hours but once she dropped it on the carpet she handed it over easily.  

I don't think she was all that impressed with it.  I'm kind of glad; she doesn't need to get addicted to candy.  A pile of them have sat on the counter for a week and she has yet to ask for another.  Now, let her see a piece of cheese and she'll knock you right over to get to it.  Cheese topped the list as her favorite snack this month.  She also started eating pretzels but she's usually over it after just one.  She also had her first real slice of pizza this month, pepperoni and all.  

We went to my company's Halloween party last Sunday.  Punky wore her Elmo costume and looked adorable.  One little boy younger than Punky was infatuated with her.  Apparently he thought she was Elmo and took every opportunity he had to follow her around and hug her.  It was too cute.

The party fell during the usual naptime hours, so the only nap she had was thirteen minutes in the car on the way.  She was fine at the party, and for a while when we got home, but by six she was getting cranky.  By seven, she was miserable.  By quarter to eight, her teeth were brushed, she had her milk, and I was rocking her in the living room.  I thought she'd pass out by eight.

Nope.  By eight, she was crying.  Screaming.  A complete meltdown.  She cried so hard she was literally gagging.  It took forever to calm her down only to have the episode repeat itself  a few more times until she finally fell asleep...at 11:30!  She was so over-tired and fought sleep with everything she had.  It was awful.  Her dad and I had a hard time coping and ended up taking our frustrations out on each other.  But he got to escape at ten to go to work so I had to deal with the tail end of it on my own.

No matter how many times I've seen it happen, I still can't get it through my head that my child simply can't go without a nap.  It seems like every event for kids is smack-dab in the middle of the day...during naptime.  I don't want her to miss out on things, but I don't want to see her (or us) have to go through another episode like that.  I think we need to politely decline until she is able to cope a bit better.  Of course, my nephew's birthday party is coming up in less than two weeks...at one o'clock no less...and I know we can't skip it.  I guess I can wake her up at five that morning so she's ready to nap by eleven before the party.  Who am I kidding?  That means I would have to get up at five, so yeah...it's not happening.  Maybe it won't be as bad this time.  I can only hope.

Drips, Dunks, and More of the Red Guy

We missed swimming last Saturday because Punky was battling a cold for days.  I didn't want to risk turning a runny nose, slight cough, and low fever into full blown pneumonia if she got a chill.  Every time her nose would run she'd tell me, "Dripping, Mama.  Nose.  Get it."  She finally seemed better by Tuesday.

I woke up Wednesday morning and it was my turn for the drippy nose.  By the afternoon it was out of control.  On Thursday I had so much pressure on the right side of my face.  I threw in the towel and came home at lunch time.  The couch was calling my name.  I'm still not completely over it but plan on taking her swimming in the morning.  I don't want her to miss two weeks in a row.

Speaking of swimming, the last time we went was the weekend my mom was up visiting.  She came along to watch Punky do her thing in the water.  She proudly showed Grammy all her cool moves in the pool.  Kicking.  Splashing.  Her favorite part of class is jumping in from the wall.  Of course I have her hands the entire time and she never goes under the water.  At least she didn't until that class.  The instructors told us to try letting them go under so they get used to it...

Talk about an internal struggle.  I do everything in my power to keep her safe; that's the number one priority of motherhood.  There is just something inherently wrong with purposely shoving your healthy, beautiful baby under water.  I mustered up the courage, took a deep breath, dunked her, and hoped for the best.  And she was fine.  A tad bit startled, but fine.  A few turns later I asked her if she wanted to put her head under the water again.  She said yes so I dunked her again.  Less startled the second time around...and still fine.

I know it's a reflex to hold your breath under water, but it still creeps me out.  I guess I need to get over it because she absolutely loves the water and I think swimming will remain a regular part of our lives for a long time to come.  Hopefully with time and practice I'll feel better about  dunking her.  I doubt it, but I can always hope.

After that swimming class we headed to the mall in search of a Halloween costume for Punky.  One store goes all out with the decorations, scary figures, and eerie music.  I don't think we were in there one full minute before Punky freaked out and started crying.  My mom had to take her back into the mall to calm her down while I shopped.  I just found the whole episode rather odd.

I mean, she's not even two.  She doesn't know what scary is yet in relation to ghosts, witches, monsters, and the like.  She has no recollection of last Halloween.  She's never seen a horror movie.  She has no concept of the boogie man in the closet.  She is not afraid of the dark.  She barely startles with loud noises.  Yet somehow she was terrified in that store.  I guess she'll be a big chicken when it comes to Halloween.  Just like her mama.

I hate Halloween.  Always have, always will.  I hate scary movies and no amount of money can make me watch one.  I have nightmares about scenes like that.  I hate the dark.  Every little bump in the night makes me jump.  Going trick-or-treating required conversing with strangers and my introverted, extremely shy self was never comfortable with that.  I hated trying to figure out what kind of costume I could wear.  I dreaded it every year.  I even hate candy corn and pumpkin-flavored anything.  I don't decorate the house for Halloween.  Not even a jack-o-lantern.  The only good part of Haloween for me is chocolate...and that only got me cavities and root canals.  Yeah, Halloween sucks.

As a mom, I know I need to keep my feelings to myself and not end up ruining Halloween for Punky.  She needs to decide for herself whether to love it or hate it.  My luck, she'll grow to love it.  At any rate, four stores later we finally got her a costume.  Any guesses?

Of course, Elmo.  What else would she choose?  I tried like hell to talk her into a lion because she makes the most adorable little roar.  I tried a cute little puppy costume.  I went the pretty princess dress route.  She would have none of it.  It was the red guy or nothing.  So, Elmo it is.  And I bet she'll be even cuter than the original.

Wild Guesses and Girl Stuff

I spent the better part of the weekend searching for an answer to a question in the trivia contest.  Every free moment I could manage to steal.  I stayed up till the wee hours googling, asking, and binging till my fingers cramped.  I mumbled.  I grumbled.  I cursed a bit.  Okay, a lot.  And I got squat. 

The deadline for posting an answer is roughly an hour from now.  I couldn't bear the thought of dealing with it for one more second.  I took a wild guess five minutes ago.  Seriously.  Not based on a single ounce of research whatsoever.  The question required you to put four things in order and I did.  My order.  Made up in my head.  Who knows?  Maybe my gut intuition on random letters will be correct.  Most likely not.  Ah, screw it.

Punky saved my sanity this weekend.  She provided some much needed hugs and tons of comic relief.  All her new words and constant chatter have opened a whole new can of funny in this house.  Her dad worked all weekend so, in the spirit of quality girl time, I attempted something I never tried before: pigtails.  And I discovered I suck at more than just stupid trivia contests.

The first year of her life, Punky was bald.  Okay, not totally bald...more like peach-fuzzy.  Her hair finally started really growing this spring.  It's still not long by any means; we're still months away from that first haircut.  But it's finally long enough to give her those adorable little girl pigtails on the top of her head.

She was a real trooper.  She sat still and played with a toy while I combed and parted, this way and that way, trying to get it just right.  I had one side perfect...then realized I never took the packaging off the pack of elastic band thingys.  Of course, I couldn't get it one-handed so I had to let go of the pigtail and start all over again.  I finally managed to make two little pigtails and I stepped back to admire my work and her absolute adorableness...

Damn.  I need a lesson in pigtails 101.  They weren't remotely close to even.  One had more hair than the other.  One jutted out to the side; the other stuck straight up towards the back of her head.  I seriously think she may have done a better job if she tried it herself.  She was still adorable, of course, but I just couldn't bring myself to take that "first pigtail" picture.  I need more practice.  Eventually I'll take a "first pigtail that Mommy didn't screw up" picture.

So far Punky likes pink.  And purple.  And shoes.  And dresses.  And brightly colored socks.  And admiring herself in the mirror.  I think she's on her way to becoming a girly-girl and I could be in trouble.  My tomboy roots haven't prepared me for such a child. 

Chatty Cathy

I'm not sure exactly what happened in the past two weeks, but Punky is suddenly spewing off word after word with crisp clarity.  Words that had been missing endings for months are now complete.  Sounds she had trouble making now roll off her tongue with ease.  There is no word she won't attempt.  And we get it...for the most part.  A few puzzling ones still linger.

While reading a book Saturday night before bed, the word umbrella was still the same, old umba it had been since she first said it; Sunday morning, it became an umbella, still missing an 'r' but progress nonetheless.  I was so excited!  I made her say it at least fifty times that day.  

Mo has morphed into more.  A-ga is now clearly all gone.  Bye has turned into goodbye.  Hat and bat now have a definite 't' sound at the end, although cat remains cack for some unknown reason.  Pup and pups have become puppy and puppies.  The 'k' at the end of book finally exists.  The suffix -ing is now proudly tacked on to verbs like kick and jump. The list goes on and on...

And a bunch of new words have arrived on the scene.  Pudding, plane, cute, rainbow, water, and 'puter (computer) are a few that come to mind.  Opposites like over/under, in/out, open/closed, and high/low have made their debut as well.  And her favorite phrase of all is "I got it!" as she proudly runs toward us with whatever it is she got!

It truly is like someone flipped a switch.  Something clicked in her head.  A locked door popped open.  A previously dormant neuron path has burst into life.  It is amazing how much change can happen so quickly.  She's so different than she was just two short weeks ago. 

Her life has become a never-ending naration.  And apparently there is no "off" button.  

She tells us what she wants, what she's doing, and what she has...along with what she just did, what she will do next, and what color everything is that she touches.  Hardly a bite gets swallowed without an accompanying yummy, yucky or a simple good.  She dictates the process of washing her hands...Water! It's cold! Soap! Rinse! Towel, Mommy! Dry!  At least once a day she runs through an anatomy lesson as she points to each part, from her hair to her toes, and even the little details like eyebrows.  The subtle hint of simply handing me a book has gone by the wayside.  Now I get a "Read! Mommy! Read!"  

My little chatterbox.  I'm so proud of her. 

Round One

Well, the trivia contest started on Monday and, to be honest, this first round of questions was almost too easy.  Within 48 hours of the release, we already had an answer for all five questions.  I've second-guessed them a million times since though...I just have it in my head that they can't be that simple. 

We've played the game before, and very few answers are clearly black and white.  Sure, once in a while they throw you a bone with a true/false or multiple choice question, but even those need to be double and triple checked.  And it's so easy to get confused with all the misleading posts out there.  People are modifying websites left and right and posting incorrect answers in forums to throw people off track.  I thought the new format would curb some of that activity but I was completely wrong.  I think it's even worse this time, and we've only gotten the first set of questions.

Even though we've agreed on how we are answering these five, I haven't been able to bring myself to lock them in just yet.  It just seems too...final.  We have one extra week to submit this first set and I imagine most people will hold out as long as possible.  One down, nine weeks to go...

Cry Me a River

I'm happy to report that the hitting phase seems to have passed.  And it looks as though it took the whining phase with it.  However, a new one has swooped in to replace them and it's even more powerful than its predecessors.  Oh yeah, the crying phase has dawned in this house...

And when I say crying, I mean crying... Over. Every. Little. Thing.  And not a few tears that stop as abruptly as they start, I mean lengthy crying fits.  Full force, snot dripping, can't catch her breath water works that last anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour.

She cried so hard at nap time last Saturday that it seriously took me over an hour to get her calmed down.  We repeated the episode one night this week at bed time.  That same night, she woke up at four in the morning and cried for another hour.  Tell her no...about anything...and the faucet turns on full blast.  We're almost drowning in tears around here and I have no clue how to handle it.

This child was never a crier.  As an infant, hunger was about the only thing that would trigger a cry.  She never cried at bed time.  Not once ever at bath time.  Never when she needed a diaper change.  If I add up all the boo-boo tears she's had in her lifetime, they don't even come near the amount of tears we've seen in the last week or so.  And lord knows this kid has had boo-boos.  I saw her slam her forehead off our headboard so hard that a super-ball sized lump appeared in thirty seconds flat...and she cried for about three minutes.

It's almost like she is suddenly super sensitive.  Simply telling her no hurts her little feelings so badly and the tears flow instantly.  I absolutely love that she is so strong-willed and independent, but as any parent knows, she can't have/do whatever she wants.  It was hard not to cave with the whining.  It was difficult to ignore the hitting.  Apparently we did a good job because they stopped.  But now she pulled out the big guns and it's virtually impossible to tune out and ignore the crying.

She sounds so pitiful and it breaks my heart.  I try everything I can think of to calm her...without giving in to the original issue that started the fit in the first place, of course.  I don't want her to learn that this crying crap will get her whatever her heart desires.  No way.  But man, it's tough.  I was actually reduced to tears myself during one of her marathon episodes.  Partly because my baby was so upset.  Partly because all my mama tactics had failed to soothe her.  And partly because I just couldn't take it any more.  Talk about frustrating.  Geesh.

I know how this phase stuff works.  They rarely last only days.  Usually not even weeks.  In actuality, we could be looking at months here.  I need to figure out the trick to calming her down in minutes rather than hours or we'll be building an ark by Christmas.

His New Toy

Punky's dad has a new toy.

On his way into work third shift a few nights ago, his truck fell apart.  Literally. 

The technical terminology escapes me, but suffice it to say that a big, important hunk of metal fell out of the front end causing a tire to go from vertical to almost horizontal and leaving him skidding to the side of the road.  Luckily, he had just exited the interstate and was only going 35 miles an hour at the time. 

We knew he was in dire need of a vehicle.  The truck was over fifteen years old and sucking money out of us left and right.  Plus, it was only a two seat pickup truck...no option for a car seat.  We were working on a plan to get him a new truck but didn't expect to make a move so quickly.

Fixing the old one would've been a huge waste of money.  The estimate was around eight hundred, and I just couldn't justify putting that kind of cash into it...not after what we already spent the last few years.  Enough was enough already.  It was time to bite the bullet and truck shop.  And it didn't come without sacrifice...

Our only option to be able to afford a newer truck included the sale of his beloved Harley.  And although I'll admit I wasn't sad to see it go, I was sad for him.  He put years of blood, sweat and tears into that old bike, not to mention buckets of money.  It was his baby.  His all-time favorite toy.  And I'm proud of him for letting it go without much struggle when it was really our only choice.  

Once he committed to the idea, he wasted no time at all in finding the truck he wanted.  He bought a used 2009 Dodge Ram pickup with 26,000 miles on it.  Big.  Manly.  Beast of a truck.  If it were any bigger, I'd need a damn step stool to get in it.  

Between the high payments and the huge increase in his car insurance, we have a rough couple of months ahead of us.  We really need to buckle down and spend only what we need to spend until we get adjusted to this new set of bills.  Perfect timing with the holidays quickly approaching...

The dealership delivered the truck to us on Friday.  I haven't seen Punky's dad since.  Okay, so I've seen him, but only for as many minutes as it would take for him to find yet another excuse to run somewhere and drive his new toy.  Seriously.  He's been like a little kid all weekend.  The newness will wear off eventually, but it may take a while.

The truck isn't brand new, but it's the newest vehicle he's ever owned.  I think his "newest" car was a decade old with over 80,000 miles on it.  He always bought old hunks of junk and made them last as long as he could.  This is an entirely new experience for him.  

He's been working so hard on this insane seven-day rotation for over a year now.  He deserves to have something to show for it.  Now we just need to make it through the next few months of bills without ending up in the poor house.  And I'm thrilled that my car will no longer bear the brunt of the mileage every time we go somewhere as a family.

Punky had her first ride in Daddy's truck on Friday.  I thought it would be exciting since she's only ever been in my car, but she wasn't overly amused.  Different car, same car seat, I suppose.  I guess it wasn't much of a unique experience since she is still rear-facing.  She had the same view of the back seat she gets in my car.  When I asked her what she thought of Daddy's truck, she said "It's big!"