Happy 1 and a Half Birthday!

I love this comic nonetheless.

More enlightened people (parents I trust) told me about six months ago that the term terrible twos doesn't mean one has an angelic and easy-going child until she reaches her second birthday at which point all hell breaks loose like in the comic to the right, but in fact that it's the second year of the child's life, the time between the first and second birthday where the difficulties start, and who hasn't heard of the terrible twos with their tantrums and constant "no"-s?

According to a parenting advice book a friend of ours gave us, called Your One-Year-Old: The Fun-Loving, Fussy 12-To 24-Month-Old by Louise Bates Ames, toddlers and children tend to be most unbalanced emotionally during their half birthdays, not when they turn "a year" older. As a child hits her different milestones, there's a time of figuring out how to control the new set of "powers" and a time when they're considered "mastered." In general terms, children master the new skills of their particular age around the time they hit a birthday, making half-birthdays the time when figuring things out is in full swing. This means a whole lot of frustrations between parent and child, with the half-birthday being the peak of this.

Of course, this is a generalization, and each child is different, but my point is, Rini turned 18 months old today! It boggles my mind how much she has grown so far, and I can't wait to see where she will go from here.

Since we visited the doctor for her well-child visit just yesterday, I will include some extra information in this month's development post. Our height and weight measurements between these check ups are done by us at a well stocked nursery area of a local mall, and are probably not quite accurate. The stats below were measured by nurses, so please disregard the apparent shrinking of my child.

Height: 77.8 cm

Weight: 9.84 kg

Head Circumference: 48 cm

Chest Circumference: 47.2 cm

Vaccinations: So far Rini has finished her Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hib, PCV7, Measles, Mumps, and Chickenpox vaccines. She still needs her booster shot for Polio, which we'll get sometime in November, probably along with her influenza shots. This will complete all her shots while we live in Japan.
We've decided no to get her the BCG or tuberculosis vaccine, until we know for sure where we will settle down for good after Japan. If she would get the vaccine, she would have to have a chest X-ray every year in the US when she's in school, because she would always test positive from the vaccine, and that's not something I'm quite prepared to deal with just yet. I will have to do research into Hungarian vaccination practices as well as US ones, sometime before we leave Japan, just to be clear on what is expected.

Clothing size: 80 cm

Shoe size: 12.5 cm - She's been slowly outgrowing her little size 3 sandals we picked up for her in the US in the spring, so I'm glad the weather is turning cooler, and she can wear sneakers now.

Diaper size: For night-time and going out we still use Moony, size M (6-11 kg), but it's starting to feel a bit short on her back. The next size up is for 9-14 kg, and I expect we'll switch up before the end of the year. At home, she still wears FuzziBunz Mediums, and will continue to do so for some time, I'm sure.

Teeth: All 12 of her teeth broke through fully. While a couple are only half-way to completion, they are all visible and well formed. I do have to note, that it's been much harder to catch the exact day a new tooth breaks through her gums, mostly because my husband is the one brushing her teeth and I keep forgetting to ask for updates. Speaking of brushing her teeth, Rini began using a small, but regular toothbrush a couple weeks back, which she seems to enjoy much more and is more willing to brush her teeth, than when she had her baby toothbrush. She's getting better every day at brushing her teeth on her own, though as I mentioned just before, my husband does a once over in the end just to make sure every one of her little teeth is pearly white. So far, we've only insisted on brushing her teeth before bedtime, but lately, she wants to brush with us when she sees us brushing our teeth in the morning, too, so I guess, it might be time to settle into the twice-a-day routine.

Food: Now that Rini has some molars, we've began giving her more textured foods, or at least, we don't cut them into quite as small pieces as before. She's also been getting much better at manipulating her spoon, so that she doesn't spill quite as much liquid, whether it'd be soup, or cereal and milk, as before. This helps a lot in broadening her pallet into the wonderful world of soups and stews, just in time for fall and winter.
On a slightly different note, I should mention that she quite prefers adult spoons and forks to her child size ones. So much so, that sometimes the difference between a happy meal and a not-eating child is the size of the utensils we give her. Oh, and she tries real hard to use chopsticks and can hold them to scoop up bits of food, like with a shovel.

Nursing: We're down to once a night nursing, not counting bedtime of course. As for the time she wakes up, it can be any time between midnight to 5:30AM, though generally it's most common around 3AM. She might wake up after 5:30AM, but I'm usually out of bed by then. If she wakes up before midnight, she usually goes for her sippy cup. There has been one or two night lately, when she woke up before midnight for her sippy cup, then slept through the rest of the night. Those nights were glorious for me.

Sleeping: Rini is still a "nap enigma" as James puts it. The only thing he can tell me about Rini's napping habits, is that if she wakes up earlier in the morning (around 7:30-8AM), she is more likely to nap earlier, too (around 1PM). When she wakes up a bit later (8:30-9AM), then she's more likely to nap after 2PM if she naps at all. Going out in the morning to play in the park or to playgroup will make her napping more likely. Generally speaking she either falls asleep during the bike ride home, or comes to James to nap in his lap. Both times James is usually able to put her down on the bed once she falls asleep, where she sleeps for about an hour. Then she wakes up a bit, looks for James again, and snuggles into his lap for another 30 minutes to an hour of napping. In any case, we make sure she doesn't nap past 4PM (even if she hasn't napped yet), as that interferes with bedtime.

Milestones: Two major milestones that happened this past week are walking backwards intentionally (as opposed to stumbling back and falling), and being able to throw and kick a ball. I think she learned how to play with a ball when she spent some time with her new babysitter, because the next night she brought her big yellow ball to us after dinner, dropped it into my hand, then stepped back a little and waited for me to throw it to her. Then she did the same thing with her dad. The three of us played pass-the-ball for a good 10 minutes or so that night, and a couple more times since then! It's quite cute, and a new entertainment for all of us. This was also the night I discovered she is able to walk backwards.
I just missed where she kicked the ball all around... she seems rather tired here.

Another new thing is she (sometimes/when she wants) sits down on the diaper changing mat and waits to be changed. This is mainly after her bath, when she's naked and needs her diaper, not from a dirty to a clean diaper, but still. She also lifts her legs up when it's time to put powder on her. Also this past month she started asking for soap and soaping herself up during bath. She usually tries to wash her privates, her feet, and her hair, and is not doing a bad job with it either, though I do re-scrub, just to make sure she didn't miss a spot. I'm hoping to help her to find her underarm and her neck, and then we'll be more or less set for her to wash herself on her own. She also tries to brush her hair, and is getting better at it.
Finally, there's a little nursery rhyme in Hungarian about walking that goes like this:
Sétálunk, sétalunk, egy kis dombra lecsücsülünk, csüccs!
It means roughly "We're walking, we're walking, we sit down on a small hill, plop! (here we squat down)" Point is, whenever I say this little rhyme, even before I reach the word csüccs, which she knows already as the act of sitting down, she squats down for a second. Even if I stop saying the rhyme after the first two words, she waits a couple beats and squats, like I've never stopped. There are times I absentmindedly say the rhyme as I walk with her, and she squats down and doesn't get up until I squat, too. It's really cute!


Words: She started using "bye" regularly this past month. When she wants something she uses the sound "datdat," which I take is a form of "that." Finally, she started using the word "stinky" with the hand gesture in front of her nose. This usually happens, when her diaper is changed, but also sometimes when she pooped in her diaper.

Favorite toys: Balls, books, blocks. Also, her little wheeled animals she got from her grandma in a care package a few months back.

Likes: She really enjoys listening to Japanese children's songs, like the ones she hears during playgroup. These little songs usually have simple words and hand gestures, and I'm thinking of buying a CD or something so that we can play it together. It's so interesting how much I've forgot from my own childhood, when it comes to rhymes and games. I'm hoping to learn them back soon!

Dislikes: She not really into eating fried rice anymore, which even just a month ago was quite crazy about. Outside of this, there's not much else new.

Mommy/baby update: We've been spending more time together, which I'm really happy about. I've also started looking into places we could visit on a nice day as a family, like the zoo and amusement park. We're planning on visiting one such place tomorrow, in fact.
Last, but not least, we were able to sign up for a family helping service in the city, which basically means, we got paired up with an older lady to watch Rini when we need some time for ourselves. This older lady is (or used to be) a kindergarten or nursery school teacher, and she is really nice. She watched Rini only once for us so far, on the weekend of our anniversary, for about 3 hours. That day, I dropped Rini off at her house, stayed about 25 minutes or so, then said goodbye, and went to enjoy our time off. When we came to pick Rini up, she was happily playing away, listening to children's songs and doing some gestures as well. The lady told me they went for a walk around the block a couple times and have been just generally playing little games. Overall, Rini seemed to have had a nice time, and I'm hoping to set something up for every other week for 3-4 hours, just to give James and I some "us" time. Of course, there's a small fee, but it's very reasonable, especially when it's calculated into our monthly budget.