18 Months Today!

Well, the Tenster is 18 months old today! I usually tell you what's new and what she's accomplished on these milestones, but today I thought we'd take a walk on the Dark Side.

1. An 18 month old should have a 15+ word vocabulary, should be able to pick up his/her toys and say "thank you". - Caring For Your Baby and Child, by AAP. Um, no. Not hardly. Tenley has probably uttered 15+ words, but most of them (apple, orange, lemon, puck, doggy, banana, fish, etc) have only been said once. Some, which might be considered useful (like: yes, done, more, again, eat, ouch, juice, drink, thank you, please, etc) have never even been attempted. Tenley's answer to most questions is "no" which is signaled by a vehement shaking of her head. If you do get an affirmative answer, it's a big smile and a giggle. The kicker here is that she understands almost everything that is said to her and is capable of following fairly complex instructions (if she feels like it). If you tell her "Go get your red shoes from under your bed so we can go outside" she will go down the hall into her room, get the shoes under her crib, bring them back to you in the kitchen and flop into your lap to have you put them on. I actually contacted our county's Early Start program last week to have her evaluated for speech delay. I haven't heard from them yet,which is no surprise since they're a county program, but if she's considered 30% or more delayed Uncle Sam will pay for speech therapy. Essentially, my litttle monkey could probably scale the Empire State Building like King Kong, but she can't tell me that's what she wants to do.

Tenley has no interest in picking up her toys, and if you pick up her toys and put them away, the first thing she does is get them all back out. If you tell her to pick something up like blocks or spilled crackers, she will pick up and put 1 back. Only 1. You have to launch into football peptalk for each individual item. She doesen't really do "put in" or "build", she only "unloads" and "destroys".

2. T-minus 6 months to 2 years old. And may God have mercy on us. Tenley has always known what she wants, and as she has become more mobile and independant some of those wants are not the best idea from my perspective. Increasingly, telling Ten "no" produces a bad reaction which ranges from fake crying and foot stomping to throwing herself on the floor and kicking and screaming in a full tantrum. For example: From day 1, Tenley has never liked to have her hands touched. Except now we're out for walks on the street and across parking lots, and that means holding Mommy's hand. Uh-oh. If you say "Tenley, hold my hand" she will shake her head no and try to run ahead of you. If you try to take her hand she will yank it back, shake her head no and try to run ahead of you. If you hold on so she can't yank it back, she will sit down, begin whining and screaming, and try to peel your fingers off of hers. In fairness, she is getting better on the hand holding: she has learned that crossing streets and walking in parking lots are non-negotiable hand holding areas, but I will allow her to walk independantly next to me if we're on a side street. This is just an example of one of the many wants in Ten's life that we routinely deny her like scaling the chairs to walk on the computer desk or kitchen table, playing with the video camera, opening and climbing in the fridge, "playing" with the kitties by hitting them with various objects, etc. The next 18 months are going to be a barrel of laughs.

3. Thou shalt have no sleep without Mommy. Don't think The Teninator has gone soft and wants to cuddle with her mum. No no- rather, she refuses to let anyone but me put her down for a nap or bed. That sounds nice on the surface, but it means that if she is with anyone else during the day I return to an extremely cranky over-tired child because she screamed bloody murder when someone tried to put her down. And I'd best be there at bedtime, because she will not leave Daddy's arms willingly, and if he pries her out and puts her in her crib she will scream as though she is being tortured until (2 hours later) he gives in and goes and gets her. The only option for most people is to give her a lovey and wait for her to drop over from exaustion wherever she happens to be. Sometimes a little spin in the car will do it, but you have to drive until she's really out, or she'll wake up as soon as you open the door. Grandma Suzie has sucessfully had her nod off on her shoulder once or twice, but this kind of thing occurs with the frequency of Hailey's Comet.

4. Slower than molasses in winter. At least when it comes to growing teeth and hair. She still only has 6 1/2 teeth, although we feel 3 good hard lumps on her gums (which could account for some of her recent crankiness) and we think we can see a spot of white emerging on one of them. It's about time- Amanda & Natalie have all their teeth, and James is four months younger and has more than she does! If she only wanted to eat applesauce & oatmeal I wouldn't care less, but this kid wants steak & granola. She still doesn't have much hair either. Her hair is very thin and really slow to grow in on top.

5. Tinkle Tinkle little star... Potty training?? HA! Tenley is still put out about having her diaper changed because she's busy, and she doesn't care if she's wet or stinks. She has evidenced absolutely no interest in what the commode is or does. She does think it's nice that we keep a water table in the house, and can't understand why we don't want her playing in it.

So there you have it. A random sample of the less than glamourous side to life with Tenley. There are good and bad moments in every day; and I know that one day she will speak eloquently with a full set of pearly white teeth and have a long mane of hair that gets in her way when she's trying to sit on the toilet or get into bed - and then I will have other things to worry about like paying for college and keeping her off drugs and in school. But for now, as the 1st time parent of a willfull toddler, this is the seedy underbelly of my world.

Week In Review

Sharing is a relative concept

Most parents accuse their kids of having selective hearing (particularly teenagers), but I’m here to tell you that sharing is a selective concept for toddlers. Just try to get a 2 or 3 year old to share his neon orange soccer ball, and I’ve seen fights erupt over sand toys at the park that rival anything the WWF could ever have dreamed up. However, if they have a wicked cold with all kinds of nasty germs to make you miserable, they are more than happy to share that with you. And if you are eating something the toddler wants (like say a pickle or cookie) they expect you to share your goodie with them without so much as a second thought.

You can pick your friend’s nose
Well, you can and probably should pick your toddlers. Along with the nasty cold comes the gobs of yellowy whitish goo that seems to pour from Tenley’s nose. If it wasn’t a biohazard I could bottle this stuff and make millions selling it to little boys because it is the perfect consistency of sticky slime. The only way to get this stuff out is to attack with the nasal aspirator, which strangely enough, my kid loves. She sees me get the blue bulb and some kleenex and comes running to flop in my lap with her head over my leg so I can roto-rooter her nose. She generally just lays there and giggles. I’m guessing it must tickle, but I know she feels better after it’s out. Unfortunately it’s too small to work in my nose, although I’ve been eying the turkey baster and wondering if it would be a good fit for me.

Hey buddy, can you spare $2000?
Jeff got up and left for work on Thursday morning, but he didn’t get too far. His car decided it had had enough of this pesky changing gears thing, and decided not to do that any more. He managed to get back home, and after he re-started the car OD, D4, D3, and R were a no go, but D2 worked! So he cruised very slowly to the Honda dealer, and then got a ride to work. A call at 4:45 confirmed the worst: his transmission was toast. Ugh. However, Jim the Mechanic did have 1 piece of good news for us: apparently, 2000 Honda Accords had some transmission issues and Honda issued a recall, so since the car was still under 100,000 miles, Honda will replace it for free!! Whew! I thought I was going to have to slap a Union Jack on it and call that our trip to London!

Next stop, Everest
My little monkey has discovered the joy of climbing. I went to the bathroom and returned to the living room to find her standing on the computer desk. She’s been scaling the couch for weeks, and now she’s apparently mastered the chairs at the desk too. We have forbidden her from climbing on the coffee table and end tables because we’re trying to reinforce the idea that her feet & butt do not belong on any table. :::sigh::: Now I have to re-evaluate the house for climbing opportunities.

Your children can save you money
It looks like we’ve reached the end of an era. No more dining out for us. Little Miss Busy Pants is no longer content to just move around on the seat of a booth, and is trying to crawl across the table, slide under the table (and escape), scale windows- whatever. Food, crayons and the sugar caddy are not holding her interest. God help us if the service is slow. We’ve had two dinners in this week alone where we almost left a $20 on the table and left before the food even arrived. So it looks like we’ll be eating at home until we can make someone understand appropriate restaurant behavior.

Stranded at the K Mart
Grandma Suzie apparently lost her mind and on a recent outing to the K Mart in Ontario she decided to buy Tenley one of those Little Tykes Playhouses that cost as much as a thoroughbred racehorse. The playhouse was on sale, but what she forgot to take into account was the size of the box vs. the size of her late model Honda sedan. A hasty call was made to my husband who was out running errands with the Tenster, and as soon as they had secured a new sound card for the computer they were on their way to Ontario to rescue Mom who was getting strange looks from passer-bys as she sat in the Kmart parking lot with a large brown box leaning against her car. Fortunately it fit in the CRV, and we didn’t have to call Doug & Tina and beg for the use of their truck.

And the Nominees are...
Not us. Normally Oscar Sunday is a big night in our house. We usually have friends over, vote on our own ballots (with prizes for the most right and the least right),give out goodie bags, and have themed food (baby Broke-back ribs, Munich German potato salad, Constant Gardener salad, Memoirs of a Geisha’s sushi rolls, Charlie and the Chocolate Fondue). But this year we had 2 people with raging colds, and decided most folks weren’t going to be happy about wallowing in our germs. It was probably just as well- John Stewart does great with political humor, but I don’t think he was the best choice for the Oscars- it was a rather boring show. Hopefully we’ll roll out the red carpet again next year.

Hacker Version 2.0

For those who have asked (and those who haven't) here's Tenley intently training to be a hacker...er..."network administrator" just like Daddy. She's always had a fascination with technology, and was always able to tell the difference between a toy cell phone and the real thing (and she only wants the real one) and a computer keyboard that was not hooked up to anything, and one that did things when she pressed on it. She loves to sit in our laps and "help" us with what we're doing, and pitches a royal fit if you try to put her down.

Since we can only play on www.noggin.com for so long (she loves to move the mouse and look for Zee while pages load), we put the Child's First Computer by Comfy on her Christmas list (item # 1582406 at www.flaxart.com), and the other cyber geek in the family, Grandma Suzie, happily bought it for her.

It's a large tot-designed keyboard with 20 or so keys that hooks up to any PC (with a Pentium III or above and Windows 98SE or higher) with a plug and play USB connection and a software CD. The keyboard comes with 1 CD that has 3 levels to teach kids ages 1-3 about colors, shapes, body parts, music, and day/night in any one of 16 languages (sadly, Chinese is not one of them). There are at least 4 other CD's available to grow with your kid up to age 5. As an adult, it will bore you to tears after 5-10 minutes, but Tenley will happily entertain herself for 20-30 minutes at a stretch on the thing (sitting still for 20 minutes for Tenley is amazing), and frequently plays with the phone component even when it's not hooked up. We just hook it up and put her in her booster chair at the computer desk and let her have at it. Again, a major fit will occur if you try to take it away before she's done with it.

I'm sure there are other computer type things out there for toddlers, but we liked this because it gave her her own keyboard with big buttons, it had multiple levels & software titles, and she can't just click out of it and get onto the desktop and begin throwing the hard drive into the recycle bin. Which, in case you're wondering, she has actually tried to do.

Weekend in Clovis

Last weekend we headed back up north to visit Jeff’s parents in Clovis. I really wish someone would invent that “beam me up” thingy from Star Trek, because I love seeing my in-laws, but I hate the 290 mile drive. Tenley doesn’t like it either- heck- she doesn’t like going across town being restrained in a car seat, so the 4 hours to Clovis is a killer. But we had a plan this time: I was 90% packed a day in advance, we woke Ten up at 6, at 8:15 she got a little Benadryl, at 8:30 we went to the park to run and play until 9:30 when we left. It worked! Tenley was asleep before we got on the 210. But then I blew it by desperately needing to use the potty somewhere around Rowland Heights, and she woke right up as soon as the car slowed down and refused to go back to sleep.

She was actually pretty good (minimal whining and cranking) and was happier when we made our usual stop in Bakersfield for some McCrappy fast food lunch and a wander around the Wal-Mart to stretch our legs and change her. She was less than thrilled about having to get back in the car, but managed to amuse herself by playing with the holographic silver and metallic pink soccer ball we had just bought her.

We made it to Clovis by 3 and put Tenley in cute clothes so she could go with Grandma to Grandpa’s work to meet everyone. Jeff and I took off to run some errands that go better without Tenley like getting some new jeans at Old Navy. Of course, Jeff didn’t make it out of the Old Navy without 2 new outfits for his Monkey Princess. After our respective outings, we rendezvoused back at the homestead and happily settled into some yummy, but spicy, chicken enchiladas and the evil evil cake that Jeff’s Mom (whom is diabetic I might add) had baked for us.

On Saturday, we got up, dined, and let Ten get distracted playing with Grandma, and then around 11 we ditched her to go antiquing and have lunch like sane childless grown-ups. Of course, the only things we bought were 6 books for Tenley and a 2 qt. casserole dish that is part of my long-discontinued Pyrex. For her part, Tenley was having a fine day. Grandpa came home from the golf course, and they pimped the red Radio Flyer wagon that had belonged to Jeff and took Tenley to the park where she decided to try out the big girl swings. The only downer in Tenley’s whole day was that she refused to take a nap, so by the time we showed up she was one tired and cranky little girl. I finally managed to rock her to sleep around 5, so we let her have a little snooze and then disturbed her around 6:30 to go have some dinner at Marie Callenders.

The dinner itself was nothing remarkable, but something very sweet happened: we were seated in a booth with Jeff’s parents on one side, and Ten between Jeff and I on the other. We got the kids salad bar for Ten so we were feeding her, and encouraging her to color on her placemat, and playing peek-a-boo with the menus while we waited for our food to come. Suddenly, an older gentleman looking very dapper with his hat and bow tie came up to our table and smiled warmly at Jeff, Ten & I and said “ The love the 3 of you have for each other is so obvious...it’s just beautiful. I don’t see that very often, so I had to come over and tell you.” I was so moved. I think that may well be the nicest compliment I’ve had as a Mom.

On Sunday morning, Jeff’s parents got Tenley up and dressed her in the very chic and way too cute leopard jumper that Aunty Jen bought her and took her to church, thus allowing Jeff and I to sleep in. After they got home we went out to breakfast, and then it was time to begin the 290 mile journey back home. This time, Tenley fell asleep in Fresno and slept all the way to Azusa! Good girl!! We called Doug & Tina as we passed their house and they jumped in the car behind us to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Yummy!

Another good weekend at an end!

Bing and Bong

...There's a Tiny Planet calling....

East Coast parents with early risers know who Bing and Bong are. Frighteningly, so do some of us West Coasters. Bing & Bong are the heros of "Tiny Planets" on Noggin which is on at 6am EST...that's 3am for us in CA.

I like Tiny Planets, but we usually don't see it (which is good) except when Ten has a sleepless night....or she's sick. I'm sorry to say it's the latter.

My little baby is sniffling and sneezing and has a nice chest cough. The whining & whipering started coming over the baby monitor at 2:30 and an hour later Tiny Planets was over and I was in the car in the pouring rain heading to Rite Aid for infant's Robitussin.

While I hate it that Ten doesn't feel well, the nice thing about her not feeling too well is that she's a little less active and alot more snuggly...it's nice to get to snuggle with hereven if it's only because she needs comfort.

I'll post pictures and stories from our sick-free weekend in Clovis as soon as my sick baby is sleeping.

Well, We Tried

Here's Tenley looking positively evil with glee over the giant pinwheel she's holding. It's a shiny confection of red and hot pink mylar on a bright gold frame with various characters celebrating the New Year and a pair of red metallic flags with dragons on top. We aquired this fabulous $2 trinket last Saturday at the Lantern Festival street fair in Monterey Park just a couple of blocks from USAA's office.

We figured that since Monterey Park has a large Chinese community, and on their website they indicated that the event had offsite parking with shuttle service, was several blocks long with kids crafts, food, rides, wares for sale, and everything from Lion Dancers to Chinese pop groups as entertainment this would be fun and cultural to visit and give Tenley lots of input.

Not so much.

The event was actually about 3 blocks long, and had one stage which we got to see some pre-teens fan-dancing on for a couple minutes (Tenley liked the music!). There were some rides, but nothing of interest for a 17 month old. If you were in the market for DVD's or CD's in Chinese- this was the place to be; beyond that there was the generic Chinese junk stall where we bought Tenley's pinwheel, a booth of knock-off hand bags, and one booth of procade dresses and tablecloths. The rest of the booths were "community service" booths with information for the good citizens of MP about the LA Times, bottled water, Maggi Chinese cooking sauces, LAPD, and various other things of interest to the local community- but not in any way culturaly related. There were a couple food stalls with BBQ and Boba...but that was it!!! We had toured the whole thing in 30 minutes. Rather dissappointing.

On the bright side, the weather was fabulous and it was great to be outside. We popped into the very local supermarket and I got a super huge totally yummy fuji apple and some of my favourite soy milk. We also stopped at this little Chinese conveinience store where I bought red envelopes before our trip to China and bought Tenley some cute melamine bowls and spoons, some green tea for Jeff, and I got some cheap shower caps that work so much better than the Goody ones from Sav-on.

The day was still young enough, and we were starving so we stopped at Victoria Gardens on the way home for a nice stroll in the balmy evening air and some delicious all-American BBQ at Lucille's.

Not quite what we had planned, but a good day none the less.

Terminator IV

As we survey the damage caused by baby destructo in the toy infested wasteland once known as our living room we are reminded of these facts stated about the Terminator...

It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, it doesn't feel pity or remorse and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!

The resemblance is uncanny!

Apology

We're Sorry About Your Restaurant

Yesterday at lunch, Aunty Meg and I were discussing the fact that we're getting an El Torito Grill closer to home, and that while we know the menu differs from the regular El Torito, as long as they have the Mexican Caesar Salad, we're cool. It's something about the dressing that makes it addictive. And we went and talked about it...so now I needed one.

Dining out with Tenley is an experience. Ten's never been real fond of highchairs, and our eventual solution to this was to request a booth and block her in so she could move back and forth and stand up and eat. Sometimes this is not so good of a thing since a) Tenley is not shy about eating off anyone's plate that might have something she's interested in, b) she has no idea what a napkin is for, and c) sometimes she'd rather just sit in your lap and eat whatever you happen to have. You don't have leisurely meals either, because when Tenley's done she's ready to leave and she expects you to be too.

So like a nice enabler, Jeff took his addict wife and overactive kid to the El Torito for dinner. We had to wait 15 minutes for a booth, so that meant I spent 15 minutes chasing Tenley out of the cantina. I tried to explain that the sign that said "No one under 21 admitted" meant 21 years not 21 inches, but all she knew was that those people had chips, and they were playing something funky for a sister to dance to.

We finally got our booth, and 5 minutes later Pedro the Uninterested Waiter came by to tell us he would bring us chips. No problem- Tenley was happily coloring and that gave Jeff and I time to figure out what we were going to have besides the salad. A busboy brought the chips and salsa and narrowly missed getting nailed by the blue crayon that Tenley threw out of her way as she lunged across the table for the chips. Pedro finally came back for our drink order, and we would have ordered then too, but he was distracted by the table across from us with 7 kids of varying ages and 2 oblivious adults. Five minutes later the drinks finally came and we got our orders placed. I can't tell you how long it took for the food to come, but I can tell you that we said "Tenley! Take bites!" "No, too much!" and "Chew that one first!" about 3-5seconds apart and no less than 30 times each. When the salads came, she happily plopped down in her Daddy's lap and stole all the tomatos and tortilla strips out of his.

Eventually, the food came and that was when my good intentions of rice instead of fries went horribly awry. Tenley loves rice, but the concept that food does not stick to the fork like velcro is lost on her. So she was very adeptly scooping up forkfulls of rice and then turning the fork upside down as she crammed it into her mouth and the rice went cascading down the front of her all over the table and the seat. Feeling that that technique wasn't working so well, she threw the fork down in disgust and began cramming handfulls of rice into her mouth with the excess going everywhere. She took a few bites of chicken out of her taco...but then her eyes landed on my plate and lit up.

There they were: 2 huge dollops of sour cream. Ten came right over and started dipping her fingers in the sour cream...but that wasn't going fast enough for she so then she was trying to grab handfulls of it like the rice and getting it all over her face and sleeves as she licked it off her palms. Jeff and I grabbed our napkins and started damage control as Tenley turned around and started finger painting the wall behind the booth with the leftover bits on her fingers. As Jeff was wiping the left hand, she used his distraction as a chance to examine his plate and discover that he had more sour cream and guacamole. She dove for his plate as soon as he was finished with her hand.

Fortunately, Pedro the Uninterested Waiter chose this moment to come by so Jeff and I practically threw our plates at him. Robbed of sour cream and guac, Tenley decided to have some of her fruit. Well, she decided to put the pineapple in her mouth, suck all the juice out, and spit the flesh of the fruit back out into our hands. At our next Pedro sighting we gave him her plate. Pedro went to get her sundae that comes with the nino meal, and I think he may have churned the ice cream from scratch himself of the length of time it took him. This gave us a chance to survey the damage. There was more rice on the seat of our booth than I saw in some of the paddies in China. Tenley was trying to pick it out of the crack between the cushions and eat it. The floor was covered in rice, fruit pulp, and bits of tortilla chip. There was rice in my shoe, and enchilada sauce on my shirt. Jeff had sour cream smears on his shoulder. Tenley was trying to lick a smudge of guacamole off the table.

The bowl of ice cream arrived and she flopped into Jeff's lap with her mouth hanging expectantly open like a codfish. The problem with feeding Ten (particularly at that angle) is that she wants to see the food going into her mouth, so she continually drops her chin, and you miss. So within 5 minutes Tenley had sundae all over her nose, chin and cheeks. We pushed the bowl out of reach and attacked our daughter with wips the way a pride of lions attacks a sick zebra. As soon as she was fit to face the world, I grabbed her and made a break for the lobby while Jeff began waving his credit card and stalking Pedro.

We politely suggested to the manager that he just dynamite the booth we were in, and I think he thought we were kidding. We weren't.

Evil Mommy!

Hmmmm...do you notice any simularities between these 2 pictures??? Yep, I gave my daughter the "Instant Martian" hairdo. I'm sure she'll kill me when I drag these out everytime there's a 1st date (along with the naked bathtub pictures).

I'm sorry we've been so quiet over here...we've had a whole lot of nothing exciting to say! Here are all the less than exciting updates:

Tenley has found the playground. Our trips to the park, until this last week, have mostly consisted of Tenley toddling everywhere, and becoming very nervous on playstructures and crying on swings. Suddenly this week, she figured out the steps and got all excited about the steering wheels at the top platform. She was interested in the tunnels and the slides and it took a couple visits, but she got over her aprehension and today went down 2 of the 3 slides all by herself with musch giggling and clapping at the bottom. She also got on the swings and had a good 5 minutes of happy swinging- it was a breakthrough!

Jeff is having cruise withdrawl, so he got all excited and booked a nice little 6 night cruise from San Diego to Vancouver. Then we lost our minds and upgraded into a junior suite because we decided to take Tenley with us. So we're trying to decide on what we can fit in our port time from the myriad of tempting things to do in San Francisco, we're looking forward to tea & sweets at Murchie's in Victoria, and we'll be spending a few extra days in Vancouver so we can take Ten to Grandville Island and Stanley Park....but can someone out there tell us what there is to do in Astoria, Oregon??? I know it's pretty...but what should we do??

The income tax return is looking good, so I'm plotting a trip to London in the fall with the hope that the tax man comes through enough so I can fulfill my promise to my Mother-In-Law of giving her at least 1 week a year with Tenley.

Just last Thursday we headed out with Doug & Tina, 2 of Doug's sisters, Uncle Sean (and his new paramour)...whom we all saw on the exact same day a year earlier as we welcomed James into the world. WOW. I can't believe our little Puxter is a year old!! In one way, much like Tenley, I feel like he's been here forever...and in another I can't believe that a year has passed. Someone told me that once you have kids, time passes faster than ever- I think they're right.