As unbelievable as it is, our little M is already 2 years old. And we have been parents for 2 years! At times, it is still hard to think of ourselves as someone's parents, people who should be able to know and do it all :-)
Important events and developmental milestones
- We have had a lot of family time here, with my mom and my husband's parents visiting. That also means less daycare, fewer viruses, and less rushing to drop her off and pick her up = less stress all in all :-)
- She is going to a big kid daycare group (2-4 years) in May. She has been practicing there already since March and now she can make her own sandwiches! What a big girl.
- We are trying potty training (on low speed) again, but the success is yet to be achieved. We will probably do something in the lines of the three-day potty training at some point.
- She is going to get a room makeover (with an animal wallpaper) and a big girl bed!
- She can open doors since a month (which in combination with her being able to open doors might not go as well as we would like).
- We visited a zoo with her last weekend and she absolutely loved it. Lions, monkeys and fish are her favourites! She especially liked if animals were eating or sleeping, two activities she can really relate to.
- She had her first kids party and her first piece of cake. She is really like her mommy, eating it very carefully and not wasting even a crumb (and not paying attention to all the gifts and guests, because she had cake...). So far we have come without any sugar... It won't mean that she will get sugar now every day, but for such an important event it might be pardoned, I hope!
- She loves going somewhere with the car, even so much that I sometimes take her to daycare early when she gets all excited seeing me picking up the car keys to drive to the hospital ("emme auto").
Language
Her language development deserves its own paragraph. I have written about it earlier.
- M can say over 100 words consistently, most of which are English, then Estonian and then some Dutch words (about 15 at the moment).
- During the time her Estonian grandmother was visiting us, she picked up quite a few words, but not as much as I had expected. Now her English-speaking grandparents have been here for 2 weeks and you can really notice the development! At times, I feel that spoken English is much easier to acquire due to simpler words (in my opinion). She really goes towards simplicity and will say "one more" instead of "veel üks" (the combinations of consonants are pretty hard for her). She will also drop the beginning of the word ("(ba)naan") or substitute the first syllable to match the other one ("tati" instead of "Kati").
- M is starting to make more two-word sentences, the most common being "dada tuttu" (daddy is sleeping) or variations of saying bye to things or people ("bye (al)paka!).
- She has started to tell about things that she has seen or what has happened to her, such as recounting her visit to the zoo with a lion ("jaja, jaja") or to a parcel point that had an aquarium ("tädi fish"). A couple days she hit her head to the door and then later pointed to it and said "ai-ai-ai").
- Some sounds are still hard for her, such as "r", "s" (in the beginning of a word), "ch".
- She has a few verbs now, such as "tuttu" (sleeping), "mämm-mämm" (to eat), "ist" (sit or istu, the Estonian counterpart), but I think this is still limiting her quite a bit.
- Strangers can understand very little of her, especially Dutch people (as she uses so few Dutch words). For an English or an Estonian speaker, it maybe is 10% that they can understand. Schedule
6:45 wake-up, changing, teeth
7:00 breakfast (porridge and a glass of milk)
(7:30/8:00 daycare time)
10:00 snack time (fruit, cracker)
12:00 lunch (piece of bread with peanut butter or cheese and a fruit, a glass of milk)
12:30/13:00 naptime for 1 h to 1,5 h if we are lucky
14:30 snack time (fruit, berries, loves them all!)
(17:15/18:00 pick up from daycare)
17:30 dinner (carb: favourites are pasta and potato), veggies, some protein, like an egg, plus a fruit)
19:00 getting ready for bed: teeth, changing, story-time)
19:30 sleep time
Eating
I never need to worry that she doesn't eat enough, but she can be picky! She likes porridge, bread, fruit and berries of all sort, potatoes (usually, but in a form she knows), pasta (without sauce), pancakes, and of course all the sweet things she can get her fingers into (which is as little as possible). She LOVES snacks, but then won't eat well after... Toddler brain is difficult to beat.
Challenges
- I am finding motherhood difficult at times. You are never home enough and you are never enough at your work. I will start working four days a week from the end of May (with 2 shifts a month being added later) and I am curious how I will find having every Friday with her. I think it will be very good for our bond and her language, but I do need to make it interesting for both of us. I already sense some Excel sheets and developmental goals coming from there.
- From challenges of a smaller scale, potty training is one of them. It needs to be time soon!
- I am due to travel with her alone by plane for the first time in May.
- Screen-free (or reduced) parenthood is something I am thinking a lot about. All the research is for it but we will have 3 long-haul flights in the summer coming up...