The logic of a two year old

Kathleen wakes up in the morning and I go in to get her out of her cot. The following is a typical conversation ...

Kat: "I want to watch tella-wision"

Mummy: "We don't have time to watch anything. First we're going to have breakfast. Then we're going to get dressed. And then we're going to ..." (insert day's activity here)

Kat: "I watch sump-a-nee" (something)

Mummy: "You can watch something while you have lunch, but right now we're going to have breakfast. What would you like for breakfast?"

Kat: "I don't want breakfast, I want lunch!"

LOL

Getting Out and About

Kathleen, Victoria and I are finally starting to get out and mingle in the local community. We have been living here just over a year now and haven't made any friends, which is a shame. I would have liked for Kathleen to have had other children to play with over the last year. Unfortunately, with our two girls being born right in the middle of the current baby boom, places at early childhood centres are limited. I've been turned away from two different places because the waiting lists were full. Kathleen is currently on the waiting list for both Playcentre and Montessori, and Victoria is by default also on the waiting list. (Six months ago the waiting list for Playcentre was estimated at a year long but may be down to six months by now).

But that's not to say we've been stuck at home the whole time. We started going to playgroup at the beginning of last year, every Wednesday morning and sometimes on a Monday as well. Plus for the last six or so months we've also been going to music group every Friday. However it's been a bit difficult to break in and make friends at those places. Kathleen's been of an age where she just plays alongside but not with other children. And I've been a bit too shy and not really made much conversation with other parents past "how old is your child?". The age range of the children at playgroup goes from 0 up to 4 years, so there has only been a limited number of children Kathleen's age there.

But that is all starting to change...

Victoria has definitely opened up new avenues for us. Everyone loves a baby and loves to come over and talk to you if you have a baby with you. And share horror stories, LOL.

This week we went to our first Plunket run coffee group for babies born in November and December last year. A room full of 2 and 3 month old babies! Of the dozen or so mums there, about 4 were second time (or more) mums. As we all have some common ground, hopefully this will turn into a regular event at least, or some new friendships at best. And Victoria will have some friends her own age once they grow older.

But the biggest news is that Kathleen has started atttending the creche run by our local Plunket. She attends three hours on a Thursday morning from 9-12. Today was her second session. Last week Victoria and I stayed with her the whole time. This week we left for about half an hour. Next week we'll go away for a bit longer, until she's comfortable enough for me to leave her there on her own the whole time. Actually I don't think she'll have a problem with it. I pretty much spent the whole time today in the corner playing with Victoria and talking with the other mums. The only time I intervened was to stop Kathleen from getting into arguments with other children (the downside of not having had other children to play with is not knowing how to share, but it's only been a couple of small instances and I'm sure she will learn pretty quick).

At her first session last week she had an absolute ball. She had so much fun that by the end of it she was absolutely exhausted and just had to have a lie down in the playhouse.

Already she's been exposed to new experiences that she hasn't had at home - messy play with sand and mud pies, creating stamp pictures, playing with clay, "painting" the fence with water, and just lots of different toys, puzzles and books. It's going to be a brilliant experience for her. I'm starting to feel bad for not having done those things with her at home, but I either didn't think of it or didn't really want the mess in the house. But she does have playdoh and she loves her blackboard, and I'm fully intending on buying some paint when she's older.

In other news, Kathleen is ready to drop her afternoon nap completely. Which is a pain for me because I'm so exhausted that I really look forward to her going to bed for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I'm still persisting with putting her to bed after lunch, but she just talks to herself or plays with toys. At the moment I'm leaving her for about an hour to rest and then getting her back up again. She's normally quite worn out by dinner time and I'm not quite sure what to do about that, if I should bring dinnertime and bedtime forward earlier, or what.

Kathleen's language skills continue to amaze. She's moved on to more abstract concepts like "me" and "I", for example, "I take piggy with I", rather than saying "Kiki" (which by the way she has also dropped and now calls herself "Kass-Leeeen Hammul-tummm").

Victoria has lately started squealing in the cutest little baby way. Her neck is getting a lot stronger - she likes sitting on your lap but her head normally slumps to her chest after a short while, and she still hates tummy time but can hold her head up for a few seconds now which she couldn't do before.

Evenings continue to be a difficult time for us. I try and give both girls a bath at the same time, which sometimes means keeping Victoria awake longer than she would like. And with Kathleen not napping during the day anymore it also means keeping her up longer than she'd like too. So there's usually a lot of grizzling at bathtime lately.

Victoria still wakes up once during the night for a feed, which is really getting to be exhausting. The last couple of nights I've started ignoring her when she wakes up, and both times she has gone back to sleep for another hour.

Recently I got hand impressions made of both girls. I have to highly recommend Twinkle Toes. Nike who runs the Wellington branch is very friendly and the finished product is fantastic. The actual process of taking the impressions is very quick and easy, taking only about 20 seconds. Actually, the most difficult part was taking a photo to mount in the frame, of both girls looking at the camera and not moving.

And now, some comparison photos of the girls...

Kathleen age 11 weeks	Victoria age 11 weeks
Kathleen age 14 weeks	Victoria age 14 weeks
Kathleen age 15 weeks	Victoria age 15 weeks

-Megz

Three Months

Victoria is now three months old. She is growing strong and fast. She went to the doctors today for her 3-month immunisations which she handled very well, only crying a little bit. They weighed her and she is exactly 5kg. On the smaller side for her age, but she has always been small.

But she is growing quickly both physically and developmentally. Touch wood I think the worst of the newborn stage is over with now, and we're coming in to the cute learning and discovery phase.

She’s a pretty happy girl most of the time now, no longer the screaming newborn who would scream for hours at a time (ok that's a slight exaggeration). Now if she’s crying I’ve got a pretty good idea of why – she’s either hungry or tired or wants attention.

She is so much more interactive nowadays. She’ll lie there and talk to you and smile up at you. Or sometimes she’ll just ignore you completely and stare and smile off into space.

She’s also very settled too, happy to lie under her play gym by herself for ages, and even if you try and interact with her she will ignore you and keep staring at the toys. Sometimes this can be a good thing because Kathleen still takes up an awful lot of my time and attention, but I feel guilty that I don't pay enough attention to Victoria at times.

She's sleeping pretty well at night now, waking up once during the night for a feed. During the day she will protest having a nap quite strongly, but once in bed will generally go off to sleep on her own ok. She tends to have one big nap and a few short naps during they day, unless we're out.

I think managing both Kathleen and Victoria is starting to get a little easier. Victoria is no longer as constantly needy as she was in the beginning, and Kathleen is getting used to having to share mummy. I’ll put Vicky down under the play gym and often Kathleen will climb in there with her and give her kisses and cuddles. I’m so pleased she still seems to like her little sister. Victoria seems to absolutely adore her big sister and is always happy to be on the receiving end of all the cuddles and kisses.

I think Victoria is starting to teethe. She has her hands in her mouth a lot of the time now and really chomps on them. she even tries to put her hands so far into her mouth that she makes herself gag! She also likes to bite things, including me, OUCH! She's not quite at the stage of being able to pick things up yet, but if you put something into her hand she'll hold onto it for a short while.

It's interesting raising a second child. While we're not raising Victoria any differently from Kathleen, there are subtle differences re things I learned the first time round. Such as not trying to force Victoria to sleep if she wakes up. With Kathleen I spent hours trying to rock her to sleep. Now with Victoria if she wakes up after half an hour, I will get her up and she's usually pretty happy with this. I also don't stress about getting her back to bed quite so much as I used to. I wait for her to tell me she's tired rather than watching the clock.

I also expect that she will be learning a lot through osmosis, as she is often in the room when I am reading Kathleen bedtime stories, so she is hearing a lot more language than Kathleen ever did (Well it was just Kat and I at home alone so who was I going to talk to - myself?). Plus Kathleen and I are often singing songs from nursery rhymes or TV so I expect Victoria will grow up always knowing these songs. It will be interesting to see if this is the case.

Cheers,
Megz

Two Years Old

Kathleen turned two years old on Monday. In some ways it seems like she has been two for quite a while now. In fact sometimes I have to remind myself that she's still only little. Having Victoria around now and her being so little, Kathleen seems very big and grown up in comparison. But it is Kathleen's speech that makes her seem so much older. She talks in fully formed sentences now, sometimes quite long and complicated. She may miss out little words like "is" (e.g. "baby talkee on da phone") but her speech is for the most part intelligible and intelligent. She knows all her colours and is getting better at numbers, able to count to five in both English and Spanish.

Kat's birthday was on Monday. This also happened to be Wellington Anniversary Day so Peter had the day off work. We began the day by singing "Kiki's Special Day" song (from Dora the Explorer, Boots Special Day episode). She then wanted "stamps" on her hands, so we drew pictures on her hands with marker pens. Kiki and Daddy then enjoyed watching cartoons over breakfast.

Then it was time for presents. Kathleen got a bit spoiled, although we only bought her a couple of presents. There were also a couple of presents from family and friends. And a couple of presents left over from her birthday last year. These were things that she just wasn't ready for at the time (a tea-set and some Playdoh). So I put them away until she was older and then kinda forgot about them. We could have given these to her a couple of months ago but with Christmas coming up I decided to keep them until her birthday, as she had quite enough Christmas presents as it was.

Her favourite presents would have to be the set of Little People building blocks, and the tea-set. Every day since her birthday she has dragged these out to play with, making tea for the Little People or for Mummy, and stacking the blocks and toys up.

She also got a blackboard, which is great because she can pick up the chalk at any time and draw pictures without bugging Mummy to get the pens and paper out. And even better, Mummy doesn't have to supervise to stop her drawing all over herself or worse. If she wants to draw on herself with chalk she can...

After all the presents were opened and played with, we brought out Kathleen's birthday cake. A Very Hungry Caterpillar cake which looked pretty good even if I do say so myself. Neither Kathleen or I have made many friends since we moved back to Wellington, so we didn't have a birthday party for her. It was just Mummy and Daddy and Kiki (Victoria was sleeping).

Later on we took Kat and Vicky out to the park to play, and had a picnic lunch under a tree. Then that evening we went out to dinner at McDonald's and once again Kathleen had a great time playing in the playground.

To top it all off, today we took her to Little Monkeys indoor playground for her "party". Only one of the five sets of parents we invited were able to make it. But that didn't matter anyway as Kathleen didn't even notice or care. She had a wonderful time playing and didn't want to leave.

So now my baby is two years old. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was posting about her first birthday. In that year she has grown up a lot - learnt to walk; learnt to talk; learnt to jump and climb; learnt to draw; discovered Dora and Barney and The Wiggles. Some things haven't changed - she still wants to get into everything, she still loves being the centre of attention. Tantrums are becoming more frequent, and are an almost daily occurrence.

In the next year I expect she will continue to build on the skills she already has, will get better at drawing and throwing/catching, will continue learning to use the potty, will learn to dress herself. She will also continue to become more independent, and will soon be attending creche one morning a week all on her own. I will certainly miss her, even if it is only for three hours a week.

-Megz

A New Year and back to reality

Memory is a funny thing.

Peter thinks Victoria cries a lot more than Kathleen ever did. I think she cries less.

In my memory, Kathleen did nothing but cry all day long, and we spent night after night rocking her back and forth in her pram to get her to sleep, taking turns rocking while the other one cooked and ate dinner. The terms "Devil Baby" and "Daddy Walk" were not coined for nothing.

In Peter's memory, well I guess he's blanked it all out. He went to work during the day and only saw Kathleen in the evening, and only had a week off when she was born. With the summer holidays, Peter has been at home for 4 of Victoria's first 7 weeks and has seen a whole lot more of her than he ever did of Kathleen. Plus by default he has had to be a lot more hands on with Kathleen in the 4 weeks he's been at home, doing things with her so I can spend time with Victoria.

I bet he was glad to get back to work this week!!!

I, however, miss his help very much. It is exhausting looking after two little ones. It's not too bad when one is asleep, but when they're both awake ... well sibling rivalry has begun already. Kathleen is obviously used to having all the attention, so when my attention is diverted to Victoria, Kathleen will pester me over and over again for what she wants, she will start to get into things she's not supposed to, and when she doesn't get what she wants she will throw a tantrum. And if Victoria doesn't get enough attention, she will just scream and scream.

Admittedly I've only been at this for two days so I hope it won't always be like that.

Juggling the competing needs of two little ones is my biggest challenge right now (and just forget about getting the housework done or cooking dinner - even feeding myself is too difficult sometimes!). I've never been very good at multi-tasking. Kathleen needs to get out of the house and do things. Victoria needs to stay home and have a stable routine.

I'm looking forward to when the summer is over and Kat can go back to playgroup. She will also be starting at Plunket Creche for one morning a week once she turns 2.

Victoria is growing well. She now weighs just over 4kg. I haven't quite worked out her personality yet, but I expect she's going to be just as big a handful as Kathleen is, when she gets older. She's been through several different phases so far. The first few weeks she was very sleepy and would sleep anytime, anywhere, through any noise. That phase passed and then she went to the opposite extreme and wouldn't sleep and by evening would just scream for hours. Then we started working on teach her to self-settle in bed. It has been going ok and I have had more successes than failures (although once again Peter would disagree). But now we're into a new phase where she understands the bedtime routine but just doesn't want to go to bed and will scream and scream as soon as you even go into her room. I wonder what her next phase will be - sleeping peacefully for hours on end? Yeah right. ROTFLMAO.

Over the summer break we have been rearranging the house again. Victoria now has her own room, the room off the kitchen where Kathleen was sleeping. Kathleen has moved into the biggest room in the house and has lots of room for her toys and to play and even has her own couch for snuggling up on to read. Kat's room is the room which we were using as the study, and the study has now moved into the front room. We've got it set up like a proper office, with Peter and my desks facing each other in a cubicle style. There's even a computer just for Kathleen set up there as well.

We hope to now start looking into renovating/redecorating the house again soon.

And finally, because comparisons are inevitable, here are a few photos of Kathleen and Victoria ...

Kathleen age 6 days	Victoria age 7 days
Kathleen age 6 weeks	Victoria age 6 weeks
Kathleen age 8 weeks	Victoria age 7 weeks

-Megz