Notes of a Native HyePinay: Photos: Sylvia on Her Way to 2!

My my, what a neglectful blogger I have been! Of course, the difficulty is that Sylvia has been sick like clockwork since she started day care in November. In December, she got pink eye and a cold, which became an ear infection and croup. And wither Sylvia's health goes, so goes the rest of the household.

I don't know where to start to recount her developments over the past four months or so!

She becomes more and more of a chatterbox — and a bossy one, at that — every week. "Mama pick you (meaning "me") up!" "Daddy draw a wainbow!" "Go in chicken (kitchen)!" "Go in the bedroom!" This morning it was, "Mama and Daddy and Sylvia spin in the shadow!" And if, heaven forbid, Mama says something like, "Sylvia, Mama's tired. I'm not going to pick you up, but we can snuggle on the couch", well, it's like a siren goes off in the living room. "Mama pick you up! Mama pick you uuuup! MAMA PICK YOU UUUUUUP!" Yes, we are two, even if we are not two yet.

In parallel to giving orders, Sylvia is also obsessed with trying to do things by herself. When she is reluctant to do something — go to the potty, put on her socks (oh my god, I never thought I would spend so much time fighting over socks), brush her teeth — we can often convince her to do it if we say, "Sylvia, can you do it yourself?" This provokes a staccato explosion of "Self! Self! Self!" This chant has also become a regular feature of meals, which has made the bibs relevant in a way they never were before. She feeds herself well with, say, oatmeal and rice, but smoothies and soups end up coating the entire bib surface and pooling in the pocket. Not to mention the purple or orange Van Dyke our daughter sports by the end of the meal.

A pleasant development is that Sylvia is now diaper-free at home. She either wears panties or goes bare-butt as long as she is awake, and we have very few misses. She still wears a diaper at nighttime and during naps, but usually when we take the diaper off after her nap, it's dry. At home, our task is now to wean her off potty time as marathon-reading-time, as we are getting tired of reading book after book or, as is more often the case these days, reading the same book — and even the same page — multiple times while sitting on the toilet or the bathroom floor. There are only so many times one can read A Day at the Airport before visions of Richard Scarry's anthropomorphic animals begin to dance in your head.

It's telling that one night while she was asleep, Sylvia suddenly said, loud and clear, "Read this page again!" Her other notable talking-in-her-sleep statement was, "Mama do it!"

Sylvia has also finally figured out the two-feet-off-the-ground jump. After what seemed like months of trying to jump and managing only a one-legged hop, she broke through. And now she will not stop. This is the pain of babyproofing: it never seems to end. Now our litany is, "Sylvia, no jumping on the couch! Sylvia, no jumping on the papasan!" Her new morning ritual is to say "Go in bedroom!" then climb up on the bed and start jumping around. It's her new passion in life, and she has embraced it with both arms.

She is doing very well at day care. While she still seems reluctant to leave us in the morning, she now willingly reaches for Ildiko when we drop her off. She can recount the names of most of the day care regulars when we ask, "Who will you see at Ildiko's?" And as a result of her new routine, she is now obsessed with crackers and, to a lesser extent, with cookies. Luckily, she still regards the teething biscuits — sweetened only with molasses — as legitimate cookies at home.

Singing remains one of her chief pleasures in life. Particularly, it seems, in the middle of dinner when she has a mouthful of something. Songs sung to the ABC tune are still a favorite: ABCs in English and in Spanish, Twinkle Twinkle, and Ah vous dirai-je maman, the original French lyrics. She loves singing Happy Birthday, particularly to, say, her sandwich or her pilaf. And yet when the birthday of a relative arrives, she clams up. Oh well. She is starting to learn the songs that came with her Dan Zane's Jump Up! book, although sometimes it takes a couple of starts before we recognize what she's singing. She also seems to have learned "Do, a Deer" at day care.

But without further ado, let's move on to the photos. To start, I have just put up a quick selection of photos from the holidays to the present, mostly of just Sylvia. The holiday photos are so daunting, I don't yet feel up to tackling them! Plus, Erica and Kraig did an excellent job of documenting our visit on Brielle's blog (honestly, they put me to shame).

I love this photo that Kevin took at the Sacramento zoo. It's almost like a Magritte come to life, if Magritte painted adorable little girls rather than men in bowler hats:

Sylvia recently went though a period of wanting to carry things with her all the time. She would pick up one object, see another that she wanted and add it, and another and another until her arms were overflowing. Any attempts to help her carry these things, which were dropping to the ground, would be violently rebuffed. At this time, she also became oddly attached to her water bottles, to the point of wanting to take them to bed with her. Since they are stainless steel, we drew the line. But here's a photo of her two-fisting during the daytime:

When Sylvia had croup, the doctor recommended that we cool her lungs with cold air, cold drinks, etc. So we took her to the beach at the Santa Monica Pier. (I should mention that when Sylvia has been sick these past few months, it has not slowed her down AT ALL. Every time we contemplate keeping her home from day care, we watch her jump around and remark to each other, "Boy, that kid looks so sick.") Sylvia's favorite beach activity lately has been to pick up fistfuls of sand and drop it on our shoes. Probably to hear her parents squawk in protest.

And yes, she still adores the Ferris wheel!

The previous time we'd visited the pier, the carousel was closed. This time it was open, and Sylvia was determined to ride on it. Typically, she was not satisfied with just one ride! Oddly, the next time we went back she didn't want to. She is like that with the ponies, too: Sometimes you can't get her off them, sometimes you can't get her on them. But this day she had a blast:

Sylvia received a life-sized Emperor penguin from her Aunty Maxine for Christmas. This is another beloved object that we've had to ban from the crib. Kevin takes particular delight in surprising Sylvia with the penguin's antics. Some days she will come home from day care, and the penguin is sit/standing on one of her stools, or he is wearing her favorite hat, or he is hiding in the giant TV box that her Aunty Haan-Fawn gave her. She will point to him and say, "What's THAT? Penguin!" Lately, she's been laying the penguin down on the floor, covering him with a napkin (yes, a napkin) and saying, "Penguin's sleeping. Shhhhhhh." Here she enjoys a quiet moment in his company:

Sylvia now has plenty of hair to play with. In her quest to be like Mama, sometimes she will accept hair bands for pigtails or a ponytail. She also rediscovered her amber teething necklace (now that I can wear necklaces without worrying whether she will try to yank it off me). When she wears it, periodically throughout the day she will say, "Necklace?" and touch it to reassure herself it is still there. She might say, "See! See!" so we will lift her to the mirror.

Another new game. "Uh-oh! Sylvia in the toy box!" (I wonder when she will stop referring to herself in third person? She either calls herself "Sylvia" or "you.")

One of Sylvia's favorite dessert items is sweet Thai tamarind. The process of opening the pod and extracting the flesh from the seeds is part of the pleasure. Kevin captured her hilarious expressions as she tries to break open the pod: