Busy Girl

This post is all about AB's day. Do not feel bad if you go ahead and skip this one. It might not be interesting.

AB is a very busy girl. Most days she wakes up at 6:45 am by yelling "Da!" at the baby monitor. Da! is short for daddy. She only says mommy about once a week, and it is usually when she is in distress. I cannot even coax it out of her with bribes, she just won't say mommy.

AB's room has the best air conditioner in our apartment, so she sleeps in a fleece sleeper, while KB and I sleep in our hot bedroom. Since the unit in our living room is off during the night, it can be quite stuffy when we wake up, so I strip AB down to her diaper for breakfast. Most mornings AB eats oatmeal made with milk, cinnamon and a little bit of sugar (otherwise she won't eat). I try to get her to eat as much oatmeal as possible, because it is possibly the only whole grain she will eat the entire day. If it was up to her, her diet would only consist of cheese, milk, ice tea and chocolate. I still spoon feed her breakfast, but I suspect she is able to do it herself. My primary reason in feeding her breakfast is that she makes a huge mess when she does it on her own, and I do not want to start the day off with a bath.


At 8am Karen and Kitty come to our apartment. Kitty is our language tutor, and Karen watches AB so we can study. AB immediately runs to the front door as soon as Karen arrives because she knows she will get to go play outside. Maybe she does not feel the heat or something, because I am not sure how anyone could be excited about going outside right now. The weather is just like Houston in the summertime. To my horror, Karen tells me while outside AB runs around trying to steal other kid's strollers and toys. All the grandparents ask her questions about how we raise AB and talk about how white she is.


At 9:30 AB usually comes up from playing to take a nap, but unfortunately and against my best efforts, she is dropping this nap. All the books say the parents should facilitate dropping this nap, but she is doing this on her own. The morning nap is great. I am very sad to see it go.


AB usually eats lunch at 11am. Until recently she enjoyed eating eggs with spinach (the only vegetables she eats all day), but she has begun to reject them. I am going to go crazy if I cannot find a way to get her to eat something good for her. I try to withhold her milk to get her to eat other food, but she would seriously rather wait till her next snack/meal to get something better than to eat what I give her. I at least put nifty vitamin drops in her milk, at least right?

AB seriously loves tea. She loved it in the winter when I drank hot tea and now she cannot get enough of my ice tea. I have begun to sneak into the kitchen and drink it from a cup I keep in the refrigerator because she drinks like half of my glass of tea! She is 18 months old now, she can definitely pitch a fit when she does not get her way.

AB has a very tender spot in her heart for her toys, specifically her stuffed animals and dolls. She carries them around, pushes them in her mini stroller, and she is thrilled that I showed her how to make a little baby bed out of a basket, pillow, and a blanket for her baby. One of the few words she says is "baby," so obviously, her baby is pretty stinking important to her.

Because I am preggers and not much inclined to move if at all prevented, I often lay in her floor while she plays around me. I prop my head up on a small pillow and use one of her blankets to cover me, because once again her air conditioner is awesome. Last week she found a little pillow and blanket for herself then laid down beside me and covered herself up with the blanket. We laid side by side for about 10 minutes looking at books and "talking." It was genuinely one of my favorite moments with her.

AB adores Toby and Toby adores the way AB smells. He especially likes it when she has a dirty diaper - gross. He has trained her to throw his ball, and I think they are best friends.

AB's favorite toy of all is her daddy. He loves to toss her, chase her, and throw her onto the couch. When daddy gets that "look" in his eye, she knows it is time to play and she giggles and squeals the entire time. The only bad thing is when daddy gets tired, and she pitches a fit.

The computer is a significant point of fascination to AB. Not only does she get to see and talk to her grandparents on it, she can watch Baby Einstein while mommy and daddy eat. However, she really does not like it when one of us is on the computer doing normal things, like email. She would prefer our attention be on her. This can make things difficult at times to get work done. Recently she learned how to climb onto the computer chair, and we have caught her more than once "using" (abusing) the computer.

The trashcan has always been a huge temptation for her. It is big, it opens and closes, mommy and daddy use it all the time, and it smells interesting...however she has begun to understand that the only appropriate way to use the trashcan is to put stuff in it, not including her hands. Now she finds every excuse she can to throw something away, and so far we are think all she has "thrown away" is actual trash. I am waiting for the day I see my shoes or a shirt mixed in day old food scraps.

Bath time is fun time, and if my own personal appearance after her bath time is any indication of how much fun she had, AB had a lot of fun! I have to wear an apron when I bathe her because she splashes so much. Fortunately in most of Asia, there is a drain smack in the middle of the bathroom floor and most of the water that does not land on me goes down this drain...this is also the drain that lets in the weird uncooked canned chili smell that so often makes me want to vomit when I make my midnight bathroom runs.

I am not going to mention how healthy AB is because the moment I say that she has never gotten more sick than a cold or 1 ear infection she will come down with something huge.

AB is still a great sleeper. She goes to bed a little after 7pm each night, leaving the rest of the evening to undo the tornado effect she caused in the rest of the apartment. Our only issue is when she is not sleeping but is still in bed. My little girl is apparently part termite, beaver, or woodchuck....the inside of her crib looks like a mental patient attacked it. In the mornings I find little sticks of wood she has shredded from the inside of her crib. I will provide pictures at some point. I was hoping to sell this baby bed after I was finished having kids, but I do not see how I could ask anyone for money to take it off my hands. She needs a teething rail that covers the whole bed. I even tried using Toby's bitter apple spray on the areas she really likes to chew. Either she liked it or it had no effect on her at all. Apparently this weird wood eating things comes from my side; my niece is notorious for eating everything, including a baby bed that belongs to another baby and part of a play scape.

We love our little girl. She is super fun and we are thankful everyday for the chance to be her parents.