21 Month Update

Edie will be 21 months in one week. Edie will be 22 months in two weeks. Sometimes finding the time and steam to finish a blog post is as fun as a root canal. Anyway, I've heard people say that there isn't as much to document once a baby turns one, but I find there are so many moments that I want to remember at this age. It's incredible to me that at this age Edie can understand and communicate clearly, and every day she tells me something new.

Edie's Favourites

- Books (Sure, go nuts!)

- Cookies (Occasional treat, why not?)

- Photos/Ipad/TV (aaaghnt! ix nay!!)

She's so Asian!
Edie is slowly more open to new food and tastes, but for the most part she prefers her Asian flavours. Sesame oil, soup (she asks for hot soup specifically), rice, she loves. Mac & cheese? Pasta? Pizza? No thanks. I thought it was pretty funny until we went on a cruise with my family. She practically ate nothing at dinner and at the risk of sounding like crazies we asked our waiter for some plain rice and tofu. When the plate arrived Edie looked like she was going to leap out of her booster and land into the plate. She still loves carbs but is getting better at eating other foods groups. Edie uses regular cups and I love watching her drink. It reminds me of how far we've come since she first started drinking (or not). She's starting to show more interest in food and will even do a crazy dance when she sees her favourites on the plate.


Funnies
Edie has no concept of time. Whenever I ask a preference question like, "do you want have a pie or noodles for lunch?", she'll say, "No. I read", because she thinks I'm asking her to stop whatever she's doing (reading) to do what I'm asking NOW.

She likes to take our phone and call her friends. We know for sure there's an imaginary friend called Becky. We'll tell her to call so and so and she'll say something like: "wai? (insert friend's name)? ipat? ok. bubye." That part is pretty standard but what kills me is her deadpan delivery of some of these conversations. I love when she calls the librarian and tells her what books she likes. "Hello? Eye-bee-yun. Moonshot. I read moonshot. ok. bubye." I don't even know how she learned to talk on the phone because we never use the phone as a phone.

We take out books from the library regularly. First order of business when Edie flips open the book? Smell the page. I can understand a love for the smell of new books but eww, not library books! Edie literally does a nose dive and says that it has an "eyeberee" smell.

Other Funnies:

- Speaks a few English words with a Chinese accent

- When she's tired she sucks her fingers and wants either my hair to twirl or the tag on her bunny to flick

- Doesn't like milk but loves soy milk. She asks for "soy milk. Hot(!)" every morning. (豆漿.熱!豆漿!)

- Doesn't like anything on her toast and will flip it over so that she isn't eating the nut butter, but will eat nut butter by the spoonful

There are so many Edie quirks that it'd be impossible to list them all. I guess what I love about them is that they're what makes Edie Edie. I believe that if given the right tools and left to be who they are, children are the most creative, funny and intelligent creations. True stars.


Emotions
This lovely darling is an intense creature, especially when the emotions are directed at me. It is mostly loving emotions. Sometimes Edie will dart towards me at full speed and open her mouth wide like she's about to pounce on me like some wild animal, but she will stop her teeth just as they make contact with my legs, or she will bear hug me from behind and try to shake me like I'm a horse. With me she is just more expressive, more physical, more everything.

Yes she also screams but 99% it ends up like this: Edie screams, then I say quietly: "Edie, do you need to scream?". She'll stop and say extra quietly: "no", and then I'll ask her to tell me nicely what the problem is, and sometimes she can (after lots of probing) and sometimes she can't. The simple distractions that worked 1-2 months ago are no longer effective, but that's ok. I know it's frustrating when no one gets you, or worse, when you don't get yourself. Edie is still an only child, so most of the time I have all the time in the world to talk, hug, and on occasion, even nurse her tears away. The other day we were at at consignment store, shopping for her Halloween costume, and she found a shopping cart that she really wanted to play with, but after wheeling it out of the corner, I told her she had to put it back because the store was about to close. She looked at me like she was going to flip out, and when I saw that face, I thought "oh great not now"! I knelt down and said something like: "Edie please. We have to go. See the lady at the cash? She is closing the store. We have to put the cart back in the corner", and expected to have to carry her out kicking and screaming, but she very slowly pushed the cart in the corner direction. Usually after we leave a store she will have lots to say but that day she remained quiet for a long time. Her reluctance gave way to cooperation and that seriously challenged me. For her age, I find she is composed and I even admire her, because I don't think I could handle myself like her sometimes! Things will change as she understands more of the world, but for now we I think we have an understanding that when one of us cannot get our way, it is an exception, and not the norm, so we both try to be gracious in those situations.

Repeater
Verbally, Edie has always been a clear communicator. Since she started to talk, she always used real words and I could understand what she wanted. She's been building her vocabulary steadily since she was 12 months old. What's really fun these days is that she can say some complicated words or phrases right after I say it. I didn't notice until my friend pointed out that she's a "repeater". Yea, like a little parrot. It's so cool because it means she can audibly recognize the sound and intonation, and then control her body to produce those same sounds. First thing on my mind? Ear training! Yes, I can't wait to start doing rhythm and pitch exercises with her because those are some of favourite activities as a musician. The surprise of the week was hearing her count to 10 and singing all the words to "do-me-me, me-so-so..." from The Sound of Music.

English
When I say that Edie is a clear communicator, I'm talking about in Cantonese. Her English is nowhere near her mother tongue, at least that's what I think. She knows maybe 20 words in both languages but she only expresses broken sentences (or coherent thoughts) in Cantonese only. On occasion she has surprised me by saying the English equivalent of the same word/phrase. I'll ask her who taught her the word, and 9 of 10 times she'll say "yee yee" (her aunt). Edie told us that my dad taught her to say "no way!", but my dad denies this. What probably happened was that Edie said something and my dad asked her if she said no way, and that's how he taught her. She's a repeater, remember? Without any training, Edie also uses the possessive s in the right way. I haven't noticed her using the plural form. Sometimes I teach her new English words when we sit down for meals, and she will repeat word as if to practice. We recently met someone at a party, who used to speak German exclusively until she was 3yrs old. Then she went to school and started speaking English and French. Today she doesn't speak a word of German.

Coherent Thoughts
Another verbal milestone (to me anyway) is the creation of new words and phrases. When she was younger Edie could only say the words we taught her, but now she makes up her own words. Compound words are commonly used in Chinese. Now Edie dissects the words and mash them together to make her own. Or she'll take a phrase I just said and then expand on it. Like when she wakes up in the morning and I bring her into our bed, she'll point and say that's "daddee mommy's bed", and I'll say something like, "yeah that's my bed. Let's get in the blanket!" Then she'll say "bed. warm blanket. Get in now".

One on One Conversations
Ever since our cruise vacation, morning chats have become a regular thing with Edie. The first time it happened I was shocked and couldn't believe how a 1.5yr old could express so much verbally. We were sharing a room while we stayed in Toronto, and after she woke up I plopped her next to me on my single pull out. She retold specific details from previous events and answered very clearly when I asked her simple questions. She was finally telling me what was on her mind and explaining the world as it appeared to her. It was probably the most sublime 15 minutes for me as a mother. This week I noticed she was speaking gibberish for 15-20 after her nap. She seemed to be talking to someone but it was so weird that she was not using any words. When I asked her who she was talking to, and she said: "Edie, myself".

Music
Because Edie has an incredible ear, she knows lots of songs. Three to four months ago, we realized by chance that she can recognize songs when I play them on the piano. About two months ago, we also noticed that she knows the last word to every sentence of her kids songs. Then we tried the fill in the blank game with more complicated songs, and she still knew the words. I even tried it with some hymns I sang to her as infant but haven't sung recently. Surprise, she knew them. Because my mom is a hoarder historian, she gave me a cassette tape of Chinese kids songs from my childhood. We converted it to a CD and let Edie listen to it. It's hilarious because Edie will ask for this CD at almost every meal and car ride. Yep, she knows the lyrics to every single song. She probably knows more than me. She never sings along with the CD. She'll only do it when we sing a cappella and then stop to let her fill in the blanks. When we go to circle time she never sings with the kids. She doesn't even look like she's paying attention. But when we have pretend circle time at home, she does all the actions and sings along.

Pretend Play
One of my go-tos in curbing her moodiness/tantrums/strong will (bottom line: not doing what I say!) is to pretend play with her. I read this idea on a blog somewhere and it blew my mind. We role play and act out both the desired and unwanted behaviours. For example, I'll ask Edie to tell me to come over to read to her in a loud and rude way. Then I'll ask her to do it again nicely. She usually finds our acting funny and we definitely laugh our heads off when she does it. These demonstrations allow her to understand what I mean when I use words like gentle, rude, too loud, calm down. Besides behaviour modification (hehe), Edie also pretend plays for fun (now I just sound like a psycho). Her all time favourite is pretending that her baby is crying and her crying sounds so real that she's tricked a few people. A few weeks back, Edie associated bags of all sizes as going to work, so whenever she'd pick up a bag, she'd yell out "I'm going to work! Bubye." This week she likes to pretend she's coming home from somewhere and waits for me to welcome her with a hug and kiss. She'll do it over and over and the look of excitement doesn't ever fade. In these moments of free play and wild imagination, I have to hold myself back from smothering her with kisses, because I just find her so alive and beautiful!

Potty Training
We just completed three days of potty training. We went in with very low expectations but just wanted to give her a kickstart. Edie actually showed great interest and willingness about a month ago, but it was just before we were leaving for a trip and I didn't want to interrupt her training. A month makes a huge difference. Now she has a definite opinion and voice of her own and training is therefore so much harder. I am hugely proud of our entire family for sticking it through. We stayed home for the entire three days, with the exception of a walk to the convenience store (to buy chips of course) on day three. As of tonight Edie will say poo poo when she feels the urge to pee, and be able to run to the potty and sit herself down (she's totally bottomless), but will only sit for two seconds before she shouts "all done!" and then pees on the ground a few steps away. In my books this is good progress. She can feel the urge, communicate it verbally, get herself to the potty and release. A huge improvement from day one when she'd look down and give me the where-on-earth-is-this-liquid-coming-from look. And so our potty journey begins. Update: On day four it became a gong show. Everyone was tired and going crazy from doing nothing but trying to pee, cleaning up pee and trying not to get angry. We had to stop anyway because Edie started freaking out at the sight of the potty. Since then she is back in diapers and sits on the potty whenever I go, when she wakes up, before meals, before naps, after naps, before going out, etc. It's more like training me to take her to the washroom, but I guess that's what I'll be doing if she actually does stop wearing diapers. At least she stopped being scared of the potty.

My Favourite Edieisms

1. Her Politeness. When I showed her a picture of some new winter clothes I bought for her, she immediately said "thank you mamee." I never expected a kid this young to understand gratitude. She schools me with her pure heart.

2. Her Imagination. Such fun to play crazy with someone who doesn't think I'm crazy.

3. The way she tilts her head down and lifts her gaze up when she says "awe / oh / oooh-kay"

4. The way she holds a cup. Of course I'm happy to be done with zippy cups, but it's more than that. Every time I see her reaching for a cup full of liquid, tilting it at the exact angle to her mouth, knowing how much to swallow and when to breathe and when to stop, it reminds me how things that seemed impossible can enfold so beautifully.

Sometimes I get really creepy and just stare at her (I try my best not to let her see). It's just unreal that her 18 lb. body can hold so much sweetness and understanding. We've had some rough phases but I feel as though we're in a golden time again. haha every time I have time to sit and write an update, it HAS to be in an easy phase, no? I have a love hate relationship with documenting our journey, because I am not a natural writer and it takes me a long time to write. That means I have lots of ideas and lots of thoughts but very little content ever makes it on paper. Which translates to me always feeling like I am behind in my work. But when I flip through the old entries, those little details show me how much progress we've made. Not just Edie and her development, but how I have changed in my character and how we have grown as a family unit. Oh man I don't know how I'm going to hold it together for any of her graduations and big life milestones. So much history and knitting of hearts.

At this point, my biggest struggle is that I constantly feel torn between being a great mom and a great me. But I'm trying to be patient and gentle on everyone, including me, so all I am right now is thankful, for the every day piles of laundry and stacks of dishes, and will work out all those other issues one day at a time. I mean, seriously, what else can I do. Ha!

To wrap up, here are my hopes for little E:


Dear Edie, may you see the world with fresh eyes each day,


stopping to listen to those in need.


And remember what your mama said, "Always finish your veggies before the carbs!"