Life with Z

I know I need to write more often. Right now the gaps are so long that when I do write, I have way too much to say and it’s hard to figure out what to focus on. I’ve been using Twitter a lot more, so I find myself doing mini-updates there, but grandmas don’t read Twitter and they aren’t getting their Zoe fix.

The big Zoe news is that she has started using the potty, more or less. She’s 18 months old and I assumed we’d be waiting till around two before real “training” started. All we’d done was introduced her to the potty and let her sit on it whenever she seemed inclined. Mainly she treated it like another game and would grab her bath toys (which sit in a basket between her potty and the tab) and throw them in the potty and close the lid. But within the past couple of weeks she’d started playing a lot with her diapers doing things like this and this, and I started wondering if maybe she was trying to tell us something.

At daycare she moved up to the toddler class and she is one of the younger kids, if not the youngest. A lot of the older kids use the potty. I talked to her teachers and they said if I thought she was ready, they would take her, too. On the first day (which I think was this past Monday) she went and used the potty successfully with everyone else. So we started trying at home. Essentially we’re guessing and putting her on the potty at typical times we’d think she’d use it and we’re guessing correctly about two times a day. We’re not to the point when she actively tells us she needs to go. I think she is still figuring out how everything fits together. I guess I should probably read a book about this but after my fiasco with “sleep training,” I’m inclined to go with common sense. And until she learns what the sensation of needing to go is, and is able to communicate that to us in time to get to the bathroom, I don’t think we can make the next step. Next step in my mind is pull-ups or big girl underwear. We’ll see how it goes. I still think she’s pretty young and I expect a few bumps along the way. I’m excited she is even interested in the potty as something other than a receptacle for toys! Maybe I’ll break down and read some typical potty training advice but right now “experts” are bugging me.

In general, I’m really enjoying toddlerhood. Zoe’s communicating a lot more. She says please, milk, more, and shoe in sign language, for example and random words pop out, or at least what sound like words to me, like “that’s it.” She’s still hard to understand. Diaper is something like “die-puh” and hello is something like “hiyoo!” but we’re getting there. She’s very independent and wants to do a lot of things herself. She also has very definite ideas about shoes. Sometimes I’ll grab a pair and she shakes her head and goes to grab another set. Very often they do not match and she’s discarded the ones that would be really cute with her outfit, but I have chosen not to care. Moving on! Not going to argue with an 18-month-old over shoes, especially when I know I won’t win. At least not without a lot of tears and screaming and who needs that in the morning before you’ve had any coffee? She also occasionally shows us she’s ready to go to sleep by doing things like walking to her bed and lying down (lol).

She’s pretty fearless. She’s gotten into the phase where she wants to climb up on everything, furniture, boxes, whatever. She’s doing the same at daycare and while one teacher likes that Zoe is “rough and tumble” and admires the fact that she doesn’t cry very often when she falls or jumps off things, another teacher has asked us to remind Zoe that her “walking feet” belong on the ground so we stay safe. We’re trying to reinforce this at home but have had some pretty funny experiences at playgrounds when the child launches herself off equipment. And without fail she always wants to go down the biggest slide, try to climb the big kids’ stuff (and her little legs and arms are often too short to reach the rungs), and generally is pretty rough and tumble. She likes climbing up the stairs outside our apartment and will consent to having her hand held.

She’s also very affectionate. She gives lots of kisses and hugs. Sometimes I think I miss her infancy, when she was so tiny and I held her more. But this phase is pretty exciting, too. She’s now more than half my length (not that that’s hard, I’m a shortie) and developing more into her own person every day.

Next update: thoughts on my novel and publishing.