Chris left for Melbourne yesterday for his cousin’s wedding coming up this Friday. So for the next 1.5 weeks, it’s just going to be Pooks and me at home. Today was our first full day together with Chris, and it actually went pretty well… overall, anyway. Swim class was good this morning — it was Kaia’s first class where I got in the water with her instead of Chris, and she was actually very focused and followed instructions well. The leader of the swim group said she just needs to tilt her chin up a bit more during independent float, and then she can graduate and move on to level 3 class, which means she won’t need to have a caregiver in the water with her. I think we are all looking forward to that day for many reasons.

After we came back from her swim class, we spent the rest of the morning cooking and baking together. Kaia was in a happy mood almost all morning. Sunday late mornings are always fun with her eating because we don’t really put her in a high chair much anymore; she will usually eat as I cook, and it feels like less pressure on both sides. She’s more likely to eat the food since she’s watching it be prepared. Today, she even ate quite a bit of completely raw cremini and king oyster mushrooms, plus raw gai lan, which I never, ever eat raw… At her insistence, we also made muffins. This time, we made apple banana oat muffins with some extra sunflower seeds for crunch. She ate four of them in one go.

Together, we made stir-fried gailan, spicy sesame king oyster mushrooms, air-fryer garlic cremini mushrooms, air-fryer roasted za’atar carrots, and apple banana oat muffins. Sometimes, she got bored and went to go play with her xylophone or her train. Other times, when I’d announce I am doing something and asked if she wanted to see it or “try” something, she’d come running back and up the stool in the kitchen to watch the stir-frying action or the mixing of the muffin batter. She especially loved seeing the muffin batter come together since it meant she got apple sauce…. and even finished the remainder in the jar.

Kaia didn’t fall asleep for her afternoon nap until almost 4pm, which meant she had a late wake-up time. She had a decent dinner, but a terrible bath, during which I insisted we use conditioner (she HATES double hair cleaning, which is why we usually just do shampoo and then do a conditioner spray after). Her tangles have gotten worse, and the liquid conditioner always makes her hair easier to manage (she definitely has my hair!).

Bedtime was frustrating. She pretended to sleep, then every time I’d leave the room, she’d cry. A couple times, she demanded “Daa-TEE!” but I’d insist he wasn’t here. “Where is Daddy?” I’d say. He’s in… Melbourne.” And I’d have her repeat after me.

Kaia would repeat after me, but also resume her pretend sleep game. She knew what she was doing. She even giggled a few times when she knew I realized her “game.” So I ordered her to go to my bed, which she happily did. She fell asleep within 15 minutes.

I got about 1.5 hours to myself during her nap, most of that time spent cleaning, then 15 minutes to myself before bed. This is what solo parenting is like, especially with a toddler who is very aware of who is and isn’t there.

Welp, I hope this isn’t her sleep pattern every night this week…

When we first gave Kaia a pacifier at around age 1 month, I was a little worried about how she’d be with eventually weaning off it. You always hear these horror stories in parent groups about kids who are 3, 4, even 5 years old who refuse to let go of their pacifier. Pacifier, paci, dummy, whatever you want to call it — it’s not just a toy or another object to a baby or toddler; the paci is a source of deep comfort and attachment. So, if you take away something that provides the child comfort, you are risking a lot. It also made me uncomfortable to know that Chris still had his dummy at age 3; I absolutely do NOT want Kaia with a paci by the age of 3 and really hoped that Kaia wouldn’t be as dead set on hers as her dad was when he was a similar age. If anything, I would have ideally wanted to cut it off by age 2, but given we were doing a lot of travel in that time, I didn’t want to take away a comfort source during a heavy travel/transition period. Last summer, we had mostly weaned her off the paci for daytime naps. So overnight sleep is what she wants her paci for.

Last week, Kaia was being really fussy at every bedtime. She was going through a little teething, as I saw one of her back molars was coming out. She also may be going through a 2.5-year sleep regression. But either way, Chris said that she could have one or the other: one of us on the bed with her, OR the paci. I wasn’t really thinking we’d start this early; I originally thought we’d start the weaning process after we got back from our summer trip. But oh well. In most cases, she chose us, and she’d fall asleep sans paci. At some point of the night, though, she’d come barging out of her room crying, in search of us. She’d come to our bed and indicate she wanted to sleep with us. I get it: it’s hard to let go of a comfort item like the paci, so instead, she wants us to be her new comfort item. I felt so sad for my baby, but I know weaning off the paci is something we want and need her to do. It just came about very quickly and suddenly since Chris just declared it out of nowhere last week. It’s been almost a week now of no paci overnight, except one night when she did choose the paci over us.

Chris has also been telling her things like, “Pacis are for babies. Kaia is not a baby. Kaia likes scooters. Scooters are for big kids.” So because of this, Kaia now says sometimes at bedtime, “Pacis are for babies. Kaia not a baby.” I think she’s trying to rationalize to herself that even though she has an urge for the paci that she should fight the urge and power through without it, and ultimately let it go.

My sweet baby is growing up. It’s trite, but it really does go too fast.

Kaia has been expressing interest in the potty since the beginning of this year. She loves to follow me into the bathroom when I have to pee or poop. Sometimes, when I need to go, I will tell her and ask if she wants to come. Almost every time, she will enthusiastically agree and come into the bathroom running. She will observe my every move, so I make sure to narrate every step for her understanding, from pulling down my pants, to sitting on the toilet seat (NOT THE BOWL), wiping, ensuring I’m clean, then pulling up my pants and flushing the toilet. And of course, she always knows I have to “xi shou” or wash hands right after.

Unfortunately, she isn’t totally ready to potty train. I tried to get her to sit on a toddler potty that I got off of Buy-Nothing, but she got scared and refused. She still cannot fully pull her pants down and up every time. Sometimes, she also gives false alarms by telling us she pooped when she did not. But one thing she consistently does when she poops is: she will disappear from where we are and go silent, go into a corner or another room, close the door, poop in her diaper, then come back to us, usually walking awkwardly with a big stool in her diaper. She did that tonight. When I opened the door to the bathroom she was in, it smelled like her poop, so I knew she had gone. I brought her to the changing station, and SMUSH. Some of the poop had spilled out of her diaper and onto the floor mat by her changing station. I had poop all over my right toes.

I stepped into Kaia’s shit, literally. It was red (from beets), stinky, and mushy. I had no idea that anything had fallen out of her diaper. I was not pleased.

Chris finished with cleaning her up and getting her into a clean diaper. While he did that, I limped around on one foot while spot cleaning the floor mat before throwing it into the washer to get laundered. I also removed excess poop from her blown-out shorts with a tissue before swishing the shorts in a bucket with laundry detergent for a pre-clean, then finally went into the bathtub to wash my own feet.

Well, that was an adventure. Having a child is truly an adventure in itself, isn’t it?

I yelped quite loudly when I stepped in her poop and realized what it was. She then proceeded to parrot my yelp, each intonation after the other, in what Chris said was a “perfect imitation.” Yes, she’s truly a perfectionist when it comes to the art of imitation now, and certainly at the most opportune moments.

This incident reminded me of when we were in Pennsylvania last month, and we were in the lounge room of the hotel with Chris’s parents. I could tell that Kaia was pooping in a corner because she had gone quiet and disappeared for a bit. When she ran up to me, she smelled of poop. She smiled while looking at me and said, “I pooped over there.” She pointed to the window overlooking the parking lot. Shen then led me over to where she pooped. And right there, I saw a small little blob of human poop — her human poop. I immediately brought her back to our room to clean her up and to ensure no other damage was done to her clothes. Then, I promptly went back to the lounge room to remove her poop and clean the area.

All I wonder now is: how many more little round poops of Kaia’s am I going to keep inadvertently discovering…?

A couple months ago, we had an incident report given to us that said that a child in Kaia’s classroom bit her on her back. It resulted in a large red mark that was in the middle of her back. I didn’t think much of it because after the initial bite, she didn’t seem to have much fuss about it. That evening when I gave her a bath, she told me someone bit her, but she didn’t have any pain when I washed her back, so I let it go since toddlers will be toddlers. But then, I didn’t realize that my own child would actually bite!

Last Thursday, Chris went to some food stalls in San Salvador to get lunch, so Kaia and I were sitting at a booth on our own waiting for him. When I tried to put her bib on her, she refused and said she didn’t want to eat. I told her that she needed to eat, and to eat she needed to wear her bib. I forced the bib on her, and she yelled in protest. Then, she shot me the most devilish look before reaching down to my thigh and taking a big, painful bite. I yelped in reaction and told her, “No biting!” She glared at me and kept whining.

That evening when I had a shower, I realized that she’d actually pierced through my skin and I bled a little. A small scab had formed. So, this is what toddlerhood and raising a toddler can entail, eh?

I hope I never forget Kaia’s precious early years. I suppose that’s partly why I write about seemingly mundane and everyday moments with her here. Even in times when she is extremely disagreeable and having her worst tantrums, I realize that I still find extreme joy in having her in my life. She has given me a different view of the world, which is the view through a young child’s eyes. We are all children only once, and so it is a sweet reminder of innocence to have young children in your life who happily and eagerly share all their observations with you. They truly live in the moment, whereas we as adults don’t; instead, we constantly obsess over the future, whether that future is the next hour, next day, or next month or year.

While in San Salvador, we did not have a bathtub in our room, so I had to do showers with her to bathe her. While in the shower together, we’re obviously both naked. Kaia is generally not a fan of the shower, and so it took a while to get her comfortable. Once she stopped whining, she got excited and started pointing her fingers towards both of my breasts.

“Those are mummy’s watermelon!” she exclaimed with glee.

Hmmm. I barely have A-cup breasts, even after 14 months of breastfeeding. She has an interesting perception of what size “watermelons” are.

Then, Kaia proceeded to point at my anus while I was rinsing my leg off of soap. “That’s where mummy poops!”

She is, as Chris’s dad says, “a real delight.”

A couple weeks ago when I was on my period, she accompanied me into the bathroom while I peed, which is one of her favorite things to do lately (which I’m hoping means she will be ready for potty training soon…). She peered into my underwear and noticed my pad, which had some blood on it. She then looked up at me and smiled.

“Mummy have diaper,” Kaia said. “Diaper have poop.”

I told her that it wasn’t a diaper, that it was actually a pad. “Mummy have pad,” Kaia murmured. “Mummy have diaper pad.”

It’s so damn cute. I just want to grab her and squeeze her sometimes… and just sniff her again and again.

On our last morning in El Salvador, we went to Tin Marin Children’s Museum, which is reputed to be one of the best children’s museums… possibly in the world. It is incredibly extensive, with both large indoor and outdoor areas. The indoor area has numerous sections and rooms devoted to learning and development, from construction (building), supermarket shopping (of course, my baby’s favorite), restaurant cooking and dining (of course, play pupusas were represented even with their fresh tomato salsa and curtido accompaniments, so we’re very in touch with local flavors, plus a pizzeria, an ice cream/sorbet cart, a dairy shop, and a dried grains/beans vendor), an education area about your mouth and dental hygiene, volcano and earthquake education; a real car for kids to paint (so messy but fun!), to even a full fledged mini theater with dress up for slightly older kids and a puppet show. No detail was overlooked in the creation of each of these sections; I was truly blown away by the thoughtfulness of the tiniest features throughout. The outdoor area was also incredible, with a real fire truck from the 1930s area (shipped from Canada, one of the attendants told me), part of a real ship, as well as a real part of an actual airplane. You could even smell the airplane interior — there was no mistaking that old airplane scent. The museum outdoor area also had a butterfly conservatory where many tropical and colorful butterflies were fluttering about.

I thought about this experience and how comprehensive it was in comparison with the experiences I know to be true of the Manhattan Children’s Museum on the Upper West Side. The entry fee has gone up since last year and is $16.75 for children (over the age of 1!!) and adults. It doesn’t even have half of what Tin Marin offers. The supermarket area itself is depressing next to the massive, comprehensive one we experienced here. Tin Marin’s little supermarket even had “salmon” fillets made of rubber, as well as an entire dairy section and medication/formula area. Here, the admission fee was a mere $3.50 for endless exhibits and hands-on fun.

In general, I left El Salvador marveling over how child-friendly and inviting it was. Entre Nubes, the coffee farm/cafe we went to yesterday, also had a huge children’s play area with a massive, colorful play house with a play structure attached to it with slides and all. The library from our first full day was made for young children. In New York, or really, the U.S., children aren’t really included or considered when people build general public spaces. That’s why museums like the Children’s Museum on the Upper West Side cost so much. Why should a child, age 1, be charged $16.75 to enter a children’s play museum…?! That just sounds like price gouging at its worst!