Ever since I became pregnant, I have been served endless child/parenting related memes and posts on social media. One of the most recent ones that I remembered and chuckled out loud at went something along the lines of:

“My child is the most precious thing in the world to me.

I can’t wait until 7pm (their bedtime).”

It reminded me of one of our friends who has twin girls who recently turned 4 years old. Ever since we can remember, he’s constantly made comments about how he wishes he could be a stay-at-home dad, that it would truly be the best job for him, in an ideal world. His full-time work schedule is Sunday through Thursday, so he’s off on Fridays and Saturdays. His wife works Monday through Friday. From Monday through Thursday, his in-laws care for the twins full time. So on Friday, that’s his full-time dad duty day. Keeping this in mind, he’s also made this comment given they will be starting preschool this fall, “I cannot fucking wait until the girls start preschool because it means I will have Friday ALL TO MYSELF – sleep in, play video games, and do whatever the fuck I want and be free of them!”

So, I think the above meme sums up exactly how he feels. And how a lot of us parents of young children likely feel.

When I was setting up Kaia’s bath this evening, I realized that given her size and length now, she really doesn’t even need her seat anymore. First, we started her as a tiny newborn in the newborn sling; then we detached it and had her sit up in the bathtub seat at around 4 months. And now, at almost 18 months, she’s graduated and no longer needs the seat. We probably could have nixed the seat earlier, but I just got used to the habit of having it, really. So we bid farewell to the seat today and I detached it from her baby bathtub. Soon, she will no longer even need the baby bath tub and will be able to bathe comfortably and slip free in the regular bath tub. Recently, she’s also gotten frustrated with having water dunked over her head, so lots of interesting developments as she gets older.

Kaia has not been happy. She has some side front teeth coming out, and surprise surprise: the pain seems to be the worst, even worse than her molars. With her molars, I was actually quite surprised that four popped out in her mouth with very little fussing or noticeable pain from her. With these two side front teeth, she’s so upset that she’s barely eaten anything over the last day, even her usual favorites. Even bread hurts her; she took a few bites and screamed.

Chris didn’t think it would be fun or productive to go out and about with her today, so we decided to stay home and let her rest. We walked around the building and in the common areas. I made some apple sauce, banana, and chia seed (ABC) cookies for her, which she ate four of in one go, so at least that was a hit. But we ended up not really leaving the building at all today, which is strange for us on a Saturday. Hopefully, she will be better tomorrow to go out.

Earlier this week when we brought Kaia home from daycare, she was wearing a diaper we did not recognize — with an Elmo design on it. I didn’t think much of it; I figured the teachers got the diapers mixed up once, and I let it go. But then today, she came home with a Target brand diaper (which we buy), but it was a size 3; that’s two sizes smaller than the diaper she typically wears. Plus, it was super tight on her. After changing, I realized she had a bit of a rash on her butt, and I started applying some diaper rash cream. All rashes are inevitably going to be uncomfortable, but a diaper rash is worse because given the fact that this area is always covered with a diaper other than during diaper changes and baths, it has no time or “air” to breathe and be free, which makes it even more susceptible to getting worse over time.

I was willing to let it go with the first diaper, but with the second diaper, I was definitely annoyed… not just because it was someone else’s diaper, but because the diaper was just too small. And who knows – maybe that small diaper is what ultimately caused Kaia’s rash? It would be hard to prove, but she has never before had any type of diaper rash, not even a small one. Also, this would mean that Kaia’s diapers are likely being used on someone else! So I sent a note to the teachers to address the problem. Whatever their response will be, I know for sure it will not just simply be a scowl or death stare that assumes zero accountability the way I used to get for even the most benign feedback from our ex-nanny.

Out of nowhere this week, Kaia has started yelling out her own name. She will just say “Kaia! Kaia!” over and over again, and so it’s clear she’s fully recognizing that this is her name. She would always look up for the most part if I called out her proper name, Kaia, or even Pookie or Pookster. I wonder if we are confusing her by calling her so many endless nicknames…?

The other cute thing she’s doing is that she’s recognizing animals and sounds, and words to objects. In different books we read, she recognizes the dog named Pal; when I ask her what this is when pointing at the dog, she responds, “woof woof!” and when I point at the cat, she responds, “Meow!” She also knows who Arthur is (one of her favorite books), Bluey, and she even has started pointing at pictures where there’s the beach and shouting out “watty! (her word for “water”). Sometimes, she will speed ahead to her favorite parts of books. It’s been really sweet and endearing to see this level of development.

During play, she’s also started stacking multiple blocks on top of each other, and she seems to understand more nuances of other toys I’ve been picking up for her through our Buy Nothing group. It really is like what Chris said: literally since our nanny quit, her development has truly exploded. I wonder if that’s a sign of something?

The last few mornings of getting Pookster ready for school have been a little bit less than fun. She usually wakes up crying, drinks her milk, and then picks at her (first) breakfast and cries for her pacifier. She’s definitely teething, as I can see when I brush her teeth that there are even more teeth coming, but it’s been pretty miserable. She’s usually a great eater, but the last three mornings, her eating has been pretty terrible. She will eat a couple spoonfuls of Weetbix, a couple bites of greens, beets, or mushrooms, maybe 6 spoonfuls of yogurt and almond butter, and then whine and whinge to get out of her high chair. She’ll demand to walk and get out of the chair, but once out, she refuses to walk and wants to sit. Or, even worse, she will splay her entire body all over the play mat, face down, and cry.

At the end of the day (or, well, morning), I just need to get her ready to get out the door. So I try to coax her to eat between getting her snacks and lunch box packed, then clean her up, do her hair, dress her, clean up her high chair and splat mat, and do all the dishes. Once she’s finally in the stroller seat, she seems to calm down, but it’s definitely a struggle to get to that point. When is this supposed to get easier?

I recently have scored quite a number of useful things via my local Buy Nothing group: a “vintage” set of Pyrex glass mixing bowls; a lot of fun board books to entertain Kaia’s passion for reading; eight massive bulbs of fresh garlic. With the garlic, it was more an aside from the person I picked up about eight board books from. She kind of threw it in as an after thought, and I passively said “why not?” I mean, I could always use garlic. But when I collected it, I realized, WOW. This is a LOT. Plus, the cloves were WAY fatter than the ones I get from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. And I don’t know how old this garlic was or if it was on the brink of going bad. So when I bought some bok choy, I thought I could make it the way the Sambal Lady makes her bok choy, which is to blanch it, season it, then sprinkle the top with homemade garlic chips. And with half of these garlic bulbs, plus another bulb of my own, I decided I’d make garlic chips. But I didn’t really want to peel and slice all 70-80 cloves of garlic by myself.

So, I decided I’d use the Mother’s Day excuse and ask Chris to do this task. It’s not a task for ME; it’s a task for the family to enable tasty meals. When he woke up this morning, I declared this to him, and he immediately groaned. Then, he saw exactly how many cloves there were on the kitchen counter, and he tried to negotiate with me and said he’d do half. I said, no, he had to do all of them. In the end, maybe he left about 15 undone, but it was still a pretty good job. He spent about an hour just peeling them, then did the slicing a few hours later. While Kaia napped in the early afternoon, I fried the garlic. Unfortunately, I probably fried them a minute too long, but it was still edible.

While many mothers out there want expensive gifts and flowers for Mother’s Day, I really do not want any *thing*, per se. I’d really just like acts of service as love. I will make sure to ask Chris to peel and slice garlic cloves for future garlic chips, especially now that I didn’t master frying them to the optimal level during my first try.