When people think of parental moments of pride, they oftentimes think of major milestones, like the first time crawling, standing, walking; preschool or kindergarten “graduation,” the actual graduations, acceptances into college/law/medical school, etc. What tends to get overlooked in the broader picture are those small moments when kids start to assert autonomy and their own personalities.

Today, the nanny reported to me that Kaia made her really proud: she had taken her down to our building’s play room, and there were two other older kids there with their nannies (both kids were around 2 years of age). One kid was being very aggressive and kept hitting the other kid, who was passively just taking it all. The aggressive kid came up to Kaia and forcefully tried to pull a toy out of her hands. Kaia, not one to be pushed over, held onto the toy firmly and started yelling endless jibberish, staring hard at the aggressive kid and not stopping the yelling until she let go and backed off. The aggressor got so freaked out that she not only backed off, but she ran away! The aggressive kid is over twice as old as my baby is!

Our nanny said she was so proud. I was also super proud, too. I didn’t witness this happen, but my heart was warmed. The last thing I want is for my baby to be bullied; I want her to stand up for herself and assert her authority. I don’t want any other little twit pushing her around, whether it’s on the playground, at the play room, or at school in the future.

I think Kaia’s second word is officially “bye bye!” We’ve been trying to get her to wave bye bye to our nanny each evening when she leaves. She’s been resisting, though, as she hates having her hands touched or held (hopefully, that’s just for now…. please…). But in the last week, she actually has waved, in her own funny way, and she’s even transitioned from saying “buh buh!” to “bye bye!” And yes, it actually does sound like she’s really saying “bye!”

And it’s as though she’s gotten the routine down now, as well: after she gets fed her dinner and bathed with the nanny, she knows it’s time for the nanny to go home. So after she finished dinner and got bathed and moisturized this evening, I picked her up and she looked at the nanny and started waving: “Bye bye! Bye bye!”

My baby is learning every single day and demonstrating what she’s taking in. Each moment I witness these little bits of her development, my heart feels like it is swelling.

My nanny was originally planning to spend the week of Thanksgiving in Jamaica on her own, relaxing and clearing her mind. She wasn’t even bringing her husband along with her. When she realized that it might be too expensive to pay for a full week of accommodation by herself, she reluctantly asked her cousin if she could stay with her that week, and her cousin agreed. But what she didn’t realize would end up happening was that her cousin told a few other relatives that she would be in town, and all those relatives started creating lists of things for my nanny to buy and bring back. In addition, they also started making requests for random sums of money for our nanny to give all of them for miscellaneous repairs and expenses that were out of their budgets… that just needed to be purchased or done, of course. In the end, our nanny got so frustrated and mad at all these expectations of her piling up that she decided to cancel the flight altogether. It was originally meant to be a time of R&R for her, but it was turning out to be a huge stressor, one that made her realize that all her relatives back in Jamaica just saw her as an endless ATM.

She was mad to cancel her trip, but she also said that cancelling her trip made her more cognizant of the fact that this is the way poor people treat their relatives who are just a tad better off than them.

“If there’s one thing you tell Kaia when she grows up, tell her, ‘Don’t be poor,'” my nanny said, getting exasperated thinking about all her relatives who seemed entitled to her earnings.

I have a feeling Chris will already be telling her that outside of the nanny’s advice.

Endless toys are on the market for babies and children of every stage and age. When I originally selected a small handful of toys for Kaia for the baby registry last year, I tried to choose things that would be interactive and provide some sensory stimulation, and I guess some of them are labeled as “Montessori” type activities. At around the 3-month mark, she loved playing peek-a-boo with Shungu, the elephant stuffed animal “blankie”, and she also enjoyed Babar, the multi-sensory elephant that was gifted to her. She loves anything that plays music, so the few “baby Mozart/Beethoven” music toys got a lot of use. She still occasionally plays with Babar, and she stil loves the music toys. But her favorite toys now… are not actually toys. They are random cardboard boxes we have from deliveries, plastic bottles from Chris’s beverages he brings home, sealed shut pill bottles. Most of all, though, her absolute favorite toy… is my phone. I guess I can’t be surprised: she sees us on our phones constantly, so she’s eager to see what all the fuss is about on these magical, mysterious screens of ours. Plus, she also gets to watch videos of herself on them! I try to limit her screen time a lot, and I almost always give the phone to her while it’s “locked.” But she’s absolutely obsessed with it and babbles endlessly when she’s fiddling with it. The other “toy” she hasn’t tired of? All her pacifiers!

There’s a phone attachment on her baby walker, and while she does shake it and play with it, she probably has zero clue that it’s supposed to be a “dumb” phone. One day soon, she will laugh when we tell her.

When people think of foods that babies will like, they usually go to the same list of fruits and vegetables: banana, avocado, potato, sweet potato. They suggest these because they are mostly soft, easy to eat, and other than the potato, are very nutrient dense for a baby’s small stomach. The thing is – with sweet potato, Kaia didn’t really like it right away. She found it a little weird and would eat a few bites and then stop. It may have been because I steamed it a lot in the beginning. So I started varying up how I made it. Yesterday, I finally roasted them in thick wedges and coated them in extra virgin olive oil and cinnamon, nothing else. And she grabbed and demolished both fat wedges in just minutes. I was shocked. I gave it to her first, thinking she wouldn’t eat much of it, and instead, she ate the entire large portion I gave her!

It takes a lot of patience to serve a baby something 18-20 times (the recommended number to see if they REALLY dislike something) before making a call on whether they really dislike something. But if someone has been really patient and persevering in this process, it’s definitely me. I have really shocked myself with how patient I’ve managed to be with all her food prep and observing her exploring and eating food.

A lot of the times when people think about compliments a new or relatively new mother would like to hear, they immediately think of things like, “you look great!” or “you don’t even look like you had a baby!” — so in other words, things surrounding their appearance, weight, or weight loss. While I have been fortunate enough to get a lot of compliments just like these about my overall appearance and weight, what I actually really like hearing are things around my pumping and breast milk for my baby. When our nanny first started working with us, she kept on complimenting me for my strict pumping schedule and always being on track, plus my output, which she thought was crazy high. To this day, she still makes comments about how she cannot believe I am STILL pumping so much milk.

But the compliments that don’t initially seem like compliments that I might appreciate the most come from Chris. This morning when I woke up, Chris had already measured out Kaia’s milk to get the first bottle feed ready, so he had done some milk consolidation in the kitchen. When he came back into the bedroom and we exchanged words, he said, “Your pump last night was really fatty.”

That was like music to my ears. I immediately perked up, like a dog whose ears shoot straight up when their owner is in sight, and started grinning from ear to ear. Mmmmm, fatty milk. I’m still producing fatty milk for my baby to drink at over 11 months postpartum. I’m so proud of my body and what it has accomplished for my Kaia Pookie, my little Pookster.

Kaia has been exploring.. literally everything, everywhere she can get her hands or mouth on. She’s been picking up random scraps of food on the floor and eating them. She finds her way into the open dishwasher and cupboards in the kitchen and tries to climb right in. And with us, she’s trying to pinch, pull, and grab pretty much everything she can see: my hair, nose, lips, teeth, toes — whatever is there, she wants dibs on. The cute but slightly disgusting thing she has been doing is sticking her tongue into my mouth before bedtime and running her tongue over my teeth, or even touching my tongue with her tongue. I told her that this is a bit weird and not quite “normal” for mommy/daughter affection, but she doesn’t seem to mind and continues doing it while giggling.

Each night, I tell her that she is the greatest gift of my life, and I’m so grateful and so lucky to have her. I know as the days and years go on, she will get bigger and older, and she will no longer need me as much. In just a year, she may push me away when I try to hug or kiss her, but I hope she doesn’t. In a year or so, she likely will not want to stick her tongue in her mouth. She’ll understand things like “disgust” or “shame.” She’ll want some forms of affection and not others from us. But I do hope that I will be able to foster an environment for her where she feels safe and secure, not just physically, but psychologically. I hope she can feel comfortable cuddling with me and sharing information with me. I really do not want her to feel a lack of psychological safety the way I did when I was growing up. I may have felt safe physically while in the presence of my parents or in their home, but there was never a time I actually felt safe to think or feel what I did, and especially NOT to voice it to them. Sometimes, it felt like there were thought police around, and I don’t want her to feel that way at all. I want her to feel safe in every possible way with me.

Kaia has now had about 220 different types of solid foods and spices. I was eager to have her try a lot of Asian desserts… but unsweetened that I grew up enjoying, such as dou hua (tofu pudding) and grass jelly. Given that I am actively trying to not include added sugar or salt into her diet, I’ve been giving her the plain silken tofu and plain grass jelly to try. On Friday, I picked up freshly made grass jelly for myself, and for her to try out without the sugar syrup. I wasn’t sure how she would do with it, especially since.. it’s probably the only gelatinous thing she’s had, not to mention the only black-colored solid food she’s had. Initially, when she had her first taste, she made some faces and pushed it away. But then she’d come back for a couple spoonfuls and then push it away, all the while trying to get her hands into the bowl to smush the jelly between her fingers. On day 3 trying out the grass jelly, she just wanted… ALL of it. She would try to grab mine after I added sugar syrup to it. She wanted more and more and didn’t want to stop until I made her stop. It was so cute and hilarious to watch this.

I hope she embraces all the subtly flavored Asian desserts I introduce her to, especially once we introduce some sugar to her from time to time.

The last couple of days, Kaia’s solids eating has been sporadic. She’s been drooling a lot, sticking her fingers and fists in her mouth, and exhibiting irritation due to teething. I guess from the age of about 4 months to 3, pretty much any type of annoyance or pain for a child can be attributed to teething. Upset? Teething. Not eating? Teething. Rejecting her bottle? Teething. Teething likely can cover about 95% of all grievances at this stage of development, as it’s been said that teething is the most painful thing that human beings go through.

Today, I made something new for her: Instant Pot keema with peas and potatos, made with ground turkey. Making keema with ground turkey is a bit unconventional, as it’s traditionally made with lamb, goat, or beef, but I happened to have turkey, as I originally got it since Kaia still hadn’t had any turkey yet. Plus, I figured this would be an easy way to introduce it to her, along with more Indian spices.

I originally served this to her without salt as usual, but with rice. I had quite a large helping of keema in her bowl, and I figured whatever she didn’t eat, I would just finish. But I was shocked to see that she ate the ENTIRE portion I served, which looked like an adult portion of keema! She loved it so much and kept sticking both hands into the bowl to try to self feed whatever chunks of turkey and tomato her little hands could grasp! It was the cutest thing. I wish I had recorded her doing this, but I unfortunately had both hands dirty from feeding her food. But sometimes, we just have to live in the moment. It was such a happy thing to see her really get into the food and enjoy it, barely pausing to take breaks and constantly “mmm”ing the entire time. I love watching my baby enjoy the food I make her. It is one of the best feelings.