The “terrific toddler” moments include when your young toddler is learning more and more language and chooses to express sweet sentiments towards you and other loved ones. In the last month or so, Kaia has caught on to the fact that a lot of the people around her say “bless you” after someone sneezes. She seems the most attuned to Chris’s sneezes, likely because he’s an extremely loud sneezer, and less attuned to mine (Chris claims that my sneezes have gotten louder over the years, likely due to his influence, but I am not totally sure that assessment is accurate). Given that, she almost always says “bless you” after Chris sneezes. The other cute thing she sometimes does is at bed time, when it’s just about time for “lights out” after reading together, she will lie down, put her head on her pillow, look at me with big eyes, and say, “Bless you, mummy. Bless you, Daddy. Bless you, Kaia.” And I just become a big puddle of love looking at her, caressing her sweet little smiling face as she’s all snuggled up in her sleep sack and baby blanket. These are the moments I love the most: when she’s being sweet, affectionate, cute, and sentimental, but she’s also expressing more and more of what she learning and absorbing from her surroundings. The toddler years can certainly be stressful and full of angst and helplessness, but these loving moments always keep me grounded. These moments of her being this age will soon pass, and I will still have all these memories, photos, and videos to look back on and remember how amazing she was in this moment of time.

I saw a post on Instagram about parenting (that’s pretty much most of my targeted posts now) littles that made me stop for a moment. It talked about how everyone always talks about the “Terrible Twos,” but people rarely stop to think about all the great things about toddlers when they reach this general stage. Kaia is now 22 months old, so while she’s not yet 2 officially, she certainly is a curious, independence seeking young toddler who wants to do her own thing. The post went on and discussed all the great things about this stage of development, like the fact that they can walk, run, and climb; they can speak a little so can actually communicate with you a bit; they are extremely responsive, they can listen to things you say and take action; they can be sweet and affectionate, and they are still in the ‘happy-to-cuddle’ stage.

I’ve thought a lot about that this year. While I could certainly do without a lot of the toddler tantrums that Pookster has had (and to be fair, in the grand scheme of everything I hear about this age range, my baby really is nowhere close to being extreme Terrible Twos toddler at all), I’ve really loved this year of development. I’ve loved hearing her say first words or phrases for the first time, even annoying ones like “come on!” when she wants me to get her out of the stroller/high chair faster. I’ve loved hearing her finishing sentences in books. I’ve really enjoyed the journey of watching her grow confident in walking and now running. I love hearing her surprise me with songs she has learned and remembered that I’ve sung to her ages ago, both in English and Chinese, plus new ones she learns at school and through our Amazon Alexa. I love when she asks to hug or kiss me, or when she remembers the Chinese word for some food I’ve given her before. I love it when I watch her figure out how to play with a toy correctly, or identify a new object with the right name, and also when she discovers how to do things like open pill bottles and drawers (dangerous, but still good progress for her development….). I love it when I’m giving her a bath, and when it’s time to lift her feet for a scrub, she lifts the right foot when I tell her to lift it, and then she giggles and smiles while exclaiming, “toesies!” I always tell her, and have been telling her since she was a newborn: “Mama loves your toesies! Pookie’s toesies! I want to EAT Pook’s toesies!” I love the way she smells and sleeps. I still love how she sleeps on her stomach with her tiny butt sticking up in the air. This time will pass, though. It is bittersweet.

I love my sweet cheeky young toddler baby. She really is just so lovable, and I hope I can always have this much love in my heart for her. I hope she will always love me and see me as a safe space, even as she grows, matures, and decides she doesn’t always want to run to me when she sees me at pickup.

People talk about the “terrible 2s” when toddler tantrums and demands get a bit out of control. The toddler tantrum period actually starts much earlier than age 2 as we’ve seen; they started earlier this year, probably around the time that Kaia was about 14-15 months old. The reason these tantrums happen is that babies at this stage are becoming more aware of their surroundings, as well as their own feelings and desires, and when those things don’t always align with what the adults in their lives want, this can result in inner turmoil for the child… hence the tantrum. While these moments can certainly be exhausting and infuriating, I have always remembered in these moments to try really, really hard not to react, especially angrily, and to be as calm as possible. I am also grounded by the sweet moments that I have with Pookster, like this one that happened tonight.

Once we got ready for story time before bed, I asked Kaia to choose some books as always that she wanted to read together. She happily complied as always, grabbing a handful of books and dragging them onto the bed. She also asked for her baby blanket, which I gave her. She’s really enjoyed sleeping with her blanket in the last few months, likely because she’s had a blanket during nap time at daycare, so she’s used to having it. But when I gave her the baby blanket, she paused and then started crying and yelling, “No! No, no, no!” I got so confused. I gave her the blanket she asked for. What was making her upset?

I took the blanket away. She yelled “No!” again and grabbed it back. And then, she pointed at the big blanket folded at the foot of the bed that I leave for myself when it gets a bit chilly at night during story time when I’m with her. She yelled, “Mummy blanket! Mummy blanket!” And then it finally dawned on me: she wanted not only for her to have her baby blanket, but for her mummy to also have a big blanket. So I asked, “Do you want mummy to use a blanket, too?” and she nodded her head vigorously in response, continuing to point at the big blanket. Even though it was a bit warm, I decided to appease her and wrap the blanket around my legs. “Are you happy now that mummy has her blanket, too?” I asked her. She smiled ear to ear while pointing at my blanket: “Mummy blanket!” And then, she pointed at her own blanket I put on top of her, saying, “Kaia blanket!”

It was beyond sweet. My heart was so warmed. She wanted both of us to be warm and snuggly under a blanket. My sweet baby never fails to surprise me with her tenderness and affection in the moments I never suspect.

In the beginning, I was keeping a running list of Kaia’s words, but now, I can’t even keep up anymore. She says new words (and seemingly understands them) almost every single day, and more and more, she is putting words together. She watches me in the kitchen fiddling with things, and she says, “Mummy cooking.” She knows possessives now, so she likes to say “Mummy’s shoes!” or “daddy’s hat!” and “Kaia’s (insert literally everything of hers).” Today, she grabbed Chris’s hat and said “This is Daddy’s hat.” She identifies when I’m brushing or flossing my teeth. She declares when Chris is showering. She also preemptively identifies that we’re going to tell her she can’t do something: “No Rachel!” “No phone!” “No, Kaia!”

What I really love (well, this sentiment has not changed, but it’s just gotten more fun) is when we read together, and I stop before the end of the sentence to let her finish and say the last word or two. It’s really cute. She’s not only remembering but she seems to know the meaning of many of these words, which is really gratifying to watch. She does this with books we haven’t read it months, too. She even surprised me the other day when I was changing her diaper and singing the chorus of “Mouse Loves Big Rice,” a Chinese song, and she started singing along with me. She’s heard this song over and over since she was a newborn, but this was the first time she’d ever shown any affinity or understanding of what I sang. I find it so sweet. Every time something like this happens, I wish I could just have a camera recording the entire moment so I could capture it forever. But alas, it doesn’t always work out. I always try to replicate it subsequently, and of course, my little cheeky baby runs off to her next thing to discover or plow through. And of course, she loves to give me her little cheeky smile, laugh, and then yell out, “Cheeky! Cheeky! Cheeky baby!”

In June while we were in the mango capital of the world, also known as India, I was extremely dismayed and even embarrassed that my mango loving baby refused to even touch an Indian mango. My thought then, was, how did you so readily and happily eat all those Mexican ataulfo mangoes all these months in New York, yet now, you’re on some odd mango strike and just outright refuse to even look at a mango in the country with the best mangoes on earth?! How is this even possible?

Instead, and as though to insult her dad and me, when on a boat on the backwaters of Alleppey, Kerala, one of our servers offered a plate of cut mangoes and apples. And while completely ignoring the mangoes, Pookster turned to the huge slices of apples on the plate, skin and all. At first, I was initially wary of her eating such thick slices, but she seemed to manage them really well and even relish the fact that they were so fat. With each huge bite she took, she chewed and chewed, as though proud of herself and her amazing biting, chewing, and swallowing skills. On the one hand, I felt annoyed she refused the mango in favor of the apple. On the other hand, I was so damn proud of her eating skills. How many kids at her age would be trusted with apple slices that were that thick and fat? If anything, she likely could have handled them that thick earlier, but a) we didn’t really have apples in the house to test this out, and b) I was being a bit risk averse despite having her learn solids through baby-led weaning solely.

Today, she actually prefers fat slices of apple. And she rejects apple slices that are too thin! But alas, her eating habits have proven to be a bit different at home vs. at school. At school pickup today, her teacher let me know that Pookster prefers the slices fat, but cut in half horizontally. Say, what?! The weird toddler selectivity of my silly, cheeky Kaia Pookie.

Every day, it seems like my Pookster is doing something to surprise us. It’s hard to keep track of all her new words, gestures, and habits given she’s developing so quickly. Some of the things she’s done recently that have made us smile, laugh, or marvel at how much she is learning are briefly noted here:

*When she is very fond of something and wants to keep holding it, but you try to take it away, she immediately starts saying quickly, “Let go! Let go!”

*If you ask her a question, and she doesn’t know the answer, she will immediately say, “Don’t know! Don’t know!” then put her hands up as though “I dunno!”

*When she wants you to finish doing something with her she doesn’t like, like brushing her teeth or putting her hair up in pigtails, she whines, “Come on! Come on!” Other versions of stopping said action also include: “All done! All done!” or “All good! All good!”

*She is singing full lines of her favorite songs, like “Move on back! Move on back!” from “Wheels on the Bus.” She’s actually sung broken parts of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for a while now, but the lines from “Wheels on the Bus” have been new out of her mouth as of late.

*She is able to look at both photos and pictures of objects and things and name them without any prompting or assistance. She can also identify a handful of people, including her favorite Suma, Chris’s mom.

*She’s figured out how to open our kitchen cabinets — from the top. Yep. The time has finally come. Chris had to set up the magnet children locks on one, but I’d imagine in a short time, we may need to install them on *all* the kitchen cabinets.

*She knows how to twist open regular (not child-locked) pill containers. This totally freaked me out.

My baby is officially 21 months old today – not really a baby anymore, but regardless, she will always be my baby. How time flies. I’m so freaking lucky to have her and all her sweet cheekiness.