In this calendar year, it’s amazing how much Kaia’s speech has advanced. It’s almost like every day her sentences get more complex and her vocabulary grows. In just the last seven days of her new Chinese immersion school, she’s started speaking complete Chinese sentences to me. And when I’ve heard them, I’ve done a double take and stand there a little shocked. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing is impressing Chris and me because after she says a whole Chinese sentence, she will sit there and grin ear to ear. Or, the other hypothesis I have is that she’s been holding out all this time and just waiting to unleash her Chinese sentences on me, which could very well be the case since she’s such a cheeky bubba.

Sometimes, she will say sentences when she thinks neither of us is in the room or listening. The one time I laughed out loud earlier in May of this year was when she was in the snacks bar of a hotel where we were staying during Chris’s parents visit, and she kept going on and on when she got excited and saw the goldfish crackers: “Wow, goldfish! Ooooh, I like goldfish! Goldfish is yummy! So tasty, so good! I can’t have that!” She also knew she wasn’t allowed to touch it, so she never got her hands on it and just kept staring lovingly at the bags of goldfish crackers.

Today, she said, “I want orange” in Chinese. This doesn’t seem that exciting or complex, but the fact that she actually said, “I want (fill in the food)” was a big deal because she’s never even done that once before with me. She will say “want” or the name of what she wants, and that’s been it to date until now. She’s also said she likes x. It’s literally verbal baby steps.

While reading her Dragons Love Tacos book lately, there’s a page where there’s a large dragon sitting on top of a house. In the last couple weeks, she usually points at that dragon and says, “That’s a dinosaur on the house!” I’ve corrected her a few times and told her that it’s actually a dragon. She usually fights with me and gets upset, saying that it is really a dinosaur. So I’ve let her have her way with it and relent, responding that sure, it could be a dinosaur. Yesterday, she looked at the dragon on top of the house, paused for a bit, and said, “This is not a dinosaur. It’s actually a dragon!” I squeezed her and gave her a kiss and said, “Yes, Pookie! That’s right! It is actually a dragon!”

They grow so fast, people always say. It could not be truer for my Kaia Pookie.

When I was a kid, my parents always used baby words for my vagina/butt hole. They usually called my private parts down there “doo doo.” It was usually said in a funny or joking way. But they really did always use that word. Later on as a high school journalist for my school newspaper, I found out that the word “vagina” was banned from being said by any teacher, administrator, or school staff to K-12 kids in the San Francisco Unified School District. I had no idea why and could never confirm what the rationale was. And it made zero sense given SFUSD had a very progressive stance on comprehensive sex education. How do you teach sex education without saying the word “vagina”? I thought it was beyond absurd and just flat out stupid and wrong.

So since then, I’ve felt very strongly about using real words to describe… real body parts for any children I might have. There really shouldn’t be anything controversial or shocking about this stance. If you want your child to call their arm an arm, then why the hell would you not want them to call their penis a penis or vagina a vagina? What exactly do you presume you are “protecting” them from — knowledge or facts? What, ultimately, is the end goal here or desired outcome (here, I can think about work for a second)?

So for the last 10 or so months, during bath time, I’ve been teaching Kaia about all her body parts as we wash them, and the ones that are a bit more “advanced” for her age, like her eyebrows, her forehead, her chin, her shins, her calves, her heels, her thighs. We cover all the major areas. And I’ve also called her butt hole a butt hole or “anus,” and I tell her about her vagina. She has asked me if Daddy has a vagina. I always respond the same way: No, Daddy does not have a vagina. He has a penis. You have a vagina. No, you do not have a penis.

I texted Chris on Thursday to ask how things were going given I was gone Thursday-Friday. And this is how he responded:

“She spent part of the train ride down putting her hand up her shorts saying, “I am touching my vag” pretty loudly with a big smile on her face. Then putting same hand in her mouth. Your deviant child.”

So, I suppose I am getting what I wanted? She did call it the correct abbreviated name…

Since the night we returned from our Ottawa/Montreal trip, Kaia had not pooped. She seemingly is holding her poops in for as long as possible until she can no longer stand it. This seems to last anywhere from 3-5 days. At that point, she then starts leaving skid marks in her shorts, which we then have to scrub clean and launder. And we have to force her to sit on the little potty until she lets all the poop go.

So when I picked her up at school yesterday, I noticed immediately when she came out the door that she had a different pair of shorts on. The teacher told me that yes, she did have some poop accidents, and they had to change her shorts three times (using all the spare shorts I had packed as backup). We had to coax her to poop last night after we came home, and while she did let it go into her little potty, we had a strong hunch that she still had more to come. But she seemed relieved after that poop, so we let her go to sleep in her pull-up. Kaia managed to fall asleep fairly quickly, and surprisingly, she never came to our bed at all throughout the night. I woke up just after 6am to look at the video monitor and find that she was still sound asleep in her bed. I felt a bit suspicious, so I went over to the room to check up on her (and well, to sniff her head).

As soon as I opened the door, I realized what had happened just from the strong, foul odor that hit my nose immediately: SHE POOPED IN HER SLEEP. Given how fresh the poop was on the blanket, I figured that the poop had occurred at some point in the previous few hours. It was like a mini explosion!

While her pull-up was filled with poop, she had also gotten poop all over the back of her legs, her blanket, and the playmat (which Chris strategically had placed over her bed so that we wouldn’t need to do extra laundry during this potty training phase). I immediately yelped and told Chris that we had to do a massive cleanup ASAP. Pookster seemed sound asleep, but we had to wake her to clean her up. I wiped off as much crusted poop off her legs as possible and off the blanket. I undressed her and found that not only was her bottom half covered in poop, but the bottom of her pajama top was soaked in urine. Once she was awake, I got her to stand in the bathtub so I could hose her down and given her a quick scrub and shower. While I took care of cleaning her, Chris took care of cleaning the bed and all the laundry. Then, once Pookster was cleaned up, I had to take care of scrubbing the bathtub clean of any fecal matter residue.

I think it goes without saying that this was completely disgusting and hideous to deal with. The first big whiff of anything you want in the morning is most certainly NOT your child’s shit. Nor does anyone want to do any deep cleaning or scrubbing of anything at the crack of dawn. But alas, here we are, into week six of potty training, and we have finally had a real poop explosion during this season of our lives! Kaia never tires of keeping her parents on their toes.

“Aren’t you glad I put this play mat on the bed?” Chris remarked as he wiped the mat clean. “This could have been a bigger mess to clean up if it hadn’t been for my ingenius idea!”

During almost the entire period we had a nanny when Kaia had solids, so from about age 6 months to 16 months, I rarely let the nanny prepare her food. I always prepared her food — breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks, and I would have it laid out on Kaia’s silicone dish exactly the way I wanted. The vegetables would be cut a certain way, the protein prepared very specifically, the soup laid out just so. I didn’t feel like I could give instructions to my nanny and trust that she’d actually follow them. I knew she wasn’t since in the beginning, she would mash up food that I wanted Kaia to hold and eat. I’d catch this when I was between meetings and taking bathroom breaks. And from that point onward, the trust was pretty much gone.

But as Kaia gets older, and as more caregivers at school are involved, I realize that I have to let go of a lot of things that I used to be really anal about. Once she started daycare, I couldn’t always control what order she’d have her food in or how warm it was. I couldn’t prevent her from seeing other kids having cinnamon raisin toast or goldfish crackers and not wanting them herself. So after a while, I just stopped thinking about it and insisted to myself she’d be fine; it’s all about balance, right, and a little sugar here or a processed piece of goldfish won’t hurt her?

And now that she’s in a publicly funded 3K class, where all food is included, I am no longer making the majority of her meals while she’s at this school. With her 8:30-2:50 class and afterschool program, she gets three full meals (breakfast, lunch, early supper at 4pm) and a snack. The meals are all prepared and cooked onsite. The menu is a pretty good mix of multiple cultures, has a range of different fruit and vegetables, and incorporates lots of whole grains and whole wheat when applicable. I don’t necessarily love that ham is on the menu once a week, since ham is cured and thus processed, but again, I have told myself I have to stop nitpicking and just let some things go. So while I was a little reluctant to have her opt in, I realized I also didn’t want her to be the odd kid having home lunch when all the other kids were having school lunch. As she gets older, she’s going to be more influenced by that and general peer pressure. Plus for me, that means I have to think less about what to make that would be easily transportable and eaten at school in a lunch box. I don’t have to think about what healthy snacks to pack her. It’s one less item on our mental load. And that’s definitely a plus. In her backpack now, all I have to pack is extra changes of clothing, her water bottle, and silicone bib.

She still has a dinner with us once she comes home. I make sure she gets all her usual vegetables, exposure to what we’re eating, and fruit she likely won’t get at school (I highly doubt they are going to serve her peeled and pitted fresh longan or freshly cut pineapple…). The last two days, she’s eaten very healthy portions of the veggies I’ve made, and she’s also eaten more fruit after dinner. My hope, though, is that she won’t lose her taste for home food and that she still loves mummy’s food the most.

It was Kaia’s first day at her new school for 3K today. We had to wake her up a bit earlier to get her ready — light breakfast, changed, teeth brushed, hair done, sunscreen on. After taking some quick first day of school pictures, Chris was able to get Kaia out the door by 7:50. They made it to the front door of the school by 8:20 and waited to be admitted.

It was a bit chaotic. One of the administrators came out to take all the school supplies from the parents. We were told we’d get access to a Google site and Remind app. I emailed the admins about some information about Kaia (e.g. potty training status, silicone bib for meals, afterschool care payment/receipt). I never got a response. It’s 9pm after school has ended, and we still have no email or ETA on when we’re getting access to either.

At pickup, I rang the bell and after a teacher came out to greet me and told me she’d get Kaia ready, I waited outside the locked door for another 10-plus minutes before she came out with Kaia. The teacher’s assistant said she spoke Chinese and English to the kids. This made me wary: how much Chinese are they are really getting if the second teacher speaks both to the kids??

The admin came back from what I think was an errand, and she let me know how Kaia’s day was. She ate well, played well, made one new friend, and did not nap at all. The admin told me about the carbs she ate, but didn’t give specifics about fruit, protein, etc. I had to ask separately about supper, which is served for the afterschool program kids. I wasn’t told what they learned today. The admin then clarified that the second (Mandarin) teacher was actually another teacher, not the TA I just met. The Mandarin teacher just had to leave early today, so the admin was stepping in for the Mandarin teacher to lead the afterschool program activities.

I thought Kaia would be really happy to see me at pickup, but this was not the case. The funny thing was: when Kaia came out the front door, she didn’t seem excited or happy to see me. She looked more stunned or shocked. But when I kneeled down to hug her, she immediately hugged me and grabbed me, trying to climb on me so that I’d hold her. She clearly missed us.

I hope this is just a rough patch in the beginning of the school year and that these mishaps are not indicative of what the rest of the year is going to be like.

This afternoon, we went to the 3K orientation for Kaia’s new school, where she’ll be starting on Thursday. The orientation was straightforward: the administrators explained the schedule, cadence of the year, afterschool program activities and focus areas. The principal made some snarky comments about New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) since their 3K and 4K programs are publicly funded. They provided lukewarm pink lemonade and grocery store donuts. They reiterated the school supplies list, which included odd things (well, odd to me, anyway) like hand sanitizer, hand soap, and paper towel rolls. What is this: the school cannot even afford hand soap after my child poos or pees, so now I have to provide this…? Is this what public school education is like now?

The main reason we’re even doing this double commute down to Chinatown every day is that this is one of just a handful of Chinese immersion schools that is publicly funded in New York City. So there will be an English speaking teacher and a Mandarin speaking teacher in the class to teach the usual curriculum for the school day. Then, in the afterschool program, they will focus on Chinese language, writing/character recognition, and culture. I was so happy to hear that they’ve already set a date for parents to get together with the kids in the classroom for Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and lantern making. I hope we get selected since they said it’s a lottery (not all parents can attend every event, so they rotate). Unfortunately, they were still selecting who would be the Chinese teacher, so that hadn’t been finalized yet.

At bedtime tonight, I talked more with Kaia about how tomorrow would be a big day: she’d go to her new school and have a new classroom with new friends and new teachers. They’d give her lots of yummy snacks and food. She had to remember to pee and poop in the potty and ask the teachers for help. And she responded, “And I get to see Ms. Tanique?” (that’s her former 2s teacher). I lightly told her that Ms. Tanique would not be there. She looked sad and said, “I want Ms. Tanique!” I said again that Ms. Tanique would not be there. Yes, that is sad, but she’d have new teachers that she’d like and get to know. She smiled and then squealed, “And new friends, too!”

This double commute better be worth it. I’m not sure how I am going to feel if she comes out of a year of this and her Chinese hasn’t improved. Some critical reviews of the school said that while it was good, they didn’t feel that their kids’ Mandarin had gotten that much better. They also did not like that when their kids spoke with their friends/classmates, it was all in English. When they switched their kids to 100% immersion schools (of course, private), the kids all spoke in Chinese to each other. We shall see…

I don’t think this is a shock to anyone, but Kaia is obsessed with planes. She always looks forward to being at the airport. She loves watching planes on the runway and in the air. She knows how to identify a gate. She loves talking about going on the airplane and to the “hotel-o.” She’s also had some toddler demands and comments in terms of travel.

“Don’t say no to me; that’s not nice!” she said assertively while in the backseat of an Uber ride. Yes, I say this to her jokingly sometimes.

“I want to go back to the hotel-o!” she yelped, in the car on the way back to our home.

When we checked into the hotel in Montreal at midday today, Chris was unhappy with the supposed “upgraded” room we got. I think the hotel asserted it was a room upgrade simply because it was a higher floor (the worst – who the heck cares? In this case, I think size matters most, especially when you have a young child). Chris went back and forth with them on the hotel app, and finally, they gave us an upgraded room, but not just any upgraded room: the vice presidential suite on the highest floor just below the club lounge floor. When we took our bags from the original room into the VP suite, Kaia ran around excitedly in this new monstrosity of a suite: It had a large entry way, a huge living room, dining room, small kitchen, and 1.5 bathrooms. The en suite bathroom had double sinks and a separate large shower (Chris’s favorite) and a soaking tub. She kept on giggling and squealing over and over while running, “This is a big hotel-o! This is a BIG hotel-o!” I did some crappy un-athletic “cartwheels” for her to revel in our ridiculous amount of open space, and Pookster followed and attempted her own toddler versions.

Because we strongly restrict how much packaged food/sweets Kaia gets, Chris had this idea that when we offered to give her something like a fig bar, we would just let her “hold” it and not actually open and eat it. The way we’d get her to calm down in the midst of a tantrum is we’d tell her “as soon as we got on the bus” (“we’re never getting on a bus!” Chris retorted), then she could open the fig bar. And so she’s kind of gone along with this and not really called us out on our bs yet. I told my friend this, who has two littles (one who is one year older than Kaia), and she laughed and said, “You know that’s not going to last, right, and in the next year, she will call you out and realize you’re lying?!”

One time, I tried to change it to, “You can open it when we get on the train.” She corrected me: “No, we open it when we get on the bus!” she said in her declarative statement tone.

I just love these moments so much. How is she developing her sentence structure so much?!

Just over a month ago, I went to a friend’s child’s 2nd birthday party, and they asked me to bring some snacks for the kids. So I brought some veggies that Kaia likes: roasted bell peppers and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were roasted in olive oil and tossed with cinnamon, nutmeg, and some allspice. When the birthday girl was eating the sweet potatoes eagerly, her mom asked how I had prepared them. I told her, and she seemed surprised that I used cinnamon. Later on, her husband (my friend) told me that because his wife doesn’t like cinnamon that their child had never been exposed to it. I was a little bit shocked that she hadn’t offered it since cinnamon is pretty ubiquitous in the U.S.; plus, her kid was already 2 years old now! Anyone who has read any baby solids feeding guide (and no, not just baby-led weaning or Solid Starts) will see that cinnamon is one of the most common and popular recommendations to introduce babies to (not hot) spices and build a varied palate.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised, though: we’re all humans at the end of the day with our own preferences for things. It’s only natural that we’d try, consciously or subconsciously, to pass them to our kids. I have hated ketchup since even before I could speak, so up until last week, Kaia had never had any exposure to ketchup. But, I will say that given ketchup does have extra sugar (that’s what gets kids hooked on it…) and salt, there was no real reason to give it to her and even more reason to withhold it from her. While I was at my work offsite, Chris had to make his customary visit to In N Out while in California, so he went to Fisherman’s Wharf to get his fix. While he did that, he let Kaia have some fries and suggested she dip them in some ketchup. He even took a video of it to prove it to me. On the one hand, I was proud that she was finally getting into dips and “dipping” since she seems to have some aversion to sauces and mushy things like avocado and egg. On the other hand, I was completely grossed out that she actually seemed fond of that American monstrosity that we call ketchup.

If Kaia likes to dip an occasional fry into ketchup, I guess I will have to just suck it up and turn my eyes (and my nose, ugh) the other way. But, if she even attempts to squeeze ketchup onto her white rice or add it to steak…. then we will have a very serious problem on our hands that will need to be addressed as soon as possible.