Sometimes while walking, Kaia will decide that she doesn’t want to walk anymore and protest walking, so she will literally just stop and sit on the sidewalk — you know, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE. It doesn’t matter how busy the pedestrian traffic is. She will just stop and sit. Once, she almost stopped and sat within inches of fresh dog poo, and you can imagine how freaked out I was by that. Do you think she even knows what dog poop is?

Twice while walking together, she’s decided she no longer wants to walk and has tried to sit in the middle of the street, while the walking signal is counting down. In those times, I immediately piced her up, tucked her under my arm, and powered towards the other side of the street. I felt like that parent, the one with the screaming, kicking, tantrumming toddler who is just trying to appear calm, cool, and collected in public but whose head is about to implode.

Well, today was a new kind of fun. A few times while on her scooter, Kaia decided she didn’t want to use the scooter OR walk. She wanted to be carried… you know, by ME. So I had the fun job of carrying not just her but also her scooter which doesn’t even have the option of being neatly folded up. So I’d awkwardly carry her in one arm and the scooter in another. She’s only getting heavier, so I cannot carry her the way she wants to be held, so she’d get mad at the weird positioning and start fussing. Today while on our way home after school, she decided to abruptly get off her scooter with only four seconds left on the walking countdown, right in the middle of the street, and SIT RIGHT THERE.

It was rush hour obviously at that time. Tons of cars are waiting for their green light. And me. And Kaia. And the green scooter. But they all, of course, stay still and watch me as I collect my screaming child and her scooter, off the street and to the safety of the sidewalk. Two bikers who were approaching even got off their bikes to ask if I needed help with Kaia and the scooter. It was very kind and generous of them. No one honked at me or said anything. Both drivers as well as bikers and people passing by gave me sympathetic looks.

There are many very sweet, cuddly, heart warming, I-want-to-squeeze-you-so-hard moments I have with Kaia from the moment she was born to her now as an increasingly opinionated and stubborn 2.5-year-old. But this… this was not one of them. This is one of those moments that makes me think, “Oh, dear. What kind of a teenager are you going to be….?!”

Last night was rough after Kaia refused to sleep in her bed. I thought she’d be better off sleeping on my bed, so I put her on the bed and she passed out within 15 minutes. But then this morning, just before 5am, she woke up screaming and crying, likely from a nightmare. In the nightmare, I suppose I am refusing to allow her to turn on my Kindle. So she kept screaming over and over, “I wanna turn on the Kindle! TURN IT ON! TURN IT ON!” She wouldn’t stop screaming or crying for almost 30 minutes. There were times when I wondered if she’d stop breathing or have a seizure because she was so visibly distraught. Luckily, that did not happen. I tried to calm her down, but nothing worked. Finally, she got off the bed, stomped over to her own bed in her bedroom, and lied down there. She got mad when I didn’t come over, and she started screaming that she wanted “mummy lie down here,” so I went with her to lie down next to her, passed out, and didn’t wake up until 7:40.

The morning routine was fine. I managed to get her to school at just past 9am, which was actually pretty quick when I think about it.

But I guess the paci used to help with her nightmares. Now she has no sense of security without the paci and is vulnerable when these stressful dreams happen. And I suppose it doesn’t help that she is very aware that her Daa-Tee is not here. My poor baby.

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?