More dancing and a miscarriage

August 12

Well the miscarriage is over. It was much less painful and strange than the first one. 

Having Carolina to care for has been good as I'm mostly too busy and distracted playing and caring for her to focus on me. 

I think, when she's asleep for the night, I'll have a good cry and then be done with it. 

Here's to my tiny (ballerina) dancer keeping mommy focused on what's important. 

Fun story: the other day we walked by a local ballet dance studio and a class was in session. I stopped the stroller and told Carolina what it was. She could only see the tops of their bodies practicing as there was a half wall at the entrance blocking her view. 

She was enthralled and had a very serious look on her face. When I asked if she wanted To go home  she shook her head "no". I asked if she wanted to go into the class, again almost solemnly, shook her head but this time with a "yes".

I explained that the class was for adults and she could go when she was a little bigger. She started to cry. I only see ballet or dance classes for age 3+. She's still too young to follow direction even if she's interested, agile and coordinated. 

Maybe next year, if the interest is still there, she actually will be our tiny dancer. 

Good days and less good days but mostly fun

I have to say, having a two-year-old in the house can be amazingly fun and amazingly tiring. Today, for example, was great.

I figured she'd be climbing up the walls by this afternoon as it was too hot and humid to go to the park this morning and rained all afternoon, but she wasn't. She was pretty content, and we had a good time coloring, dancing and playing.

Her favorite new thing is to dance like a ballerina and tell me, "Look Mommy! Angenina!" For Angelina Ballerina, a cartoon she likes. (I don't really like it very much since I find the voices annoying but we watch it sometimes just for a change of pace.) I've taught her what I remember from ballet classes I took when I was little and she finds it hilarious that we dance together like so.

When she gets a little older, and if she still likes to dance, I'll sign her up for a dance class.

A new-to-us book we got from the library recently is "Stick" by Steve Breen. It's great because it's not very long and there aren't many words. (I basically make up sounds for each frame where there aren't any words on the page.) The illustrations are very nice and there's a map of Stick's journey on the inside covers. Stick is a "baby fog" (baby frog) who likes to do things on his own and has an adventure around the New Orleans bayou area when he tries to eat a fly and gets stuck on a dragonfly. I really like New Orleans, and so that makes me happy to get to read it to her repeatedly when she asks.

I had to do some hunting for a hardcover copy of it, and finally found one (an ex-library copy) on Alibris.com. Here's the link in case anyone else wants one:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qisbn=9780803731240&qwork=9901570&author=steve+breen&qsort=p&matches=11&cm_sp=works*edition*buyused

I wanted to make sure that we had a copy with the map on the inside covers since Carolina and I talk about the journey using the map. I wasn't sure if the paperback one they had on Amazon and BN.com had it.

Anyway, if you have a 18 month or older kid, and that kid likes animals -- I have a feeling that kid will like Stick:
 

Another current favorite is anything with Madeline in it, and Chicken Soup With Rice. Madeline is "Mad-eh-mine". She likes the first Madeline book best and we've read others. She even read enough during the Queens Library summer reading program that she earned a 'free dessert' from Applebee's. Of course we have to buy an adult entree, but it'll be fun to take her since she likes the little card they gave her with the 5 stamps on it saying she read 5 books.

Honestly, it's probably more that the card came in a little orange-plastic cover, and she can slide the card into and out of it.

She's a great dancer, and likes to play with other kids

Two things I learned about Carolina this week are:
1. She likes to dance, and has a good sense of rhythm. She prefers music with a Latin beat. Seriously. (Our first indication was a trip to Vallarta in Feb 2009 before she was born, and we were in the Cuban restaurant where they play really great music. She was kicking me like never before. She was our 'tiny dancer'.) She was rocking out to a Ricky Martin song today at the local Gymboree.

2. She likes to play with other kids. Now I knew this already but I had no idea how much now. We've just started a discount/trial month at a Gymboree on the UES (got it through groupon.com. She's in a play/movement class once a week on an afternoon and we go to the gym when they have 'open' sessions twice a week in the early morning. During today's open gym, she was so very very disappointed when we had to leave. She was playing 'catch' with an older boy by rolling the ball between them. She was very interested in playing with a 4-year-old girl who was running around, throwing herself on the mats, and jumping up and down. Carolina tried to keep up with her for a bit, then looked at me a little confused. I smiled and said "Go ahead. Keep going." And she smiled and kept trying to keep up, but she couldn't.

She climbed on everything and was seemingly very proud of herself for being so independent. I have to say, I was impressed. I try to usually keep back and let her do her own thing when I can. She almost didn't need me at all. Woo hoo!

Food, these days, is another matter. Her pickiness continues. I've been given some very helpful advice to give her what she likes and wants, instead of what I want her to eat. This has turned out to be surprisingly healthy, for the most part. Yesterday she ate her first (whole) navel orange, and today her first (entire) peach.

Today at lunch after her nap was pretty funny. She took a few bites of the cod I was eating, then didn't want that. I gave her a bunch of peeled grapes cut up from her snack before nap and after about 10 of those, she was done. So she was pointing to the blueberry muffins on the table, which are next to the peaches I just bought yesterday. I decided to give her a peach instead of the muffin she wanted. She cried, very loudly, with tears when I put a few small cut up pieces of peach on her high chair tray. Carried on like it was the end of her little life.

At one point she threw her head back and opened her mouth widely while wailing, and I put a piece of peach in there. She closed her mouth as she brought her head down and had no choice but to taste the peach. She stopped crying immediately, made a few contentious noises and then ate it. And grabbed the rest on the tray with gusto. She then pointed to the counter where the rest of the peach was and started to make a fuss that she wanted more. This resulted in her eating the ENTIRE peach.

The crying and carrying on is exhausting for me to listen to but, really, I'm glad we now have more food on her "approved" list, which includes:

1. blueberries
2. hummus
3. spanakopita (Greek spinach pie)
4. raspberries
5. peaches
6. grapes, green ones
7. cherry/grape tomatoes (although they frustrate her since she can't eat the skin but she loves the taste and that they are juicy in her mouth.)
8. rice crackers (the Mum Mum kind)
9. Graham crackers
10. broccoli (sometimes)
11. caesar salad dressing (not a meal but as a topping. I hate giving her this one since it's so salt/fatty so I don't unless I'm desperate.)
12. squash/zucchini (sometimes, and only with something else like spanakopita or hummus)
13. navel oranges
14. strawberries (but they seem to give her less than a handful of  little pimples on her face every time)
15. Berry flavored "fiddlesticks" (rice crackers in a stick form she can easily hold)
16. Cheerios cereal
17. Life cereal


Of course there's cake and apple/cherry/blueberry/orange juices on the list but above is what I can get her to eat. MOSTLY without fuss.

With fuss, recently, there's chicken, fish, beef. I'm working on getting eggs into the list and watching her face breakout/not since earlier in the year she loved eggs but they gave her the same thing that strawberries seemed to. I'll try it again.

And in terms of naps, she's almost solidly a 12pm-2pm girl. Sometimes takes until closer to 12.30 and sometimes only until 1.30pm but I can mostly get her to take her nap on schedule, which is nice. For me.

A few things about living with Carolina

I've been so preoccupied with Carolina's molars coming in, and they still haven't, that I completely missed a third front/bottom tooth was en route. It appeared Friday morning. She has been on frozen blueberry overload these past two weeks.

Gratefully she's sleeping through the night and the earliest she got up has been 6am, but still she's got some pain that goes into her ears or the back of her head -- from where I can see her grabbing. I know I've said this before, but I'll be glad when this latest round of teeth come in and we get a few days (ojalá que sí) rest from teething.

For some reason, and it might be totally standard and I just don't know better, the past week to two weeks she's been very, very picky about her food. She's no longer content to have the same mix of food day in and day out. I used to change it up a little but mostly some combination of: meat, veg, starch. And breakfast was rice cereal, apples/pears, prunes and her vitamin mixed in.

No more. She takes food out of her mouth and throws it on the floor, and also just uses her tongue to forcefully push it out of  her mouth and will not let it back in. So it has to be all nice and interesting food all the time, or there's a crying fit. And I always lose, unless I'm willing to let her go hungry. She's interested in snacks (toddler crackers, cookies), blueberries and hummus. Sometimes I can get her to eat by covering the bowl of food in hummus or tomato sauce.

I constantly worry I'm on the wrong side of spoiling her, but most of the time I am worn down by the whining and crying and just want to her to eat. I still won't give her cookies or crackers as a meal but some days, really, it's been almost exclusively blueberries for dinner.

Here are her top 3 hits:
1. The swings at the park (Regardless how hot it is and how much heat rash she's itching.)
2. Blueberries, most recently prefers frozen over all other types. (Made her blueberry muffins yesterday and only wants the part of the muffin with the blueberries.)
3. Dora (Knows which TV has the DVD player with Dora disc in it, and which one has it on the DVR list and knows how to use the TV remote, more or less, to try to get to what she wants.)
4. Music and dancing. (Often asking us to put on the iPod stereo and has a sense of rythmn I can vouch for!)

She's even taught me some features that my iPhone can do that  (A) I had no idea about and (B) would never have found on my own. Additionally, she showed us how to change the "source" on our TV without using the TV remote, just from the cable remote. So now we only need the 1 remote. Thanks, baby!

So now that she's getting along with the babysitter and I find that I enjoy not being at home every day, I'm starting to look for some work. I realized I have no interest in going back to an office full time and would have to make a butt-load of cash in order to cover the babysitter AND taxes. I'm not ready to put her into daycare, which would overall be a cheaper option than sitter or shared nanny. So maybe a 1-2 day/week job. Maybe freelance so I don't have to be in an office. Maybe nothing. But the extra income would be much nicer. Anyway, time for bed!