If you're taking a toddler to a restaurant, be prepared. Even if you've done it before.

So we went to brunch with the McConnell's and I forgot three things:
1. A book
2. Crayons or pencil and some paper
3. To set up expectations with Carolina about behavior and what will happen before we left

She wasn't very well behaved at all. She wasn't really jealous, in fact she loved seeing the baby, but she was all over the place and whiny and didn't eat much of anything.
Granted, we weren't making her the center of attention, so that's to be expected. But in my usual small diaper bag I forgot to put back a book and something to draw with after I cleaned out the bag last month AND forgot to have "the talk" before we left the apartment.

Really, I should have known better, and I do, but I forgot. It wasn't the end of the world awful but, let's just say that it was really good there were only two other people in the restaurant, sitting far from us, who were tolerant of the occasional crying/screaming by our toddler.

How I get her to eat something normal (instead of only ice cream) while we are at a restaurant or at someone else's house, I'm not sure yet. I'll just keep trying. And maybe eventually it'll stick, but for right now, I just gotta go more prepared.

Silly, mommy.

First snow -- hooray!

Carolina woke up this morning and basically told this to her papa in one breath, after he opened her curtains and she saw it was still snowing,"I'm gonna make snow angels like Uniqua, Pablo, Austin, Tyrone an Tasha. An make tracks in Snowy Day. An put on jacket, an sweater, an boots, an pants, an socks!!"

We've been reading The Secret of Snow and The Snowy Day.

So right after Saturday morning pancakes, we headed outside where a lot of super fast-made snow angels were made on the sidewalk just before the legions of dogs came to pee and poop.

When we came back inside, Carolina was still excited and we helped her get out of wet clothes and I explained you have to put on dry, warm pants and a dry shirt. Sit on the couch and get a blanket. Then I'd get her a snack and juice. After she had on new clothes and the blanket was on she looked at us both and said,"Tank you eveybody. Is much better now." Because after snow fun, warm and dry clothes are good.

I love my papa; Can I hug frosty?

After her nap today, Carolina stood up and said, "Look, mommy. Picture of papa!" and in fact there was in the hallway outside her room. She then looks at me and says, "I love papa" and gave me a huge hug. I'm supposing that was really for him but he's at home and we're still visiting abuela.

Every night she's asked to go home and often during the day for papa.

While watching Frosty for the hundredth time, and it might actually be 100 times by now, she asked if she could hug Frosty. So we'll have to do that when it snows as she's also been asking for her "Carolina snow boots. Big boots." and those are at home, too. Along with any possibility of snow.

A nice thing is that I'm now "allowed" to speak Spanish to her and to others as well as she wants to watch her Mickey DVDs here in Spanish. I guess Spanish isn't so bad after all.

Every kid she's played with has had a cold, so...

Yup, now she's sick, too. The past two nights she's had a terrible cough. No fever or much mucus but a croup-like cough. So we're taking her to the doctor today to see if he can determine what she's got.

Like with food and naps and sleep and how carefully they're watched at the park, here it's different with kids and their colds. If we were at home, we'd have seen almost no one with a child this past week as at home no one would have taken their kid put with as much snot, coughing and sneezing as they all had. But the parents did, and the kids had fun playing.

Anyway, now she's got a cough that woke her up and hurt enough at 4am she was up until 6am. At least she wanted to go back to sleep in her crib. Means she was serious about wanting to go back to sleep.

The good thing is she's in a good mood and no other symptoms.

Maybe this is why she started asking to go home to "Carolina's big house" in new york. At first we though she wanted to leave Guanajuato and go to see Abuela, who didn't come with us on the day trip. And then though she wanted to go to her little play house in their back garden. But when we got home to Abuela's house, she started crying a lot. Demanding to go home. So we understood.

Then we had a Skype call yesterday with my parents and she got upset since she wanted to be at their place since they had new presents for her from a family friend.

I'm not sure what to tell her as she gets more upset when I say we'll go soon. As her papa is going home tomorrow very early, before she's awake. And we are here another 5 days. And then a night at my folks'.

I'm a bit nervous.

I have a baby, too.

A few days ago a pregnant friend was over and as she's ready to give birth any day, she's got quite a pronounced belly. When we were saying goodbye, I decided to tell Carolina that the woman has a baby inside. She seemed to take this in stride and eventually wanted to know if the baby can come out and "play with Carolina."

Fast forward to today, she's playing in the garden with other kids and comes up to me. Pushes out her belly, points to it and says, "I have baby." I explain, no just a lot of food in her belly. She says again, "No, I have baby, too." I relent. Ok, is all I say.

She repeats this later while in the tub. And then decides she really just has a lot of good in her belly.

This is too funny. I'm hoping that she delays a bit on starting to ask when her brother can play with her as I AM CERTAIN she will be terribly disappointed there are endless-to-her months left AND THEN it's going to be a newborn, not a 2 year old who comes home.

Ah, well. I did open the can of worms...

Slowly Party

The other day, I mentioned there was going to be a party after papa arrived in Mexico with other kids. A first birthday party of a friend's son. And she asked if she could go to (what sounded like) a "slowly party". It was definitely an "oh" and "lee" sound after a mushed up sound. So she seemed to like that I said "slowly".

She couldn't tell me what a slowly party was but apparently anything that's like a birthday party is now a slowly party.

For Christmas, Niño Dios brought her a full set of Disney princesses and a tutu (among many other things). She is, unsurprisingly, in love with her tutu. It took a bit of negotiating to get her to take it off (from over her pjs), to go to church and then take a nap.

We'll see if she will put on her Christmas dress and not insist on the tutu.

I'll post a photo of her in pjs and tutu soon.

Some highlights from this week

We put a turtleneck on her this morning for the first time and told her it's a "turtleneck", to which she asked, "Wheah turtle?" 

After making chocolate chip cookies and I showed her where the chocolate chunk was, she took a bite and said, "I like eating chocolate!"

She has been refusing to eat dinner and so I let her pick most nights what she has for dinner. This has amounted to: plain pasta with butter, toast with margarine, hummus with crackers where the cracker simply serves as a reusable spoon (twice this week), and pasta with a pork tenderloin that she actually ate TWICE. But that's the only meat in about two weeks.

Fun stuff!!!!

We are going to get her a twin bed after the holidays and take down the crib and crib mattress and put it away until #2 is ready for it. I'm thinking solid color comforter and bed skirt with character sheets that she picks out. I'm guessing Hello Kitty, Minnie and Pooh or Peanuts will be top contenders.