More, please!

I promise that there will be a content post about vacation, but I just had to share.

For dinner tonight, Shoshanna ate FOUR HELPINGS OF BROCCOLI. I thought I'd made way too much. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I made just enough.

The mind boggles.

And then she helped me load the dishwasher. (Her first "chore" is putting the silverware in the basket.)

Vacation highlights

Because who knows when I'm going to get around to actually posting about our vacation, here are some highlights (with more of the pics here).







And I'll post a couple of ones that Auntie Em took via Flickr here in just a second...

Inside the mind of the toddler

Our JCC has a really great toddler pool - it's about 8" deep at the corners, and gets deeper as you go towards the middle of the edges and even deeper in the actual center to a max of probably about 16".

Shoshanna, who loves the big pool and loves swimming lessons, always responded to the kiddie pool by immediately getting upset and trying to climb out. We couldn't figure out why, or what to do about it. At first we thought it was because she wasn't steady enough on her feet and fell (thus going underwater) pretty easily. But you'd have thought that she would have been ok holding the side or our hands in that instance, and so our confusion remained.

Then, last week, Matthew figured it out. Shoshanna's not allowed to stand up in the bathtub. She was probably thinking that we didn't want her standing in the pool, either! So I thought a lot about how on earth we were going to a) figure out if this was the problem and b) how we were going to explain the difference to her.

When we went to the pool yesterday, I got in with her and, true to form, she immediately fussed and tried to climb out. I asked her, "Are you getting out because you're standing up?" (She gets taken out of the bath if she stands up.) "Yeah." "OK, come sit with me, I want to tell you something." I pulled her into my lap (still in the pool) and said, "The pool is different from the bathtub. It's ok to stand up in the pool. Okay?" "Yeah."

And that was that. She got out of the pool when she wanted to get out to get a toy, investigate the filter cover, etc. She did NOT get out every two seconds for no apparent reason. She walked all the way across the pool (holding on to Daddy's hands) to get to me. She bounced up and down. She didn't even freak out when she lost her balance and her face went into the water. Hooray! Pool mystery solved and fixed!

We went back to the pool today and I reminded her first thing that the pool was different than the bathtub and that it's ok to stand up in the pool. She kind of clung to me because the wading pool was full of 4 and 5 year olds from the day camp, but as soon as they left (and she had her afternoon snack), she was off and playing with a very bossy older girl (probably about 4). But she was having fun and I don't think she realized how much she was irritating the other girl. ;^)

Back to our roots...

I don't often post really preemie-related things here anymore, largely because we are fortunate enough to not have Shoshanna's prematurity affecting our daily, or even weekly or monthly, lives. But then I see stats like these (posted by PeepsMama) and I get a little reality check. We know how lucky we are to have Shoshanna be so very healthy, so developmentally on track. I think we sometimes forget how lucky we are to have her be ALIVE. We were talking last night about how her being big for gestational age at a pound-thirteen probably did help her, because it meant the difference between her dropping to a pound-five at her lowest and somewhere barely over a pound. When you're that little, those few ounces really do make a difference.

And then while I was changing her diaper this morning, I noticed that for the first time in a really long time, I can see Shoshanna's ribs; they're not visible ALL the time, but when she's lying down and giggling and squriming, they definintely are. She's been doing some good growing - her percentiles have increased in both height and weight, but her proportions have changed. Several months ago she was roughly 20th percentile in both height and weight; now she's more like 30th for weight and 50th for height. Seeing those little bones sticking out of her chest reminded me of when she was so very little, and I found myself reminding myself that it's normal for toddlers to alternate growing vertically with growing horizontally. And she's definitely been on a vertical-growth tear these past several months. Almost daily, we put something down where we're sure she can't reach it, only to be proven wrong.

Terribility

The "terrible twos", they are upon us. We all know that Shoshanna is a very independent, opinionated, stubborn child. We're firmly convinced that these traits are what have allowed her to thrive despite her prematurity. However, they also mean that we have exchanges like the following, which took place at dinner last night.

Shoshanna: "Done!" She places her cup and plate on the table.
Me: "OK, can you wait while Daddy finishes his dinner?"
Shoshanna: "Yeah!"
...two seconds later...
Shoshanna picks up her plate and throws it on the floor.
Us: "Shoshanna! No throw food!"
Shoshanna pouts. I pick up the mess.
...two seconds later...
Shoshanna very emphatically throws the food that was still on her tray on the floor, followed by her fork.
Me: "Shoshanna. The next time you throw food, you're getting a time-out."
Note that her face crumpled as soon as she heard "the next time..."
Shoshanna howls for a couple of minutes.
Matthew: "Shoshanna, we love you but..."
Shoshanna howls.
Matthew: "We love you but you can't..."
Shoshanna howls.
Me: "Shoshanna, you're a good girl, right?"
Shoshanna stops howling and nods.
Me: "And good girls don't throw their food on the floor."
Shoshanna nods.
Me: "We love you. Please don't throw your food on the floor."

By that time Matthew was done with his dinner and peace was restored. This sort of exchange is becoming increasingly common. She also is once again refusing to go up stairs by herself (unless you tempt her with something she really wants), but this morning she did consent to walk/scoot DOWN the stairs with my assistance a couple of times.

STICKIES!

Today I introduced Shoshanna to my favorite activity from pre-school: corn starch and water, mixed so that it's just runny but turns all funny and solid when you squish it.

Needless to say, this was a BIG success. She loved squishing it, figuring out that she could PICK UP a liquid, dribble it on the ground, on me, all over her legs. We managed to keep it out of hair and faces, and she didn't try to eat it too much. There's a big white patch on the driveway now, though.

And then came the best part: cleaning up! Shoshanna LOVES playing with the hose (even though it was really viciously cold, as I discovered when I went to hose myself off), so that made her even happier than the stickies did.

Oh, and for those who are keeping score at home, our bathroom scale now consistently tells us that Shoshanna weighs 24 pounds. And I guess that she's somewhere between 32 and 33 inches tall.

Stupid Toddler Tricks

Maybe we're a bit twisted, but part of the fun of having a toddler who likes to copy EVERYTHING that the grownups do is teaching her silly tricks. We taught her three new tricks while we were in DC.

Trick #1: Climb up in the lounge chairs on Grandma and Opa's deck, lean back, and say "Ahhhhhh!"

Trick #2: Toasting (clinking glasses). This one started when we went out to dinner Sunday night and toasted, and of course Shoshanna wanted to participate.

Trick #3: Dunking. Shoshanna LOVES to dunk grownups in the pool. In fact, it's all she wants to do. She puts her hand on the top of your head and pushes down as hard as she can.

On language acquisition

Shoshanna's at the age where she should start to call herself by her name. But we, being the sadistic parents that we are, saddled her with a name that no toddler is going to be able to say (the most common toddler-version seems to be either "Sosanna" or just "Sanna"). So she improvised/copied the grownups.

She calls herself "I". I can only assume it's from hearing us refer to ourselves in the first-person-singular (and apparently it doesn't confuse her that everyone has the same name for themselves...). But it's terribly cute to hear her going around saying "I shoes." "I socks." "I keys." and so on...

4th of July in DC

We went off to Grandma and Opa's for the long weekend. Shoshanna traveled like a champ, as usual.

Saturday
We arrived in the morning, did various errands, and then ventured out to the Germantown fireworks display. Part of the idea was to do a test run to facilitate decisions about what to do Tuesday night. Grandma and Opa bought Shoshanna her very first glow-stick, which was a big hit and also leaked.

In fact, Shoshanna decided to once again prove Lisa's characterization of her as a "high-intensity kid" correct. She LOVED the fireworks - I had her in my lap when they started, and said "Boom!" in order to make it seem fun. She thought that saying "Boom!" was really fun. In fact, she said it with almost every explosion, even after she'd gotten bored with watching the actual fireworks.

Sunday
Uncle Josh and Aunt Jacy surprised us by showing up before brunch rather than in the evening as they'd led us to believe! So we all had brunch, and then Matthew, Shoshanna, and I drove off to Baltimore to visit our friends Jonathan and Kristen and their 10-week-old daughter, Caroline (who is entirely too cute).

Shoshanna wasn't overly interested in Caroline for most of the time - she'd stop by the bouncy seat occasionally to say "Hi, Baby!" and then run off to dig all of Caroline's un-played-with toys out of their basket. Eventually, though, when Caroline was lying on the floor, Shoshanna decided that the baby needed to play with some of her toys, and brought them over. We were very impressed by the sentiment, although she wasn't too gentle when she deposited the toys on top of Caroline.

We got back in time to go to The Cracked Claw for crabs and other good eats. Shoshanna got cranky before the grownups had even started dinner, but we managed to keep her entertained until Fran & I were ready to head home.

Monday
Shoshanna, Opa, and Daddy went to visit at NIST while Josh & Jacy met with a realtor and Grandma and I went to get manicures. We also went to the pool for a bit (Shoshanna's still not sure about wading pools... she's not all that confident of her steadiness on her feet, and she doesn't like going under when she falls), and Shoshanna had oodles of fun dunking all of the grownups. In the evening, the grownups all went out to dinner at Equinox while Val & Steve babysat for Shoshanna (she was apparently an angel).

On Monday, Shoshanna also learned to say "Opa" ("pah!") and she figured out how to run (an actual run, with both feet off the ground at the same time). She still goes head-over-teakettle after a handful of steps, though.

Tuesday

Fourth of July! It was beastly hot, so Matthew, Grandma, and I took Shoshanna to the playground at the mall for a bit (she loved it, of course). We went to the pool for free burgers and dogs and beer (Shoshanna's still not too keen on hot dogs, but she loves hamburgers), sat out one thunder-induced wait and gave up when there was another one (an hour or an hour and a half later). Had dinner on the deck, which Shoshanna loved because she could run around with impunity when she got bored with her high chair (which, as always, took about five minutes). And she decided that Uncle Josh shouldn't be napping on the lounge chairs. (OK, she might have had some encouragement on that score...)

After dinner, we went to watch the Gaithersburg fireworks from the grounds of NIST. Shoshanna liked these "Boom!"s as much as the ones on Saturday, but she was exhausted and fell asleep about halfway through the show.

You read that right. She fell asleep DURING the fireworks.

And now we're back home again!