First sentence

I think Anastasia said her first sentence today. We're on vacation in Quebec City, and as Matt was making breakfast this morning, she said, "Eggs! Plate! Bite."

Does that count as a sentence? It has a subject and a verb...sort of...

there is no such thing as a potty pause

The title of this blog is a quote I read in some forum somewhere on EC. It was written by a mom who was quoting a friend of hers, a Chinese woman. EC, of course, is the normal practice in China, and this woman had no patience with the American practice of putting babies in diapers for so long. Naturally, the quote sparked quite a discussion on the forum, because "potty pauses" are considered extremely common among EC'ers. There are several times in a baby's developmental stage when they're generally expected: when they become mobile around six months, when they become more independent around 12 months, and of course around every developmental stage and tooth that comes in.

But I do think the anonymous quoted Chinese woman had a point, and it is this: people in this country who are trying to learn EC tend to be too quick to resort to diapers. We just don't know any other way, and even if your friends and family are supportive of EC, there's still a lot of pressure to use diapers. You can't go out in public, or even have friends over at your house, with a diaperless baby without getting some funny looks. (For what it's worth, I've never gone in public without a back-up diaper.) It's just too weird in our culture. And so I think that when EC doesn't seem to be working, the automatic response is to say it's a potty pause and to go back to diapers, instead of to say my baby is communicating something, and I need to figure out what.

It's similar to the issue of breastfeeding, actually. And I hope this won't offend anyone who had trouble breastfeeding, because I know I have a lot of friends who really wanted to, and tried their best, and did everything that was recommended, and still had to use formula. But I think there's a real dearth of resources in our culture who can offer other techniques, other options, other methods for breastfeeding. For many moms, they get a couple of options, and those don't work, and then they don't know what else to do. And it's the same thing with EC, only much more so. Nobody knows what else to try--nobody knows what the baby could need, or what they could be trying to communicate by not peeing in the way they used to, so we just give up temporarily and use diapers.

Anyway, so that Chinese woman has become my mantra when Anastasia won't pee on cue. There is no potty pause, I tell myself, so what is it that she needs or wants now?

It worked when she turned mobile at seven months--after a few days, I figured out that she wanted to pee in different locations, and that's worked ever since. But now at 15 months, she's had about a week of simply never telling me when she needs to pee and refusing to go every time I take her. I kept taking her, trying different locations and different positions, but it didn't help at all. Finally yesterday I just decided to have an EC-free day, because I was tired of trying. And then I had an idea.

I'd read in some forums about babies wanting more independence at this age. So I thought, why not? It's worth a try. This morning I took her nighttime diaper off and brought out her Baby Bjorn Little Potty, the tiny little potty that's small enough for babies this age to climb onto on their own. She hasn't used it much at all, because she doesn't like to be held over it. But I explained to her this morning that it's her own little potty, and if she needs to go potty, she can go sit on it all by herself and go. She seemed quite pleased. And about fifteen minutes later, she started reaching for the potty and trying to climb over Daddy's legs.

"You want the potty?" Matt asked. Anastasia nodded and signed potty. So we helped her walk over there. She held Matt's hand to climb onto it, and sure enough, then she peed! All by herself, she initiated going and went! I'm so excited.

So now it's been about an hour, and she's diaper-free again. We'll probably have several accidents today. But I don't mind. We're trying something new. I think she might actually be on her way to becoming an EC graduate.

other tricks Anastasia has learned recently

Anastasia has started a lot of new tricks in the past week, so I thought I'd write them down so I don't forget. A few of the cutest:

* Hugging. She hugs everything. First she would "Hug Mama" or "Hug Dada"--which she always does cheek first. She leans her head against you, then wraps her arms around you as far as she can reach, and then pats you with one hand. It's adorable. But lately she hugs everything. She hugs her toys; she hugs the floor; she hugs the wall; the other day when she wanted a bath, she hugged the side of the bathtub. (Of course I had to give her a bath then, only because it was so incredibly cute.)

* Saying "no." Not in words. She just shakes her head. It started the other day when I was trying to give her some teething medicine; she pulled her face away and then shook her head violently back and forth. "You don't want the medicine?" I asked, and she shook her head again. "No no no no no!" I said. "Are you saying, 'No no no no no!'?" She kept shaking her head, laughing a little now, and it's quickly become one of her favorite games. She definitely knows what it means, though, and uses it when she doesn't want something. I really hope to catch this on camera sometime soon, while it's still so adorably cute, so I can look back at it once she starts the real toddler tantrums and remember how darling her first "nos" were.

* Reading. She loves books (how could she not, with me for a mom?). I've always read while I nursed her, and now sometimes when I'm trying to nurse her to sleep, she'll roll away, sit up, crawl over to her own books, and sit there and turn the pages, watching me as she does so for approval. "See?" she's clearly thinking. "I can read my own book, just like Mommy!"

* Follow directions. She'll do all sorts of cute things when prompted: hugging, of course, is one of her favorites, but she'll also clap her hands, dance, pat the dog (or Daddy), and touch her tongue to her nose. (The last one is probably my favorite.)

walking!

ANASTASIA WALKED TODAY!!!!!!!

This morning she was holding my hand and walking, which she's been doing for a while, and I got her to let go of my fingers while encouraging her to keep going. She took three or four steps before she went back to crawling.

Then, later this evening, she was practicing standing. She stood up without holding onto anything for about 45 seconds. I got in front of her and held my hands out toward her, and she walked toward me. She took about ten steps before she crouched down and then sat down.

The first time it happened, I screamed so much that everyone in the house came running. I'm so excited! My baby is walking!!!

when does a baby become a toddler?

Anastasia has done so many new things in the past few months that it's hard to keep up. She's really turning from a baby into a toddler now, and it seems like every day she does a new trick.

The first big thing was over Christmas, when she started to really eat solid food. Of course we've been giving her food since she was six months old, but she never had much interest in it. She would pick it up, play with it, put it in her mouth, and spit it on the floor. I used to joke that I could tell how much she'd eaten--or hadn't eaten--by looking at the floor.

But on our trip to Virginia for Christmas, we stopped at Panera Bread for lunch, and I was enjoying my chicken noodle soup in a bread bowl so much that I decided to let her try a little of the bread. Up until then I'd been very cautious about what I'd given her--only whole foods with no added salt or sugar, no processed foods, etc.--but I figured she probably wouldn't eat it anyway. So I was completely surprised, and rather nonplussed, when she immediately swallowed the bit of soup-soaked bread I offered her and looked for more. She ended up eating quite a bit of it. Which just goes to show you that if you want to raise a child on healthy food in our society, you can never relax your guard. Not even for a second. The first time you offer them something processed and salty or sugary, it's all over.

Then, of course, while we were in Virginia she discovered Cheerios. My sister-in-law, Heidi, was feeding her daughter Olivia (who's the same age as Anastasia) Cheerios and other Gerber finger foods. Anastasia found some on the floor, and it was all over. Now she's decided that animal cookies will cure pretty much anything, and Cheerios are a blast. Meat, however, is one of her favorite foods. Especially if it's marinated in a nice tasty sauce.

But food isn't the only thing that's changing. She's working hard on walking, which I guess is the official changeover from babyhood to toddlerhood. She started pulling up on the furniture somewhere around ten months, and it seemed like no time at all before she started cruising and moving around while holding onto something. Next her favorite activity became walking while holding on to Mommy's fingers. She insisted on holding a finger in each hand, and then she could walk anywhere with great pride--and even run fast enough to make her breathe hard. Just a few days ago, Daddy convinced her that she could actually walk while holding on to only one hand, and now she's very proud of the trick: she stops to giggle and shriek with pride every few steps.

But the funniest new development, and the one that most makes me see how close toddlerhood really looms, is the attitude change. Anastasia has always been a high-strung baby who wanted exactly what she wanted and wouldn't put up with anything else. But already it seems to have multiplied tenfold. Recently she was having pain from molars coming in, and whenever she didn't get something that she wanted (usually something like crawling outside, which we would prevent by shutting the door), she would stop, put her hand to her jaw with a pathetic look, and scream at the top of her lungs. Her message was clear: "But I NEED that! I NEED it! Because my TEETH hurt!"

And in the past few days, she's started an entirely different type of scream. She used to scream like, well, a baby: it was a wail, a cry, a vocalization with many variations that all were clearly communicative. Now she's discovered a new type of cry: the mad scream. It happens when she doesn't like what's going on, when she doesn't get her way, and it's unmistakable. It's a long, drawn-out, guttural cry, like a cross between a scream and a growl. It says something entirely new, and it says it very clearly: "No! Mine! I want! Now!"

Yes, toddlerhood is definitely coming up far too fast.