The sight of a child clutching dearly to it’s favorite blanket or stuffed animal is very cute. The animal or blanket provides some level of comfort and safety to the child and accompanies the child on every excursion to the supermarket, the playground, the beach and any other place imaginable.

Riana, has something that comforts her equally when she seeks it out, but her thing is not a stuffed animal or a blanket, but rather a tag. Any tag. Tags on her burp clothes, tags on her onsies, tags on her pants, and anything else imaginable.

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It’s amazing how toddlers pick up language so fast. In the last few weeks, Riana’s ability to form words has increased dramatically. Her vocabulary is growing exponentially and according to her pediatrician, that is to be expected. She likes to point our body parts such as nose and eyes. She has fun counting 1,2 and 3! She likes to interact with people. I am amazed to see that she even tries to make up short sentences such as “My duddu”, “Bye Bye Dadda”, “No Touch”, “Hi Baby”, “Over There”. This morning, I was reciting nursery rhymes to her. I was surprised when she sang along…

Me:     Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, How I wonder what you are…
Riana: Up Above da… Dy…

Me:     Baba Black Sheep, Have you any wool…
Riana: Yes sa… Yes sa… tul…

How sweet. I believe she learnt this at her daycare.

Life is fun with Riana around… I am looking forward to having real conversations with her although I don’t think I am quite prepared for the “whys and hows”… Not just yet!

It was nearly two decades ago that I was first introduced to McDonald’s fast food having newly arrived into this country. I was, however, too old for the Happy Meals but my brother enjoyed the meals, as well as, the toys that accompanied the meals.

We took Riana to Wendy’s this past weekend where she enjoyed her first kids meal, consisting of nuggets, fries and the obligatory toy that will occupy her for a couple of days until she, inevitably, breaks it. To see myself go from being the child enjoying one of those meals with my parents to being the parent feeding my child is quite a circle indeed.

It is interesting the things that get put into perspective when you become a parent. Interesting indeed.

Cheers

It is a great milestone when a child recognizes that the name being called out is it’s own and responds to it. This began happening with Riana a short while back and it’s great that we can get her attention without having to use “yo” and “hey”.

In her growing vocabulary, both spoken and understood, she can now clearly look at me or her mother and say “dada” and “mama”. Looking at the numerous pictures in the bedrooms of her and us, she points to the picture and correctly identifies the person who’s carrying her.

We, however, noticed that sometimes she would say “nana” and then go on to say “dada” or “mama”. Naturally, we assumed she was mixing up the words or just outright clobbering some word. Then, we realized that Riana is actually repeating the words that we tell her, or at least she pronounces something that sounds like the word we said.

It is then we realized that she’s actually referring to herself as ‘nana’ since she can’t clearly enunciate Riana yet. Listening to her repeat the birds and animals she sees in her books are quite a thrill and very funny.

Cheers

Picking the right toys is always a hard thing to do. You can never tell if something is going to be enjoyed or ignored. Rather than buying the entire toy store on every turn, we decided to buy toys at various points in Riana’s growth to motivate her imagination and play.

Majority of her toys, till now, were primarily used as chew toys or things to bang other things with and definitely not for their intended purposes. This, however, has begun to change in the past few weeks from the moment she figured out how the magnetic stacking toys worked.

She was initially facinated by the magical attraction two pieces held when either the top or bottom ends were brought close together. Since then she’s learned that she can stack up a large number of these toys and then smash them to the ground with feet stomping glory.

The other thing she’s slowly been picking up are sorting blocks. She’s managed to figure out how to insert the circle and square shaped blocks into their respective receptacles, but the triangle shaped block is being resistant to her will and sheer force doesn’t seem to convince the triangle block to enter the circle or square receptacle. All in due time I suppose.

To watch her go from using and abusing toys to actually play with them in their intended means is quite a wonderful transformation.

Cheers

My biggest fear is that Riana will disappear in thin air if I lose sight of her even for a moment. My baby is very social and loves to interact with every person, even strangers! When we go out, she loves to greet people with her favorite word, ‘Hi’. She tilts her head to one side with her naughty side look and her lovely smile… There is no escape… She wants everyone’s attention and she gets it… and the more attention she gets, the more she wants to play with the person!

Last weekend, we were at a restaurant for dinner. She made friends with all the waiters and waitresses at the restaurant. By the time we ate our meals, she was already running behind them trying to get them to play hide and seek with her. She loves to chase and likes being chased! Shortly after, she ran to one of the waitresses and gave her a BIG hug… how lovely. The woman picked Riana up and pretended to walk away. Riana immediately waved at us and said “Bye-Bye”! I found that moment of ‘awww’ very sweet but soon realized that this could mean a potential danger. What if my baby walks away with a stranger? As the lady walked away from us, Riana quickly realized that something is not right. She reached forward and leaned over. She got down and came running to us.

Restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, malls… It doesn’t matter where we go, she loves it all. She especially likes children. She wants to play with every kid. If she sees one, she follows him/her around. Every morning she greets the daycare teachers with hugs. If you throw a flying kiss at her, she even returns the favor! So sweet… She is my cherry pie!

Love you sweetheart…

Riana is learning a lot of new things at the daycare. After spending just two weeks in the toddler section, Riana learnt how to scream and throw temper tantrums! She fake-cries just to get attention… Phew… While she is learning a lot of things from observing other kids and some of them are not very pleasant, there are also things that I adore.

She is very independent now. They do not feed children in the toddler classroom. She is learning how to spoon feed herself. She tries to comb her hair and wear her socks. She does not mind sharing her toys with others. If you ask for a toy, she will bring it to you and happily hand it to you. Once of the best things about daycare is that the kids learn to share their personal belongings.

She can communicate better now with words as well as gestures. If she doesn’t want milk, she says “no” and shakes her head off. When she is finished eating, she says “aa-don” meaning “all done”. If we ask her to sit down, she sits down. She even puts her toys in the toy box when asked. She puts the diapers and burp cloths into the appropriate baskets. Isn’t that adorable? She’ll come to you if you ask her to. When you want to change her, she walks up to you and sits in front you facing her back to you. She likes to greet people with “hi” and “ello”. She also loves to wave good bye and says “ba-bye”!

My little baby grew so fast into a toddler. Now, she is becoming a person with her own personality. A sweet one…

Time sure flies by when you’re not paying attention. If not for the various milestones in our lives, I think we’d completely lose track of ourselves. With Riana’s one year birthday a couple of months ago we stopped to realize that it’d been a year of fun with her.

The most recent milestone to approach now is her transition from the Infant program into the Toddler program at daycare. The transition happens at 15 months so as to allow all the children to be able to handle the hustle and bustle of a program active and involved program.

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If Riana could speak those would be the words that she’s utter every night as she fought to stay awake for a bit longer to play. It doesn’t matter that she’s been playing all day and she’s so exhausted now that she can barely keep her balance or eyes open. The urge and, dare I say, the need to play is so overwhelming at this age that until the sheer exhaustion finally sets in, sleep is a very distant thing on her mind.

The upside for us, of course, is the fact that when she does go to bed for the night, it’s a very restful and deep sleep that takes her through that night and into the next morning to awaken with all the energy she needs to start out once again.

Ahh, to be a baby again…

Cheers

No, I am not talking about Mel Gibson. I am referring to Riana who makes some bold moves, often making me worry. Last weekend at our friends’ house, Riana went chasing after the dogs, a German Shepherd and a Labrador. The dogs are BIG. While most children are afraid of big moving objects such as animals, my little monster loves them. In fact, she may have even scared the dogs. They were running away from her as she chased them to give a hug. She thought it was a fun game. She was all over them.

The other thing that makes me nervous is that Riana has figured out that she can reach higher if she climbs on to things. So, she dares to climb on to everything, the stairs, her crib, the baseboard, safety gate, furniture, people etc. Just the other day, I had a dream that she managed to get out of the crib and walk into our bedroom. I am sure, it isn’t long before my dream becomes a reality.

While it is good to be brave, just how brave do I want her to be is a different story. I hope she doesn’t try to play games with a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull. She’s not ready for it yet.