Children develop slowly, and as a parent seeing your child everyday, you don’t always see the progress. But sometimes, you notice something from one day to the next. I’ve regretted not writing about those little jumps I’ve noticed in Leilani before, so I want to mention two that happened yesterday.
Leilani is still a bit clingy, and especially when upset, wants to be picked up and held in our arms. Sonja resists this because Leilani is almost 35 lbs (16 kg) now. I, Daddy, am still a sucker and can’t resist carrying her around sometimes (I do avoid it when she’s whining). I did notice Leilani getting heavier, and she has been going through a growth spurt right now. We can tell because she eats a lot, and she is a bit clumsy, bumping, tripping, and falling down more as her body changes.
But yesterday morning when I picked her up, she didn’t feel little anymore. I’ve gotten so use to her being a little bundle I can carry around sitting on my arm, with one leg in front and one in back. But yesterday, it felt like her knees were sticking out at me and she didn’t just fit in my arms the way she used to. I’m a bit sad about this: I don’t want to carry her around forever, but she is so cuddly and likes to give me hugs and kisses in my arms. I guess we’ll both out the cuddles soon.
The other mini milestone is not so sentimental and innocent. We know Leilani lies about things sometimes, usually totally inconsequential things like what she ate at breakfast and whether she remembers it (ie we’re sure she know what she ate/did but pretends not to). I can’t think of any motivation other than her own realization of what the truth is and how you don’t always have to say it. I imagine she’s testing the waters and seeing which truths matter and which lies she can get by us. So last night, she was pushing those limits.
Sitting on the potty, she started talking about one of the worst insults she knows, “poo-poo head” (taught to her long ago on Kaua’i). For some reason, she wanted to say that she had not used this bad word in a long time. From the other room, Sonja heard this and said it wasn’t true, that she used it just this afternoon when she had been playing with Seyon at a park in San Jose. As a matter of fact, Sonja added that Leilani enjoyed calling him names but got upset when he did the same to her.
I don’t think Leilani heard that last part, because as she was reminded of playing with Seyon, her face lit up and she started talking excitedly about it. But what she was remembering was the teasing and how she was calling him other names. I call it her mean streak, this need to call kids names, and then pretend to spray a hose at them or worse, pretend to throw chocolate pudding on them–teasing combined with slapstick. So I started lecturing her, first about the name calling and the not remembering, but then mostly about being happy and exicted at the thought of hurting other people’s feelings with names.
I’m not happy about turning into a Dad who lectures (the mini milestone of the first lecture went unrecorded, too), but it seems that talking about issues and making her see how unhappy we are about certain behavior is the only way to address them after the fact. But she has become sensitive to it, and knows she doesn’t like my lecturing, because the point is to make her feel bad about her actions.
So she immediately pointed to some pretty crystal perfume bottles we have as decoration in the bathroom and said no, she was excited by how pretty the bottles were with all their colors. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was such a blatant lie that I called her on it immediately. I told her to stop lying and trying to make excuses (it was really the first time I’ve seen her make up a false excuse for her behavior). To break her out of her lie, I asked her if she remembered what happened to Pinocchio when he lied. She knows about the nose. I said her ears would get longer (pulled) when she lies. She has been really good for the past weeks, and this was the first time I even threatened to pull her ears in a long time. I didn’t pull them in the end, but I think (or really hope) she realized she cannot get away with lying and making excuses.
PS: Just because I’m still thinking about it: the first mini milestone I forgot to write about was around 18 months when Leilani played by herself for about 30 minutes, with us parents out of the room.
Up until then, she was totally dependent on someone for everything, including entertainment. This means that the only way Sonja and I could sit down alone was when we had a baby sitter. But this one time, one of us started playing with her in the living room, probably with some of her wooden puzzles or blocks, and then got up to do something else. Usually the complaining or crying would start in less than 5 minutes and we’d have to be back at her side. But this time, as I remember it, we both looked at each other after about 10 minutes and realized she was still playing happily by herself. We checked on her now and again, but I think we had a half-hour to sit down and relax and start feeling our independence again.
