Last Week Of December

Between being sick, Christmas, and the unexpected snow day yesterday, today is the first day in over a week that baby K's been back at daycare. I think she's gotten so accustomed to being at home that she felt out of sorts being back in her class. When I left her this morning, she was just standing there, puzzled, looking around as if wondering, "What am I doing here? Why aren't I at home playing with all the new toys I got for Christmas?" I was so tempted to pull her into my arms and drag her out the door with me... but alas, common sense got the better of me and I left... sans my little girl.

The month of December just flew by. Honestly, I don't know where the time went. One minute I was eating leftovers from Thanksgiving, and the next, I find myself getting ready for the new year! All the in-betweens of Christmas shopping, decorating the tree, putting the lights outside, wrapping the gifts, sending out the cards, baking/cooking for the holidays, getting together with family, etc is now nothing more than a faint distant memory. Christmas was only three days ago, so this is a true sign that my old age is showing. Forget about a reflection on the past year when I can barely remember what I did last week! In any event, here's to hoping that 2011 will be a better year than last! Wishing you all a happy, healthy, joyful, peaceful, and safe 2011!

Bibimbap

As much as I crave it, I am not referring to the Korean rice dish here. "Jingle Bells" has become baby K's favorite song of the week, but instead of saying "jingle bells," what comes out sounds more like "bibimbap." I found a free (but lame Karaoke) version of the song on Amazon.com and made the mistake of downloading it to my iPod mini. Now every day when she comes home, baby K automatically goes for the device, puts it on the Bose speakers, and requests for "bibimbap." Fortunately, she doesn't know how to scroll through the songs to select her favorite ones yet (but give her some time, and I'm sure she will master that as well).

Now if only I can figure out what "Yak Yak You" is...

Loving These Moments

Yesterday's Moment Of The Day: hearing baby K sing to Michael W. Smith on the car ride home.

Today's Moment Of The Day: This is a tough one... I'm torn between watching baby K use chopsticks for the first time during dinner tonight (she can't even hold a pen properly but she was able to feed herself using two wooden sticks) and seeing her dance/sing along to the Newsboys. I don't think she's ever even heard the Newsboys... it was just randomly playing on my iPod mini and baby K goes rushing down the stairs once the song came on.

A true sign that my little girl is growing up: she no longer calls me "MA-EEEE." I've graduated to full-blown MOMMY these days (although M is still known as DA-EEEE). Baby K is also testing her limits more, as evidenced by the numerous tantrums she threw this past weekend. Funny enough, she always yells "MOMMY" when she's crying, regardless of whether or not I'm the one not giving her what she wants.

Another (quite drastic) change: baby K was not interested in eating meat this weekend. I am still trying to recover from the shock. Saturday night we had chicken and string beans for dinner. All she ate were string beans and some rice. Then today, we went to Pollo Tropical for lunch. After taking two bites of chicken from M, she refused to eat any more and stuffed herself with two sides of corn all by herself (we even had to order an extra side for her). For dinner tonight, we had pork dumplings and broccoli. She would not eat the pork and only had broccoli and a little bit of rice. I don't know what to think of this. Granted, string beans and broccoli are baby K's favorite vegetables, but she's always been such a carnivore (it's constantly a struggle to get her to eat vegetables) that this recent eating pattern has left me dumbfounded. Tomorrow night's dinner menu: chicken and brussel sprouts. Let's see if she keeps it up.

Telemarketers

I do not like telemarketers (with much emphasis on the "do not like" part). Placing our name and number on those "DO NOT CALL" lists have had little effect, as we still constantly get calls from people conducting surveys, asking for donations, or trying to sell us something. It doesn't matter when I pick up the phone and request for our number to be removed from their calling list; the calls still come! The worst is before an election, when all the candidates running for office in our area cold-call every household to introduce themselves, leaving an annoying 5-minute long voice-mail on why we should vote for them on election day (darn our town for distributing our phone number!). Thank goodness for caller ID; we've been able to ignore many of those calls. However, telemarketers seem to have become more relentless. Upon returning home, we'd check our missed call log and see that the March of Dimes has called three times in the past five hours, or that Sears has called twice already (for three days in a row). Plus, it's annoying to have the phone ringing off the hook when we're about to sit down for dinner (or while we are eating dinner).

Recently, I've started to answer the phone, put it on speaker, and let baby K do all the talking. She's used to talking to my parents on the phone, so thinking it was them, she'd say "gong gong" (for grandpa) and "por por" (for grandma). The person on the other line would be like, "Hello? Hello? This is so-and-so calling. I'm looking for Mr. Y." Baby K would babble some more gibberish with the telemarketer repeating, "Hello? Hello?" When baby K realizes it's not her grandparents on the other line, she'd lose interest and stop talking, at which point I would hang up the phone. It seems to have worked twice so far, since our missed call log did not reveal any additional calls from the two offenders we've tried this on. It gave me a good laugh the first time I did this, but is this too mean? What kind of message am I sending to my 2-year old daughter, who acts like a sponge and absorbs everything we do and say? Any thoughts?

"Bless You Daddy!"

Every time someone sneezes, we've taught baby K to say "Bless you!" Unfortunately, M tends to be the one who sneezes the most often, so baby K has gotten into the routine of saying, "Bless you daddy!"

Scene in the car ride to daycare this morning:
Mommy: AH-CHOO! (loud sneeze, followed by silence in the car)
Mommy: What do you say, cutie pie?
Baby K: Bless you daddy!