Month Eighteen - Independence

Well it's been a whole year and a half. I see pictures of myself pregnant, pictures of Carmen as a newborn and it seems lightyears away. All of a sudden my teeny tiny baby is walking around, chatting, feeding herself, going up and down the stairs, singing... what is next, college?



Seriously. She is growing into a little girl right before my eyes and there's nothing I can do to stop it. At the same time, I am 'hurrah-ing' her newfound independence - she puts on her toque and brings me my shoes when she wants to go outside for a walk. She pitches a fit if we go past the playground without stopping. Every meal is a battle of wills - who will crack first? She is getting pretty good at pressing my buttons too. I can't decide which is more frustrating, the fact that she knows HOW to push my buttons, or the way I react? Time to do a little growing up myself!



Carmen is teaching her baby to potty train. She says "Baby, Pee Pee!" and we go into the bathroom, take the pants off the dolly and sit her down. I ask Carmen to get some paper for the baby (Mommy says only one piece, please!!!) and when she turns around, I grab a waterbottle sneakily and put a generous squirt of water into the potty! Then she turns around, excitedly wipes the baby and then grabs her savagely by the arm, throws her to the ground and exclaims "PEE PEE!!!" Then we flush the 'pee pee' (Bye-bye Pee Pee!), wash the baby's hands and put her pants back on. There are always plenty of kisses for the good baby!



We also feed the baby, put the baby to bed and walk the baby around in the stroller. I was pretty unprepared for her attachment to this poor little doll, who gets dragged all over the place, covered in food and dog hair, and manhandled repeatedly. I keep trucks and blocks and all sorts of other toys around, but she LOVES that baby.



And colours. She will lie on the ground with a pad of paper in front of her and her Crayola washable markers forever! She has figured out how to turn on the stereo and will start a CD and dance around. Jason and I never really went crazy with the child-proofing and so Carmen is really good at reprogramming our phone, getting dogfood for Bella and feeding it to her, kernel by kernal, as well as spreading the contents of my makeup kit all over the upstairs. I will often find her with my cell phone, bleeping away on the keypad and then talking to her peeps. It's pretty hard not to laugh!



I can't believe we are doing this all over again. I am pregnant again - 10 weeks and counting! I revisit my old blog posts from my first pregnancy and realize how much more quickly this one seems to be going by. I don't know if my baby is a chickpea or a grape this week! I don't know if he/she has eyelids. I just don't have TIME! And the reality of caring for a toddler, teaching my classes and getting through the first trimester nausea and fatigue is staggering. But we are SO HAPPY to have another, so happy that we will have a real baby for Carmen to help take care of, and so happy that we are able to give her a chance to be an older sibling, the same way we both were in our families. So yeah, life is good!