Sofia: 2.5 years old

It has been a while since I post an updated about Sofia. Sofia has turned into a person that I love to have company because she’s fun, nice, she behaves well and she keeps surprising me with new vocabularies.

The biggest accomplishment is she’s fully potty trained during the day… and most nights she wakes up dry. How did we do it? Actually we didn’t. I wasn’t planning to potty train her until summer because you know… you don’t want to be changing cloth every two hours during winter. But then her teacher told me two weeks ago that she’s ready… that I should just wear panties for her and bring extra clothes. So, without any hesitation, that Thursday i ordered 7 panties and the following Monday we put her on panties and went to school. The first day she had two accidents… nothing major. The second day, one accident. Twice during the week she had little accidents at home. But by Saturday she was potty trained. We put a potty in the first floor that she can go by herself. For the first few days, she’d go every hour and did something. Two weeks later… she goes when she needs to and even cleans up herself. The first weekend when we went outside the house we put her on diaper but she didn’t wet it. The second weekend, we went out without diaper and asked her if she wanted to go to the bathroom every 1-2 hrs. No more accidents anymore.

I’m truly impressed by how fast and easy it was. The key was to trust teacher’s judgement and follow her lead. I never forced her anything… just let her decide what she wanted to do and respect her. Sometimes we go to potty every 30 min and that was totally fine. Even if she doesn’t do it, I don’t judge her. I still tell her that whenever she feels like doing it, we’d come back.

Sleep: excellent! Bath time at 8pm, after dressing, I hold her, we sing a song together (世上只有妈妈好), I put her in bed, say good night and that I loved her. She’s say: me too! Sometimes she plays few minutes in bed, usually by 8:30pm she’s asleep. Then in the morning she usually wakes up between 7-7:15am, she’d play and talk in bed until we go to get her up. When she goes to school, she naps for 1-1.5hrs. Over the weekend, at home she’d say 2-2.5 hrs. I love how well she sleeps. I truly believe how important is good sleep for a child’s development. And I’m really happy that she has a healthy sleep routine.

Eating: for a long time she’d eat while playing, most of the time not in her chair and I’d spend an hour chasing her to eat. One day, I said no more because it was bringing too much stress to me and to her during meal time. So, I simply put her in high chair, talked to her seriously that we eat here and no play. She can decide how much she’d eat, but she had to eat there. It was fairly easy to transition back to normal routine. Nowadays, she eats in her high chair all the time and without TV. Sometimes she eats with her little computer, but I try not to let her everyday to get used to it.

we have an established routine now. Start with meal with a drink (either milk or apply juice diluted in water)

then it comes to dessert: fruit, orange is her favorite

then finish with Tj’s candied pecans

she eats well at school too. Although it takes her a long time to eat, but she eats, and that’s what matters.

with this new routine, meal time is happy time, for everyone 🙂

Some of her staple meals: cheese + avocado + noodles with a sesame sauce

eggs + mixed grains with veggies

breakfast is always pancake with almond butter. she refuses anything else.

pasta with butter + seaweed salad + chicken nuggets

Favorite plays:

visiting muserums on Sundays

making pasta in her “cooking” station

laying out books on the floor

visiting aquarium

cooking with mama

taking pics

construction projects at school

dressing up

pretending play

Language skills: she’s so talkative these days. She continues to speak to me in spanish, english at school, and shanghainese with grandma. She doesn’t mix them. She has a funny way to ask things… always like asking for my permission.. so cute. She learns new words every day and employ them in the right situation. She speaks in sentences instead of words. Sometimes she wants to say something and can’t find the appropriate words, but I usually understand what she wants to say so I help her and she learns a new word much easier that way.

Misc: 

• she’s really into pony tails lately. Every morning she’ll ask grandma to do two on her, and put two or more clips. Then she’d run into the dressing room to check out in the mirror. And when she sees me, she’d signal with her hands for me to look at her.
• Whenever she doesn’t get what she wants, she’d cry. But if I ignore her for 30 secs, she’d stop and tells me: mama, all done. 🙂 so cute.
• She really likes animals. Dolphins, penguins, doggies are her favorite at the moment.
• Whenever she does something that I don’t like, she’ll notice. And she’ll ask me: mama me gusto yaya? (mom likes Sofia?). If I say no, she’d get upset and keeps asking until I say yes. So adorable.
• According to her teachers, she’s meticulous, smart and focused. She doesn’t like free play without a purpose, she likes to be constructing, organizing, cooking, reading.
• We’ve developed a routine after I pick her up at school. I’d ask her what she did that day, who she played with and what she ate. Although she is not able to tell me all that with her limited vocabulary… but she tells me things and I really enjoy our way of communicating. Sometimes when I’m really busy with work and forget to talk to her… she’d tell me: mama habla con yaya (mom, talk to Sofia!)