This month Daniela was still hitting like a maniac but with some reading and encouragement to use her words, she has significantly stopped hitting every moment. With our patience and understanding, we have turned a corner with her. I also read that my reaction to her fuels her fight or flight. I choose everyday to calm down and when I am raising my voice a bit louder than need be, Raul is there to let me know to bring it down.

We met up with our family Maribel, Lillian, Mary, Theresa, David, Milta and Jayda at my mom’s house. They were here celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday. We were busy with work and thankfully had a good month. We met Elena and Nick who were great to be around during the fourth of July. Milta and Jayda spent some time with us in Isla Verde and we had a goodtime swimming and playing in the sand. Jayda drove our dog nuts but it was fun to spend time with her.

Daniela charmed everyone in my family. We also had Grandma Sylvette visiting Ponce. We went down to see her once and since she is still around will go back down to say goodbye.

Daniela read two letters in the sign Doral which is a bank we go to and were passing by. As we were stopped at a light, she said, “Momma, O, A” And when I looked at what she was pointing at, she was definitely recognizing her letters thanks to Agapita videos and myself.

Daniela had her first dentist appointment and she did great. She helped the Dental Technician brush her teeth. It went smoother than what I thought.

She continues to sing and dance to the Disney movies we buy her. And she has such a great memory for learning. Her uncle gave her a puzzle of the states and she has put that puzzle together a dozen times. She knows where CT is in the New England states piece.

She has been going to the gym with Raul which gives me a break to do somethings around the house. She is writing with all sorts of utensils pens makers and pencils. And added a new design to our new bedsheets. LOL

 

 

May Highlights

Even though we were battling ticks in the main bedroom, we had a good month. For Mother’s Day we made our favorite mom’s in the building gifts and to our mom’s and grandmother’s photos of Daniela. We did have a good day at my mother’s because we got to see and joke around with Grandma Generosa.

Daniela and I spent a few days alone with JuanGa while Raul was in North Dakota. We walked down the avenue and had lunch at the El San Juan and really had a good time eating at the booth. As long as Daniela is running jumping singing and dancing there is not point for hitting.

We are breastfeeding less and only doing it at bed and nap times.

Low point Daniela has been hitting more and it is making us batty okay me batty. So we are working on that with her.

June Highlights

Daniela continues to improve with her language skills, painting, counting, and loves singing and dancing. She is getting more daring with getting into the water. She painted on canvas with acrylic paint as a gift for her dad. She also learned about using pastels. We made black and white pictures of flowers one day.

She is speaking lots of English and Spanish. It is amazing how much she knows.

Uncle Javi, Tio Tito, and Christopher came to visit and during those days Daniela started just going places with Raul by herself without me. I had a moment and Raul decided to give me a break. He took Daniela to the gym and to pick up the family. She went fine without me. She is growing independently from us but at times still needs us.

She went to her aunt’s wedding with out me and had a good time dancing that she did not want to stop. I did not go and it was kinda of weird not having her or dad around. But sometimes even mom’s need a little break. But of course when I saw that it was getting late I had to call.

Daniela had a play date with Ricardo our neighbor who has an Italian mom named Carmelina and David who is Puerto Rican.

Low points Daniela’s hitting. Man we have been reading and trying to get her to use her words more and avoid meltdowns. It really comes down to how we react to her more me than Raul. He does a good job but he is only human and we have both had our moments where we needed to get away from the tantrums.

She is 2 1/2 so as I read about how to be a better in control mom, we move on to the rest of the year. We love her so much and at times can’t believe how much she knows.

She tells us when we are naked that we are showing our butt butts and our tetes and totos even Raul has a toto lol

If we break her out of little routines, she becomes upset and sometimes we remind her that it is okay to have things go differently. Creatures of habits start young. We could focus on all the fighting and tantrums but this is just part of her becoming independent and trying to let us know what she wants. We are praising her more when she tells us what she wants followed with please and thank yous.

I need to do a better job with staying in control and as I read about this age, I wonder how people do it with multiple kids and children around the same age. Daniela has a strong will but a soft heart. It is great seeing her growing up and enjoying life.

We will see what the next half of the year has in store for us!

We have been taking it easy on the craft side of things this month and started to garden. We planted cilantrillo and basil. Today we observed the plants and they started to grow; a tiny leaf we saw and Daniela was excited. She said. “Oh Wow” and somehow it reminded me of my sister Milta who always says, “Wow”

Grandma Sylvette left on the 11th of April so she got to spend lots of time with Daniela. When she left, Daniela was asking for her. Prior to Sylvette leaving for CT, she spent time in Ponce. When Daniela woke up the next day, she was in a routine of getting three big spoons for breakfast and her spoon. She asked, “Y Sylvette?” and we told her that she was with Abuelita Lydia. She basically asked for her the entire week until she came back. But when she left on the plane and she asked where her grandma was, we explained that she went on a plane and back home to CT. She had this weird look on her face one of understanding, sadness, and full of questions. Throughout the month she had been doing so many things with Sylvette, that she got used to her being around. It was a little sad to see her face process this information because she was not going to have her grandma around to talk with, play with her dolls, and dance with her.

Her talking in English and Spanglish is getting clearer and she is having full conversations with us. Back and forth. Sometimes its scary to see how much she is processing and how she feeds off of our energy. If both of us are having a bad day, it rubs off on her. Raul had an incident at the store with a cashier and the baby then acted mean to the cashier when she wanted to scan the soap and daniela refused to give it to her. On another occassion I asked her to eat, and was very negative about her not eating and she talked back in a mean voice to me. So we need to work on how we react in front of her and tone of voice. Okay I need to work on this more than Raul but I do spend more time with her, so she will act the way mom acts if I don’t do something about my reaction to her not doing something quickly.

We started learning about triangles and did a neat thing with tape and contact paper. She learns so quickly it is scary. Another thing we started to do was weaning of breastfeeding. She can only ask for Nene or TeTe if she is going to take a nap or go to sleep for the evening. We are giving her almond, soy mik, almond chocolate milk, and apple juice along with water. She sits with us at the big girl table and uses her little table to paint or put her snacks on. She has her routines that if we break them, she has a fit about them.

She is relating new experiences with familiar experiences. We celebrated Raul’s birthday with the neighbors and even made cupcakes for our neighbor who celebrated her birthday two days before Raul’s birthday. She loves all the musical movies we play for her and one day was doing choreography from King and I. Raul just bought Sister Act and she is hooked with watching the musical numbers.

We even put on Captain America and she liked the Rockeets scene in the movie. We also put on Star Wars Attack of the Clones and she was asking about the different types of beings she saw in the movie and the space ships. She was mesmerized by the action and light saber fighting.

She plays independently with the dog and by herself lining up her little animals. Reading her books in her tent and playing with our neighbors granddaughter Iman. She will be returning to Florida so we will wait till Ricardo who is in Italy with his Mom to come back and coordinate more play times together. We also have to start putting her in swim classes. She is starting to get more confident with jumping in the water, lying down, and getting up quickly before a wave comes on shore. She really likes listening to the birds in the morning and was even talking to some bugs that came in the house one day flying ants or something like that.

We could focus on her tantrums at times but I would rather focus on all the little beatiful things she does. We met Gene and Odilia, a couple Raul and I met through an online group. The spent some time with us and Gene took these awesome pictures of Daniela. I think we are doing Mother’s Day Gifts of those pictures to our moms.

 

Funny Stories I forgot to mention last month;

CaddyShacked: Daniela was having fun passing gas while we were in the tub. She did it so much that she pooed in the tub. We were both shocked and I did not want to scare her that I had to laugh afterwards. This happened while Raul was away in Texas.

Conversations: She is starting to have these conversations with us and her dolls made from cloth and her stuffed animals. If we stub our toe or bang ourselves and say ouch, she will come over and say Estas bien? Te duele? She will rub our sore spots and give this concerned looked and it’s not until we say we are okay, that she goes on her way.

Another time I told her to look for the ball in order for her to play with JuanGa and She said Its over there. I told her to go get it and she said I can’t find it. Another time I told her to go and tell her dad Breakfast. She told me she was estoy jugando bubbles con Juanga meaning don’t bother me I’m busy

She is also associating many things with previous experiences. She sees something and will say como xxxx and I will say yes.While cooking she associates making circles in her oatmeal with circles on paper, she recognizes shapes everywhere, and we do drawings in the sand.

Her relationship with JuanGa is cute! They chase eachother around and blow bubbles together. She feeds him and they really have a great bond.

She is singing Do Ro Mi Do a deer a deer deer deer and she tries to sing the rest of the song as well.

She loves her books, pom poms, and books! She also tries to keep things in order so she can find them when she wants to play with them. One day she saw Raul’s undies on the floor in the bathroom and she looked at me and said momma esto and I told her to put it in the basket. It was a look like hey this does not belong here and she told Raul exactly what I told her Ropa no en el piso Canasta solamente.

She is really a whipper snapper.

I sometimes am lazy and let the days go by without writing things on this site. But I must remember to post at least once a month for Daniela to read this when she gets older.

February was all about Musicals: We purchased several movies for Daniela that included Happy Feet, Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, Sound of Music and The King and I. I shall say that Daniela loves dancing and singing so these were right up her ally. One funny thing that happened while watching all of these dancing moves was that she tried to imitate choreography from Mary Poppins. She flipped right over after us telling her to not try and do a handstand. We were all astonished.

In February Daniela started developing Papitis; everytime Raul would go to the gym it was a crying frenzy. Well I started walking with her or doing a craft. Even the neighbor helped one time with giving her a treat to help us out with her crying. I try not to give Daniela food when she cries because I don’t want an emotional eater on my hands. Something I had to tell Raul to stop doing everytime I stepped out to walk the dog.

This month of March Raul went to SXSW and I started taking Daniela with me to walk JuanGa. At night, Sylvette who came in February and had to leave early in due to health issues came back to help me while Raul was away, would hold up Daniela so she could see where I was at with the dog.

Daniela is using her imagination which is great. She takes calculators, her little fake phone, and even clay phones to pretend she is talking to someone whether it be her Grandpa Tito, Grandma Maggie, Uncle Javi, Zuleyka or Pepe, she has long conversations with them.

Daniela is speaking both languages and counting to ten in both languages. She sings the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle, London Bridge, Five little Monkeys, Sapo Sapo, Do Re Mi (just the beginning) . She is counting up to 13 in English and up to 11 in Spanish. We count up to 20 with her in both languages. We read books to her in both languages and surround her with folks who know both.

She plays with Iman and our other neighbors when they are on the beach.

She loves painting and crafting and immerses herself in picking up pom poms with her tongs. She does so well with the tongs that when we went to the sushi restaurant, she did really well picking up tofu. She even had tea for the first time and second time at a Turkish restaurant.

What we love about living in the metro area is that we get to take Daniela to all sorts of restaurants to eat all types of food. They are vegetarian but they are still delicious.

She loves Quinoa mixed with veggies and loves sushi! She is a banana freak and will eat blackberries when we buy them. Kale Chips are her thing too. Someone did give her a lollipop and she licked it once and gave it to me. For mama she said. She loves the dark chocolate that we by at the health food and so for Valentines week we went to the mall and we bought dark chocolate truffles for her and I. Since they were not vegan, Raul did not have any but he did have a dark chocolate bar from Godiva.

Daniela cuts mushrooms, tomatos, she “cooks” oatmeal, she is learning how to pour from one glass to another. She is also pointing and counting to items. Today she saw a little hear on my Victoria’s secret bra and the one on my necklace and said one two corazones in Spanglish.

This month has been a crafty month with clay, fingerpaints, attempts to paper mache, water colors, coloring in a chick, and so many crafts that we can be here all night. We are lucky that our nieghbors love her so much that they always leave her some type of material to play with whether its newspaper for her table or butterflies to decorate with, we are fortunate to know Cirene, Resat, and Liz. Amaury and Maria always give us food from their other place and Melvin also remembers Daniela.

We are still breastfeeding more when she is teething and not feeling well and when we keep her busy she doesn’t even mention it until I sit down. That is the trigger. I have also had to breastfeed her zebra, frog, teddy bear, and baby dolls. And then after I do that she says and Nene for Daniela. It is a trick to get me to breastfeed her lol . She is drinking apple juice, frappes made at home, and water. Last month she had her first congested cough. We cured that with Echniacea and Elderberry syrup.

She has also been hitting ugh! The good the bad and the ugly tantrums are the worst. Sometimes we will be singing and wap in my face. Other times things escalate and she wacks Raul and I. We are reading up on how to handle these situations and one thing I read was to hold her hands and gently speak to her about hitting. I have been trying this more than the angry don’t do that speech.

Everytime we see baby pictures of Daniela, I look at the 27 month old in front of me and say damn time flies so quickly. We have started potting training but lightly, she still goes barefoot to GreatGrandma Lydias and they still get on our case about her taking her shoes off.

Daniela did meet Jonathan this month and since his visit with us was very short, 30 minutes, we were not able to see them interact. Another time then.

Did I say she loves to watch herself sing on video? Yeah she will say Daniela Bailando Videos and just watch videos of herself singing and dancing and then tries to imitate herself all over again. Sometimes she will sleep through the night but very rarely does it happen. It happened two nights in a row and I felt great. But that was short lived.

This month Daniela was also saying “Okay” to everything I would tell her to do and she would continue to do what we did not want her to do. Testing Testing 1,2,3

Today we had a conversaton. I asked her where was JuanGa’s bone, she said Over there (bedroom). I said go get it, She said I don’t see it.

We also spoke to our friend Zulekya about her little routines and how she gets upset when Dad has to take over a certian routine and she suggested little picture books. So we bought some for 2 bucks and I am starting to draw her routines.

She really does so many things independently like picking out her clothes, taking them off to shower, attempting to put them on. She is good for her age at putting things back so she knows where to play with them the next time. If she can’t find something she will say “donde esta…”

She hugs and says hi to lots of people and sings and dances in public. She dances and sings everywhere. Happy Feet is one of the movies she knows some words to the songs and imitiates the tap dancing. We are amazed at how she will concentrate on something and try to repeat it.

So many little anecdotes and sometimes no time to write them down in this place for her to read. Her dad shares his side on his blog and we will update little things on Facebook. Like her learning the names of the chess pieces and running to Raul. She wants to help with setting the table for breaksfast and announces loudly for everyone to eat. She is sitting with us at the big table and sometimes uses her little table for snacks.

We are lucky to have a healthy lady.