Daniela has blossomed over the last two months since we moved to San Juan. She dances, sings, and is more sociable than when we first moved to the building. She takes JuanGA’s bone, my rolling pin, or the vacuum cleaner extension and uses that as a Microphone.
Her friends are Cirene, Resat, Liz, Melvin, Doña Isabel, Don Ramon, Amaury, Maria, and Don Manuel. She knows the names of the dogs in the building along with a few of the other neighbors. For her second halloween experience, this was her first real dress up and go knocking for treats. Our neighbors got together and decided to have some treats for her. This past month Tio Tito had surgery and Grandma Sylvette was in Ponce taking care of Great-Grandma Lydia and Tio post-op. We picked her up today and she met all the nice neighbors who had little treats for Daniela.
Over the past two months I have gotten to take Daniela for walks along the beach and have gotten to know our neighbors. It was tough for me to move into a smaller space and I was a bit anti-social. But I had to snap out of it because I saw how people were engaging and wanting to get to know us. Raul is always sociable and I just took longer to come around. The hormones are still wacky within me but I think I am okay now.
We are still breastfeeding and also trying to give Daniela other things like natural juices from the market to drink and almond chocolate milk. But she still prefers boobies. LOL. We also hit several milestones with her talking. She finally said Se Acabo instead of TA TA Um. She is putting sentences together such as “Daniela is Sitting” If Juanga tries to eat her food, “JuanGa Comer Avena or Pan” and she will imitate JuanGA’s movements with his tongue.
She will also rat me out to Raul if I tell her not to do something or take something away from her. She races us to our office chairs and now all the chairs in the house are hers. One day our friend Bianca came to the house and she ran over to tell me “Bianca Sitting Chair de Mama” I had to laugh because she knows what is Mama’s and what is Papa’s.
I have her help me with the laundry and while I put the clothes in the dryer or washer, I monitor while she puts the money in the slots. She is still painting like crazy and painting herself more than the paper at times. We go for long walks and end up in the water. I don’t go all the way in but far enough that she gets wet.
She is imitiating our neighbors husband Resat when he exercises outside. And they have taken so kindly to her. It was Cirene’s idea to do the trick or treat and she was the one who bought Daniela the princess outfit. Liz Maria and Cirene bought her a kickboard after spending a few minutes kicking with LIz’s kickboard.
On the day of Daniela’s 22 montday, we had the best beach weather and water was so clear and still you could see the bottom. It was a great beach day because most of the favorite neighbors were outside. And then Hurricane Sandy struck the caribbean and the U.S. You can google that when you get older Daniela to read about what happened.
But now the water is rough so we are waiting for better weather to use the kickboard.
We also took Daniela to her first Rock and Science concert. She loved the music and was fascinated by the lights and was dancing the whole time.
She is also biting and slapping at times and getting mad when she doesn’t get things her way. But we are not hitting and I am trying to remain as calm as possible. But I do raise my voice out of frustration at times and Raul has to remind me that I need to be calmer when I am reprimanding her. He is really good at this and she ends up crying to me when he has to. I still have not found the best way to handle this. I have to remember that she is struggling between independence and clinging to mom. One thing I have noticed about Daniela is that if she doesn’t like someone, she wont’ be nice or even say hi. It takes some time to get on her good side. But she doesn’t hold a grudge for too long and she gets that from Raul.
Titi Veronica got engaged to Rick and so pretty soon we will be hearing wedding bells for them.
As I am writing this, everyone is asleep. But I just couldn’t pass up writing about what a great time you had playing with your treats from Cirene Liz and DoñA ISABEL. I made them each a pumpkin with your handprints.