Sunday, February 28, 2010
This last month has been a little calmer at least.
We're all adjusting to having a four year old with another on the way. Natalie has lots of questions about the baby and asks all the time. She's a little concerned about sharing her boo-boos but I keep explaining to her that babies can't have other foods and need boo-boos while she's able to eat other foods and therefore, doesn't need boo-boos as much. She's still very much aware that when she's all done with boo-boos, she'll get a bike but so far that hasn't provided the motivation to fully end nursing. She's down to once a day, at night before bed as I'm usually too sore to keep it up much more than that.No doubt, many would see the fact that she's still nursing as some failure on my part or a desire for me to hang onto to her youth or hold her back but that is definitely not the case. She still has a need for nursing and since nursing does provide immunity along with other benefits, I see no reason to force the issue. As it is, the issue may end up being forced when I have to return to the US to have the baby. We still have not fully decided if Natalie will be returning with me. John doesn't want me to be overwhelmed but I'm concerned with leaving her for two months or more, especially since John would have to find a baby sitter again. It's one of the many decisions we are trying to figure out as we stumble away along this pregnancy route again.
One of the things that Natalie still struggles with though is eating. Getting her to eat has been very much complicated by coming here to Korea. The food here isn't as familiar, and the things that she was used to eating are simply not here. We struggle with having a variety in our diet because there really isn't much of a variety here, at least not as far as Western foods go. The things we are used to finding easily at home are either rare and VERY expensive or simply non-existent. We've really had to compromise on many of the things we were strict about in the US. Wheat bread is impossible to find so that was one of the big changes. It's also been much harder to find things that don't have some form of sugar in them. Pasta is a bit of a constant and one of Natalie's diet staples. She does get a lot of fruit but many of the veggies are rather unfamiliar and there are few options as far as they go. Mostly, you find them fresh though it can be hard to find them at reasonable prices. Fruit is also pretty expensive and can go bad VERY quickly. John and I have both agree that we'll never complain about $.49/pound bananas at Wal-Mart again. That's a steal compared to how much they cost here, especially since they go bad in a day or less. With apples, you're limited to one kind though fortunately, it's a kind that's pretty sweet and tasty so we tend to go through a lot of apples. Natalie goes through a lot of strawberries too when they are in season which, ironically, tends to be in the winter time. She's not big on oranges though so that's a struggle and getting her to eat a lot of things period is a huge struggle.
I finally had to put my foot down and tell her that if she didn't eat dinner, she could not nurse at bedtime. I have wondered if nursing hasn't affected her eating at dinner so I wanted her to be more aware that she still needs to eat food at night even if she is going to be nursing at bedtime. Otherwise, there was no reason to let her nurse. She still doesn't really eat meat though and I have no idea how to fix that. It's just a huge struggle to get her to eat period and I really hope that once we return to the states that will finally get better. In the meantime, we ALL struggle to really get much of a variety in our diets at all, it just takes a lot more effort when all you really have to cook with is a microwave and a two burner stove.
She is picking up a lot though. Since John puts a lot of movies on the computer for her, she's been working her way around and figuring out how to use the computer to get to her movies and play them. She can play some easy games on there as well. She was doing some coloring on the computer but that comes a little too easy for her since she doesn't have to worry about coloring outside of the lines. Still, she has a lot of fun creating pictures with crazy colors. She's gotten more into writing and can write her name by herself now. She pretty much did that on her own likely remembering some of the practicing she did last year on the tracing paper. With some help, she can write a short note to her best friend here and make a card with a picture (but she'd rather have her dad draw the picture for her since he can actually draw decently). She's really big on hopping on one foot. That seems to be her favorite thing to do right now. She enjoys going to the park and will start bugging John to do that at the oddest times. She is growing somewhat but still at a fairly slow pace. That's fine by me as then, I'm not going through clothes so quickly here but she's somewhere around 39 or 40 inches now. I don't know how much she weighs but probably not much more than 40 pounds since John is still able to carry her everywhere. She's fully potty trained including overnights though she has the occasional accident both during the day and overnight. The day ones aren't too bad but the night ones can be pretty wet. John won't let me put anything on her other than panties though. She hates having her hair brushed and fights us almost every night about it. She still expects her dad to wipe her bottom but he's finally starting to put his foot down about that. I will not do it at all. She plays pretty well by herself though she tends to talk loudly in a high pitched voice. She has John play with her and has him pretend to be various things including Friendly Monster and Wall-e. She has imaginary friends and this week, it's a number of Carebears and Twinkle who I guess is a star. She enjoys Veggie Tales (though I'd rather run from the room screaming) and John has corrupted her by getting her into Mr. Bean. And she still tends to attract a lot of attention when we go out though it doesn't seem to be as intense as it was. She's gotten better about being on the subway and she doesn't mooch anywhere near as much as she used to.
Overall, she's growing up and becoming more of a little lady with likes and dislikes. For example, while she likes pretty much all colors, she prefers pink and purple the most. She's just getting more and more complex and more of an individual every day. Still, I look forward to the day when she stops whining for things!
| posted by Janeen at 11:31 PM
