Pre-Toddler

Somewhere between 9.5 and 10 months of age, Siiri became a pre-toddler. Technically toddlers can walk. As I understand it, toddlers are the little balls of energy stumbling around on their own feet, climbing over stuff and throwing food. There is no proper link between baby and a toddler. Siiri started out as a baby, then advanced to a big baby with improved mobility and now she is almost everything I'd expect from a toddler.

Siiri has gained the most important skill of all - the ability to communicate what she wants. It came very suddenly. One moment she was simply pointing at things for the heck of it. It was simple entertainment for her. And then she started pointing at things to point my attention to that object. Feeding solids changed the most: in stead of passively being fed, Siiri is actively showing what she wants and when. She'll eat for a while and then she'll purse her lips and point toward her glass of water. She drinks a sip or two and then points toward her plate again.

Sometimes it's not easy to understand what she's trying to tell me so I start checking the options, "Do you want water?". She looks unimpressed and points again. "How about porridge?", again no. "Are you pointing at that banana there?" No, "Or that pear?" No. "But Siiri, there's nothing else in sight. ...I'll get these tissues out the way, maybe I just don't see it." And suddenly she gets really excited, YES YES YES. "What? Tissues?" YES YES YES. "No you can't have paper! You'll try to eat it! I know you!". I hold up a tissue and shake my head before I get them all out of her sight. "Well you can't have a paper tissue, but do you want porridge?". She looks at me, sighs and opens her mouth in expectation of the spoon.

Also, like a toddler, she has become a lot more energetic. She crawls over obstacles, uses anything OR ANYONE in arm's reach to pull herself up and apparently she has discovered that breastfeeding is much more fun when she's upside down. I was wondering when the upside-down phase begins. I had noticed that little children like to do everything in original positions. For 3-year olds sitting on the couch is most fun when dangling upside down over the backrest. And already at 10 months Siiri crawls over my stomach and suddenly stops, just so she can dangle there with a happy smile on her face. No one encourages children to try out creative positions, it's something they start on their own.

We also started potty training! By Estonian standards, some mothers would think, "WHAT?! You didn't start at 6 months?! How lazy you are!" and by USA standards, mothers would think, "WHAT?! Children are incapable of controlling their bladders until they're 3 years old! You are potty training her way too soon!". This is one of those very varied issues with strong opinions in both extremes. Me and Erkki just thought that we will start when the time is right. Well, the time seemed right so we introduced potty. We take it out about once a day and always offer lots of praise when it is used like intended. It's a method of persistent positive reinforcement and so far it's working perfectly. Kate, from a reality show called "Jon & Kate plus 8" used a similar method but she took it a step further. In stead of simply offering praise, she took photos of her children smiling next to a potty, inside was their very first diaper-free crap. Intention was to show her children that it IS a big deal and they should be very proud of themselves. That's the kind of picture the children would never want their future boyfriends to see.

Pfff, Siiri is growing up so fast. Such a stereotypical phrase, right? I actually like it. I love how Siiri points towards her water glass, I love how she shows more and more character and she is growing up to have a wonderfully strong personality. The downside is that I didn't have enough room here to talk about the non-baby topics, like the time on Monday when I casually opened the storage room door and the boiler was leaking like crazy! The light was turned on and even the power light on the boiler was on. GAAH! There was half an inch of water on the floor and our backup computer gadgets were in a cardboard box sitting in water. With Siiri on one arm, I resisted the initial urge to rush in and start saving stuff. I kept thinking, "Electrocution! Panic! DANGEROUS!" and I called Erkki for a voice of quick reason what to do. I put Siiri in her crib and ran to turn off electricity. She was so dumbfounded with the sudden rush she didn't even cry. Then I closed off water to the boiler and started to lift things out of the water. Siiri became restless but I couldn't have her crawling around so I rolled her crib out of the room so she'd have a nice view of me mopping the floor with a towel.

Our landlord is so amazing that we got a new boiler the next morning. The apartment is not damaged and everything returned to normal in no time. Yet I still get an adrenaline rush when I hear water trickling and I can't see the source of the sound.