This month has a bit of a challenge in terms of her schedule. For a few weeks, I noticed that it takes her a really long time to fall asleep. She'll play in her bed for like an hour or more before she sleeps off. Most of the time I have to go in and remind her it's bedtime (I usually wait for 30 minutes or so before going in and sometimes this happens 2 or 3 times before she will finally go to sleep). This means that there have been days where she only sleeps close to 11 pm (we usually put her down around 9.30pm). Because she takes so long to sleep she'll wake up late the next day (as late as 9.30am) and then the whole day is affected. When I put her down for her nap around 2.30pm, she will take ages to sleep as well. Over a few days her schedule has been altered so that most days she wakes around 9 and naps close to 4.30pm. I usually wake her around 6pm so her bedtime doesn't get too disrupted. But overall, everything is all over the place. I'm trying to slowly bring it back to a more reasonable time but so far it's been hit and miss.
I read that over-tiredness may be the reason she takes so long to sleep so I tried putting her down for her nap earlier (like 2 pm) to see how it goes....didn't work. I' m wondering if maybe she's not tired enough. Now that it's winter, we don't really go out much (even playgroup takes place indoors so she doesn't get much physical activity). Sigh....so confusing. Also she's been having a lot of night wakings recently. Usually once (sometimes twice every night). It's usually around 4 a.m. (the second time is usually closer to 7am). I usually have to go down and tell her to lie down again. Which she does and usually she goes back to sleep pretty quickly. I can't figure out why she wakes up (dreams maybe?).
Other than that, things are going pretty well. I've been doing tot school with her for the past few weeks. Still not very consistent, but I try to do it at least a few minutes daily. I realise if I don't have too high expectations it's possible to do at least 1 activity a day. So far we've done some gluing (which she did very neatly), cutting with scissors and a lot of letter recognitions. I'll try to put up weekly post of what goes on during these sessions once they're a bit more organized. But for now I can really see it helps. Having this structure helps me to expose her to a lot more stuff than what is normally available in our day. Things like colours, shapes, vocabulary and fine-motor activities are much easier to expand on with this. There's a whole load of websites with moms putting up activities for toddlers so the ideas are endless.
I notice she knows most of her alphabets already, she mixes up a few of them: like b and d, p and q, k and x, v and y but overall she knows most of the uppercase and lowercase letters. She refers to them as big and little (thanks to Dr. Seuss' ABC book). She's also started singing Baa Baa Black sheep. Almost all the words except a few left out. And a part of the ABC song, it gets a bit muddled after 'L'.
On the eating front, her appetite seems to have decreased. I notice that most meals she only eats about 4 oz compared to her previous 6 oz. of food (I actually weigh her food out since I'm so bad at portioning.) She used to eat about 1 oz. meat, 2 oz. veg, and 3 oz rice. But nowadays she struggles to finish. I'm trying not to get stressed out over it and just let her eat what she wants but every once in a while I'll forget and try to cajole/ force her to eat more. I really need to relax on this. A lot of resources (what I mean is internet, of course) seem to suggest that a child's portion is roughly a tablespoon for each age. So in Meera's case it would be something like 2 tablespoons each of rice, veg and meat (give and take). Going by that, she is definitely eating enough. So I need to chill and not force her to finish her food. Sigh...easier said than done!
As for potty training, things are going great. We've even a few days where we go out and she uses the toilets the whole time. Of course I am not 100% confident so I wear pull-ups just in case. But she will tell me when she needs to go and so far has been able to hold it long enough for us to get to a toilet (peeing and pooping!).
