By Leaps and Bounds

Cathleya's on her second week of diaperless days at Daycare. The Day Care Lady (DCL) asked me about two months ago if I would bring in some panties for Cathleya cuz she thought she (DCL) was ready to start the adventure. I, on the other hand, was not prepared for such a challenge. I didn't want to be one of those moms that pushes their kids to do things way too early.

But nowadays Cathleya has shown that she can tell us when she needs to go, will hold it in for a few minutes if she must, and does her business in the potty without fuss. And she's interested. The articles in the parenting magazines always say to follow your child's queues. The DCL started putting Cathleya on the potty since nearly a year old. She hasn't pooped in her diaper in months.

So last week was her first week. She did very well. Three accidents on Monday and one tiny one on Wednesday. That's it. Yesterday she had a few, but Mondays are always reset days. She gets off track on the weekends and needs to get reset to the scheduled daycare life come Monday.

Its amazing how advanced she is for her age. An Auntie from Cerritos compared her to a three year old. Just watching how she eats fruit out of a cup with a fork by herself. Auntie said she has concentration and coordination like a three year old. And her vocabulary, speech, and articulation are very developed too. She's always been our little over achiever. I know she'll do great things as an adult. It makes me proud to see how smart she is, and yet I hope she doesn't grow up too fast.

Lately she's been singing songs with the melody. Granted, sometimes she misses verses or mixes two songs together. Twinkle twinkle have you any wool? How I wonder L M N O P. Okay that's just Daddy. And she loves drawing. Her favorite things to ask us to draw are fences and birthday candles. Her lines and circles are getting quite good. You can see the concentration and determination on her face. She's also more interested in her cardboard puzzles these days too. Not the build a picture kind, but the horse goes here the cow goes there kind.

And we can't forget the Legos. She's got a ton of the big Legos. She'll build up her "castle," even standing on her stool to build it higher, then she'll say "It's gonna fall! It's gonna fall!!," swat it with her hand, and giggle as everything crashes to the ground. Its quite entertaining to watch.

Another Cathleya moment, that I haven't had the pleasure of experiencing yet, is the dandelion search at the park after daycare. "I wanna find one, Daddy! Just one, Daddy, just one." With arms stretched out that's the signal for Daddy to pick me up and walk around the whole park until we find one dandelion. So Daddy will do his part and walk back and forth all over the park until he finds the one lone dandelion. He puts her down in front of it and she says, "I found one, Daddy. I found one!" I hope I can record that one day.

My baby's almost two. Time is definitely flying.