Mama of a Two Year Joy!

Hello ladies (& maybe gents),

 This past weekend my little bundle of joy reached the ripe age of two.

TWO WHOLE YEARS of ups and downs and all the drama and stress in between but here we are. Its been a blessed trip so far for sure. Anyways... Today I am going to be sharing a couple of the things I have learned so far being a single mama. Hopefully my unique insight of this whole parenting gig can help some of you, or at least be entertaining.

 ROUTINE ROUTINE ROUTINE! I cannot stress enough how much this has benefited not only my toddler but myself as well in getting things done. I go in to work @8 am m-f and we have gotten in the habit of waking up bright and early together and kind of spending time getting ready so as to not waste any moments that we have, Before I used to leave her asleep so that I could get ready alone until crunch time at the end where I would just wake her up to change her and put her in the car. Which in fact would make my morning a lot more stressful. I would always forget something! But now that we wake up together I've noticed that she doesn't need me to call her she just gets up and waits for to me to start changing her on the bed. Its so cute when we get to her babysitters she grabs her own sippy cup,  backpack, walks to the door and waves goodbye all on cue. We have established other routines in our lives that at first felt super orchestrated and  now they just help our day to day go more smoothly. I will probably go in detail on our routines in another post.

(Aria's make up face)

 I remember when I first found out I was expecting I swore I would never use that baby talk with my child. Unfortunately I have fallen victim into using it a couple goo-goos and gagas from time to time, but now that she is starting to construct sentences I've been really trying to perfect her vocabulary skills. As adorable as it is when they have there own words to express and explain things, like how she tells me mio mio when she wants to be carried or is sleepy, I want my toddler to be able to communicate to other people what she wants/needs without them giving me a confused look. The way I've been able to do this is Helping her repeat the proper way to say something until she gets it right a couple of times. And when she finally uses the term correctly I praise her for getting it right, she loves that she sometimes even claps for herself. It is possible for a baby to learn how to speak fluently. BTW she speak mostly Spanish but understands English well too.

 This brings me to the next thing I have learned with Aria, giving her a CARESS

frequently. I grew up with parents that weren't so, how can i say it, sweet. I mean please don't misinterpret it, they were very funny and playful when the time was right, but one thing I for sure wish to this day I had more of was the warmth of a mother per say. So I vowed to my daughter that I would not be cold to her. And let me just say that it felt super weird at first but once it became a thing for us it made her and I very happy. I love to cuddle with her and tell her how pretty she is, it brings out that funny smile she likes to make. It is possible to show tremendous love to your child without spoiling them, this is something that I never knew I would be able to project to a child.

(cheesy smile,Aria on the right)

 Alright, well obviously I have learned a lot more things with Aria the last couple of years but these are the most important to me so far. I know I still have a lot of challenges and hoops to go through and I pray that God grants me that privilege to continue being her mama.

Till next post,

-Jazmin