Archives for January 2006

We’re Cruising Now!

Allison’s reaching new milestones daily it seems. Today she showed her cruising skills, moving from her Leapfrog learning table to the coffee table (learning table was next to the coffee table). She managed to turn her body and feet 90 degrees – to position herself in front of the coffee table – and then move further down the coffee table itself. Steve was the first to witness this. I saw it replayed a few minutes later. She’s still a bit wobbly but getting more confident every day.

Not only is she moving around readily, but she’s also waving her arm and hand bye-bye. Last Friday she waved bye to Patty as Patty was leaving. Today she waved to Steve when he walked into her bedroom this morning. This continued throughout the day – I think I even saw her waving to Bisco under the kitchen table!

We’re the bowels…

Steve almost spit out his dinner tonight trying not to laugh. Several weeks ago Katherine “graduated” from the Leapfrog Letter Factory to the Word Factory DVD (although she still loves watching both). With the former she learned all her letters (upper and lower) and phenomes. With the latter she’s now learning about vowels and how letters make words. One of the first songs on the DVD goes like this “A E I OU, we’re the vowels, we’re the glue. We stick words together, we’re very sticky letters…” Tonight we were singing away as Katherine was scribbling on her easel and Steve and I were eating dinner. Katherine’s rendition went something like this “A E I O U, we’re the bowels, we’re the glue…” Needless to say we think we set her straight…”Vvvv, not Bbbbb”

Reading books now has new meaning for Katherine. Her favorites these days include Amelia Bedelia, Carl and Clifford. I’ve started to use the cover pages as a way to have Katherine identify letters and me to sound them out. She said tonight “R E D B O O K” – and we sounded out “RED.” Anyway, we’ll keep persevering to see when she gets to the next stage of putting together “B and AT, C and AT, etc.”

Allison’s On the Move!!

Yes…Allison is now crawling. She took her first observed forward crawl this past Monday morning. I was watching Allison while Katherine and Patty were off on an outing. I was riffling through plastic containers full of Katherine’s old clothes. Allison was rolling around with her toys. I looked over to see her reaching for a toy just out of reach. What did she do? She schooched her foot underneath her. But instead of rolling to the side as she had been doing, she pushed off and inched forward. Since Monday she’s gained speed – even Patty on Friday (after only two days away) exclaimed that Allison was moving much more quickly – almost anywhere she wanted to go at will.

What else? She is now walking forward when we’re holding her body or hands. This also started early last week. On Wednesday I took the girls to my mom’s house for lunch. Allison surprised her grandma by walking back and forth between us – with us holding her body – slowly but surely putting one foot in front of another. Now she’s gotten very good at asserting her will. She turns her head in the direction she wants to go. Once we help position her body in the right place she starts to move her feet!

Her other source of massive excitement is the coffee table in the family room and the ottoman in her nursery. What’s the attraction? She can stand and bang her hand against the coffee table and inspect the bumper around the table. I also put toys on top so she can bat them down, have me pick them up. On Tuesday we spent a whole 15 minutes or so hanging out at the coffee table. Anytime we’re near it, she’ll roll to it and give me the look “Get me up, will you please?”

The next development floored Patty – although I have yet to see this. Yesterday Allison was at Patty’s sisters house playing with a wooden table toy. She put her hands on the top of the table from a sitting position and pulled herself to a standing position!

Now that she’s more active, Allison is chowing down much more food. Previously she’d eat maybe 6-8 spoonful’s of oatmeal consisting of one tablespoon of dried oatmeal and a little formula. Now she’ll eat twice that amount more quickly. For lunch and dinner she eats easily two ice cube sized portions of sweet potato, peas/brown rice, carrots, or summer veggie medley, etc. She also eats very thinly diced banana pieces from my fingers. I managed to coax her into picking up a piece – although she’s very adept at picking up her O’s and stuffing them in her mouth with a pincer grip.

Tea Party

Katherine and I went to a small little tea house in Redmond last Friday much to her delight. The whole tea party thing started the week before when I told her that we had a special surprise: we were going to a real tea house on Friday with her little friend and her mother! For two whole days she kept asking “is today Friday?” I also told her that we were going to use real tea cups and a real tea pot. After she climbed out of her tub, we had this exchange:

Katherine: “Is it bigger than this?” waving her pink tea kettle from her play kitchen

Christine: “Yes, it’s much bigger”

Katherine: running back and waving her beige pitcher “is it bigger than this?”

Christine: “Yes”

Katherine: waving at tea kettles on her PJs “how about this?”

The next two days she informed my mom, Patty and Dad that she was going to a tea party. I was very clear with her that she HAD to listen to me and use manners at the tea house if she ever wanted to back. On Friday she tried sooo hard to behave. We ended up waiting half an hour to be seated since we had four little girls with moms. The girls used the opportunity to read books with us. Then we sat at the tables waiting for our tea pots and food to arrive.

Katherine’s eyes bugged out when she got her real porcelain tea cup and saucer. She first tried her tea “I don’t like this” and then settled on my strawberry and cream herbal tea. We negotiated that she would get one very small brown sugar cube with it, and she drank it very carefully with both hands.

Then the food on the platter arrived. Jam sandwiches, carefully cut fruit and a small round brownie were arranged artfully on a pink platter. Her eyes got even bigger. Katherine ended up eating all the sandwiches, half the fruit and the brownie. She loved the experience and informed me that she wanted to go back!

Listening to Mom and Dad

Steve and I are working on our overall approach to discipline. With Katherine getting more adroit at “negotiation” we’re having to be very careful about the precedents that we set. For instance, on a couple rare occasions, Katherine managed to venture out of the house in her ballerina outfit. Now she is pushing very hard to do so again telling me “I wore my ballerina outfit to Subway!” She also wants to wear this outfit in the mornings before school and after school and then after her bath over her PJs!! Needless to say, we’re setting down some clear guidelines about the ballerina outfit not leaving the house, not being worn before school or over her PJs…

We decided to resurrect the potty training rocks telling her that when she fills a small cup with rocks that she can have specific tea party book now residing on top of the fridge and have a small tea party. She has the choice of having a tea party at home (courtesy of yours truly) or at the little tea house in Redmond – ONLY after she fills her cup. Surprisingly she says that she wants a tea party at home, with Allison, me and Steve!

The good news is that she responds well to semi-bribery, now helping to clean up her toys before bed to earn a rock, and that we’ve got a very attractive incentive model when we need it. She wasn’t very excited about getting her tea party book after filling her cup – having a mini-meltdown at the mall after I bought it – but she’s accepted that that’s just the way it is. 🙂 Now if we could only get her to stop freaking out over that pink ballerina outfit!!

What did you say?!?

It’s been a busy learning month for both Allison and Katherine. Allison is starting to use sounds to form words – “ish” and “ada” and now “dada!”

“Ish” indeed refers to “fish” – a plastic fish that she loves to chew on in the tub. And, “dada” seems to refer to both me and Steve. The former came about last week as Patty was giving Katherine a bath. She handed Allison a plastic fish to chew on and repeated “fish” several times. To her and Katherine’s astonishment, Allison started saying “ish” softly and then more loudly. At first, I thought this was a case of Allison learning a sound and practicing it. But…several days ago she saw and started to reach for the fish on the bath counter while saying “ish.”

“dada” came about two days ago. I had been practicing with Allison after hearing “adat” or “adad.” According to a book I’ve been reading (scientist in the crib), first words often consist of “dada,” “mama,” and “tata” (Katherine’s former nickname!). After about a day of me saying “adad, adada, dada,” Allison is now practicing this word. She decided to practice this morning as a matter of fact…at 5AM…while I was changing her diaper! My response was, “Allison: can you please learn how to say mama?”

Katherine is becoming a skilled negotiator. Today she informed me that she hadn’t watched TV or any movies in the morning with Dad, so could I please turn on Elmo in the minivan? She also picks up and uses words without fully realizing their meaning. She told Paulette today, “can I please have some attention?” When Patty asked her if she knew what that meant, she admitted that she didn’t, but she wanted it!

Moving, Moving, Moving

Allison has been rolling around for some time now. The last several days she’s been crawling – backwards, sideways and almost forwards. The motion resembles that of an inchworm. She lifts her backside and legs, positions them underneath her body and pushes with unpredictable direction. When I put my hand behind her feet, she pushes forward. I expect that she’ll be crawling within a couple weeks. Walking will soon follow, since she can now stand and hold onto tables for fairly long periods of time.

Growing

Allison and I took Katherine to her 3 year checkup last Thursday. Funny enough we got to the checkup room and I placed Allison on the checkup table. Her face crumpled and she began to cry – thinking that she was going to be stripped, measured and prodded!

Katherine was very stoic – no crying during her Hep A shot. She also weighed in at 30.2 lbs (50%) and 36.75 inches (50%). This is consistent with past measurements where she’s tended to be 50-75% height and 25% weight.

Allison is FINALLY filling out. We’ve been feeding her organic oatmeal, pears, vegetables this past week three times a day. She ate extremely well today, wolfing down a big portion of cereal and all the vegetables that Patty and I offered her. One key learning is that Allison is a “self-feeder.” Once she starts to fill up, she grabs the spoon and directs it towards her mouth. Good thing we have a washable, nylon cover on the high chair.

I’ll post more pictures later this week.