State of the Daisy
This is going to be a dull entry for most people to read, so I bequeath forgiveness upon everyone who chooses not to read it. Amendment: I don't expect ANYONE to read it. It's just that one of the reasons I have this blog--the main reason, at this point--is to have a record of Daisy's babyhood later. I have been wanting to write "update" entries to get the details down about what she's like at different ages. When she was an infant I really believed I'd never forget any of it, so vivid and intense it all seemed, but of course, I've learned since then that things do get blurry after awhile--and then you are very grateful if you bothered to write it all down. So, I don't want to be so hung up on whether or not it's going to be interesting for people to read, or whether it sounds self-indulgent (my typical hang-ups). I just want to write my record down and have it for later. I'm going to try to do that now, at least once a month.
Daisy's 15-and-a-half month State of the Daisy update
Daisy has been taking some steps lately, but she is not doing what I could comfortably call "walking" yet. It is very cute-- SHE calls it walking. It is a little scary to behold because she tries to go very fast to get from point A (a beloved person) to point B (another beloved person). Usually the last part of the "walk" involves a free-fall into point B. I have been nervous about her taking more spills since my horrible, regrettable error the other night-- in my own view, the worst mistake I've made as a mother thus far. We were having a tough night and I think I was more discombobulated than usual; she'd had diarrhea and was doing a lot of crying, a rare thing for her, as I was getting her ready for bed. I finally got her to sleep on the little cot in her room, and then looked away for a few seconds while I turned on the space heater. I turned back just in time to see her rolling off the bed and hitting the floor! It wasn't a very long fall, and I got her back to sleep almost immediately--she only cried for seconds--but the next day she had a big bruise on her forehead.
So the motor skills have been developing some lately. It's still a bit funny to me to say that, since so many of her younger friends have been walking for months now, and some of them are even RUNNING at this point. But her most amazing developments have certainly been in the verbal department. I am almost at a loss to describe them adequately. At one year, I tried writing down all her words in a list, but by now it would be completely impossible to do that because she has so many, and every day it seems like she says something new. This morning at her usual 6:30, Mark and I could hear her yelling from her crib, "One on top!" I guess this is her new and most amazing thing--stringing words together. "One on top" is a reference to one of her favorite books, Dr. Seuss's _Ten Apples Up on Top_. Daisy puts everything "up on top," which is very cute but not always a good thing. Yesterday she put her scrambled eggs "up on top" and then spent the day with greasy, buttery hair, and this morning she put her grapes on her head.
I think it is very cool that she is putting words together--she also says, "One, two, buck" to prompt you to say the nursery rhyme that starts "One, two, buckle my shoe"--but there is something else very cool going on verbally that is a little harder to describe. I guess it's that she's using words more purposefully, in contexts that make them more meaningful. A few days ago, she was on the swing at the playground at my parents' house and she said, "Fwing! Happy!" several times; I think this was the first time she told us how she was feeling, using a word. It happened again today when my mom arrived. She was "walking" back and forth between us, saying, "Walk! Happy!" I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to hear my little girl telling us she is happy.
When we read books, she points everything out by name, and it just seems like there's nothing she can't get now. She knows all the body parts: arm, hand, fingers ("fing"), foot, toes, leg, knee, "button" (belly-button), face, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair...even "teeth." She definitely knows all her domestic farm animals and most of the animals in the zoo, too-- and "monk," "zeba," "raffe" (giraffe), "lion," and "peng" (penguin), fish, bird.... She can point out the main people in her life in a photo album and say their names: Mama, Dada, "Gammae" (my mother), and Nana (Mark's mother). She has also pointed out Grandpa and Aunt Sam, although I don't know if she says their names. She puts a phone to her ear and says, "Ho? Daize!" (Hello, it's Daisy.) She uses an article now, sort of, with a noun--she'll say "da bus" sometimes instead of just "bus." She also makes connections are surprising to me--so for example, she knows the yard outside her window is filled with "dirt," a big plot of dirt, but I was surprised when she pointed to some tiny specks of dirt on the bus window the other day and said, "Dirt." Her attentiveness and retention of information is sometimes so astonishing to me. We have a fairly new album of children's songs, and the other day in the car she started saying "Puff! Puff!" emphatically during "Yellow Submarine"; as it turns out, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is the next song on the album, though that's something I myself didn't remember.
More often than not, now, she can tell me what she wants or is thinking using words. She asks for grapes ("grap-ay"), apple ("app"), "pasta" (anything made out of noodles), water ("wawa"), a snack ("nack"); she says "nurse" or "baba" to let us know which of those she's wanting; she even says "nap" to tell us she's tired. She asks for her "bath" by name, she tells us food is "hot" or "cold"; she brings books to me and says "read"; she asks to go to the "park" or on the "fwing." She says "sand," "oshe" (ocean), "ball," "book," "phone"--can name pretty much any of her toys ("cars," "box" for stacking blocks, "lamby" or "dog" or "ted" for a stuffed animal--"duck" or "ducky" for her rubber duck--"monk" for her monkey.... She says "baby" for her baby doll or a real baby. One of my favorite things she does now is say "hug" when she gives a toy a hug. For a long time now we've been able to get hugs by saying, "Give Mama [or Dada] love." She's not so big on kissing, though she'll sort of grudgingly submit to being kissed by wincing and offering you her cheek. She doesn't GIVE kisses, however, at least not to humans (she'll put her mouth on a toy to give it a kiss).
She describes books more specifically than just "book," too. For example, if she wants _In the Night Kitchen_, she asks for "Mickey" (the little boy in the book).
Another amusing thing is that she associates Mark with coffee, appropriate since he does drink so much of it. When she hears the coffee grinder in the morning she says, "Dada! Coffee." She has a fabulous sense of humor, loves to laugh, loves jokes. She is happiest in familiar circumstances and around people she's used to. One thing I am learning--should say "have learned"--is that she's not too happy in large groups or situations where there's a lot of stimulating activity. This is the only time, other than when she's extremely tired or in discomfort, that she gets fussy. She can get to the point of a tantrum when she's in a large group and there's too much going on. (Oh, I guess in honesty I should add that she has tantrums when we try to take her off the "fwing," too. At the playground, that is now the only thing she wants to do, and she gets very upset when she's taken off, even when she's been on there an hour.) If I spend the whole day with her, or if it's a small group of people she's familiar with, she is usually totally fine all day. She is even good in the car, and has been ever since I got my new car with CD player. As long as I play CDs she likes, she will not make a fussy sound the whole time she's in the car, even if she's in there for an hour or two (and she's capable of staying awake that whole time, too!). She reads books, identifies things outside her window (horses, cows, houses, etc.), or listens to her songs contentedly.
She has been sleeping for about 11 hours at night, from roughly 7:30 to roughly 6:30. She takes one nap, usually around 11 in the morning, an hour and a half to two hours long. Our nighttime ritual has been pretty consistent and reliable. She eats dinner, has a bath (usually), maybe has a book or two, then has nursing or a bottle and goes to bed. So sleeping and bedtime have been okay for awhile now (though I'm aware it can always change); feeding her, however, continues to be a struggle. There is almost no food she seems to like a great deal, though the winners would have to be sliced-up grapes, Cheerios, broccoli, and noodles. She also likes prune juice (!!!!!), which she calls "poon," and her Organics cereal bars. But... it is a struggle. If we can get her to eat other things, we can never get her to eat much of it. She eats very small meals and never with relish. A lot of times we have to sort of trick her into eating, or distract her with songs or antics and slip food into her mouth here and there. And a lot of times she just accumulates the food in her mouth without swallowing it and then spits it back out.
Okay, I think I'll end this update for now, but will be making more of an effort to record these details each month!
Daisy's 15-and-a-half month State of the Daisy update
Daisy has been taking some steps lately, but she is not doing what I could comfortably call "walking" yet. It is very cute-- SHE calls it walking. It is a little scary to behold because she tries to go very fast to get from point A (a beloved person) to point B (another beloved person). Usually the last part of the "walk" involves a free-fall into point B. I have been nervous about her taking more spills since my horrible, regrettable error the other night-- in my own view, the worst mistake I've made as a mother thus far. We were having a tough night and I think I was more discombobulated than usual; she'd had diarrhea and was doing a lot of crying, a rare thing for her, as I was getting her ready for bed. I finally got her to sleep on the little cot in her room, and then looked away for a few seconds while I turned on the space heater. I turned back just in time to see her rolling off the bed and hitting the floor! It wasn't a very long fall, and I got her back to sleep almost immediately--she only cried for seconds--but the next day she had a big bruise on her forehead.
So the motor skills have been developing some lately. It's still a bit funny to me to say that, since so many of her younger friends have been walking for months now, and some of them are even RUNNING at this point. But her most amazing developments have certainly been in the verbal department. I am almost at a loss to describe them adequately. At one year, I tried writing down all her words in a list, but by now it would be completely impossible to do that because she has so many, and every day it seems like she says something new. This morning at her usual 6:30, Mark and I could hear her yelling from her crib, "One on top!" I guess this is her new and most amazing thing--stringing words together. "One on top" is a reference to one of her favorite books, Dr. Seuss's _Ten Apples Up on Top_. Daisy puts everything "up on top," which is very cute but not always a good thing. Yesterday she put her scrambled eggs "up on top" and then spent the day with greasy, buttery hair, and this morning she put her grapes on her head.
I think it is very cool that she is putting words together--she also says, "One, two, buck" to prompt you to say the nursery rhyme that starts "One, two, buckle my shoe"--but there is something else very cool going on verbally that is a little harder to describe. I guess it's that she's using words more purposefully, in contexts that make them more meaningful. A few days ago, she was on the swing at the playground at my parents' house and she said, "Fwing! Happy!" several times; I think this was the first time she told us how she was feeling, using a word. It happened again today when my mom arrived. She was "walking" back and forth between us, saying, "Walk! Happy!" I can't tell you how good it makes me feel to hear my little girl telling us she is happy.
When we read books, she points everything out by name, and it just seems like there's nothing she can't get now. She knows all the body parts: arm, hand, fingers ("fing"), foot, toes, leg, knee, "button" (belly-button), face, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair...even "teeth." She definitely knows all her domestic farm animals and most of the animals in the zoo, too-- and "monk," "zeba," "raffe" (giraffe), "lion," and "peng" (penguin), fish, bird.... She can point out the main people in her life in a photo album and say their names: Mama, Dada, "Gammae" (my mother), and Nana (Mark's mother). She has also pointed out Grandpa and Aunt Sam, although I don't know if she says their names. She puts a phone to her ear and says, "Ho? Daize!" (Hello, it's Daisy.) She uses an article now, sort of, with a noun--she'll say "da bus" sometimes instead of just "bus." She also makes connections are surprising to me--so for example, she knows the yard outside her window is filled with "dirt," a big plot of dirt, but I was surprised when she pointed to some tiny specks of dirt on the bus window the other day and said, "Dirt." Her attentiveness and retention of information is sometimes so astonishing to me. We have a fairly new album of children's songs, and the other day in the car she started saying "Puff! Puff!" emphatically during "Yellow Submarine"; as it turns out, "Puff the Magic Dragon" is the next song on the album, though that's something I myself didn't remember.
More often than not, now, she can tell me what she wants or is thinking using words. She asks for grapes ("grap-ay"), apple ("app"), "pasta" (anything made out of noodles), water ("wawa"), a snack ("nack"); she says "nurse" or "baba" to let us know which of those she's wanting; she even says "nap" to tell us she's tired. She asks for her "bath" by name, she tells us food is "hot" or "cold"; she brings books to me and says "read"; she asks to go to the "park" or on the "fwing." She says "sand," "oshe" (ocean), "ball," "book," "phone"--can name pretty much any of her toys ("cars," "box" for stacking blocks, "lamby" or "dog" or "ted" for a stuffed animal--"duck" or "ducky" for her rubber duck--"monk" for her monkey.... She says "baby" for her baby doll or a real baby. One of my favorite things she does now is say "hug" when she gives a toy a hug. For a long time now we've been able to get hugs by saying, "Give Mama [or Dada] love." She's not so big on kissing, though she'll sort of grudgingly submit to being kissed by wincing and offering you her cheek. She doesn't GIVE kisses, however, at least not to humans (she'll put her mouth on a toy to give it a kiss).
She describes books more specifically than just "book," too. For example, if she wants _In the Night Kitchen_, she asks for "Mickey" (the little boy in the book).
Another amusing thing is that she associates Mark with coffee, appropriate since he does drink so much of it. When she hears the coffee grinder in the morning she says, "Dada! Coffee." She has a fabulous sense of humor, loves to laugh, loves jokes. She is happiest in familiar circumstances and around people she's used to. One thing I am learning--should say "have learned"--is that she's not too happy in large groups or situations where there's a lot of stimulating activity. This is the only time, other than when she's extremely tired or in discomfort, that she gets fussy. She can get to the point of a tantrum when she's in a large group and there's too much going on. (Oh, I guess in honesty I should add that she has tantrums when we try to take her off the "fwing," too. At the playground, that is now the only thing she wants to do, and she gets very upset when she's taken off, even when she's been on there an hour.) If I spend the whole day with her, or if it's a small group of people she's familiar with, she is usually totally fine all day. She is even good in the car, and has been ever since I got my new car with CD player. As long as I play CDs she likes, she will not make a fussy sound the whole time she's in the car, even if she's in there for an hour or two (and she's capable of staying awake that whole time, too!). She reads books, identifies things outside her window (horses, cows, houses, etc.), or listens to her songs contentedly.
She has been sleeping for about 11 hours at night, from roughly 7:30 to roughly 6:30. She takes one nap, usually around 11 in the morning, an hour and a half to two hours long. Our nighttime ritual has been pretty consistent and reliable. She eats dinner, has a bath (usually), maybe has a book or two, then has nursing or a bottle and goes to bed. So sleeping and bedtime have been okay for awhile now (though I'm aware it can always change); feeding her, however, continues to be a struggle. There is almost no food she seems to like a great deal, though the winners would have to be sliced-up grapes, Cheerios, broccoli, and noodles. She also likes prune juice (!!!!!), which she calls "poon," and her Organics cereal bars. But... it is a struggle. If we can get her to eat other things, we can never get her to eat much of it. She eats very small meals and never with relish. A lot of times we have to sort of trick her into eating, or distract her with songs or antics and slip food into her mouth here and there. And a lot of times she just accumulates the food in her mouth without swallowing it and then spits it back out.
Okay, I think I'll end this update for now, but will be making more of an effort to record these details each month!
posted by Sarah Goss at 11:03 AM
8 Comments:
Sarah, it's so neat to read these run downs, so don't think they're boring. Also, it will be neat for Daisy when she's older... probably much older. ;) My uncle gave my mom a letter she wrte him in '78 and she let me read it. In it she talks about how I'm just starting to wake up from my nap and all the ways I had grown since he had last seen me. It was so neat to read about how she was feeling about it in the moment, rather than through memory. You're smart to put all this down.
wow, could I have used the word "neat" a few more times?? You'll have to excuse me, I'm in Tech week... :)
Not boring at all! Being so far away, across the country, it's so great to read about how she's doing--and what she's doing. And I agree, she'll love reading that when she gets older. My mom showed me some journal entries of hers from when I was a baby, and it sent chills along my spine, reading about her reactions to my accomplishments.
The first time I figured out how to roll from my stomach to my back, she wrote, in all caps: "WHAT A REMARKABLE BABY!" Gee, it still makes me feel good to think about that. Hmmm, no fair, I have to do so much more than that to impress people these days. :o)
I agree, it's good to document. And I agree (as you know) that some posts are for yourself more than for others.
Re: the language stuff, since she seems like she's at the point where she's grokking communication, is there another language she can learn from a family member? One of my biggest regrets (well, not MY regrets as it's not my fault per se) is not speaking more than one language fluently and yet coming from a family where 90% of the people speak at least two if not three, four, five languages. The world is so much smaller now that people who can get around or who are taught at a young age not to be afraid of other languages really have an advantage. I swear on a stack of Bibles, if I procreate, my kid is getting enrolled in Chinese school or getting an Indonesian nanny or something -- anything to avoid feeling the way I do at family gatherings or in Chinatown, which, in a nutshell, is left out.
Zzzzzz......
(just kidding!)
Actually I laughed several times while reading your Daisy 15-month review.
Like Lumenatrix I have several letters that my mom wrote to my grandmother, about what I was doing at a given time. Definitely fun to read many years later.
we look forward to the next update!
Wow, thank you all--so kind! And, Deb, I completely agree with you about the languages. Everyone on my side is sadly monolingual--although I guess my mom knows a smidgeon of Hebrew and Yiddish--but Mark's mom speaks something like four or five languages. She could probably teach Daisy, although of course Mark and I couldn't reinforce it at home.
I could be wrong, but I THINK I remember reading that even now it's a bit on the late side for Daisy to be picking up more languages... that certain types of sounds become normal for babies at a surprisingly young age. I think her vocal repertoire has already narrowed, even though she's only 15 months old. But it's not too late, of course!
Oh, heavenly days, it's not too late for her to learn more languages. Unless you were thinking of !Kung....
Babies are fascinating. Each of them develop at a different pace. Remember, development is triggered by need and environment. (And, finally, desire.) The recognition of emotion is impressive.
I wouldn't worry too much about her falling off her cot. It happens. If things like that *don't* happen to her, then she won't learn about negative consequences. So don't beat up on yourself.
And no, your updates are NOT boring. I would love to meet the 2 of you in person.
Yesterday I asked Daisy what we had seen at the park and she said, "LIONS! GRRRRR!" (The stone lions at the entrance to Sutro Heights Park). Also, she interrupted the reading of 2 of her favorite books this morning to give the books a hug, saying "HUG" while doing it. Those books were 10 Apples Up on Top and In The Night Kitchen. She has a book called HUG and she probably hugs it when nobody is looking.
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