Carolyn

Another Thing There’s No Entry For In The Baby Book

Sarah Firsts

Baby’s First Shiner.

Yep, Carrie’s got a black eye. Well, sort of – it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. She was carrying a hard plastic toy and tripped and fell onto it, and she’s got a nice reddish bruise on her eyelid and right below her eye. I’m expecting it to turn purple by tomorrow. There’s a tiny but very superficial part of me that’s concerned about whether it will be gone before her birthday party in two weeks…or better yet, by the time we get her hair cut next week. The rest of me is just extremely thankful that she didn’t seriously hurt herself. I’ll admit, my heart stopped for a split second when I saw that bright red mark right under her eye…I was thinking it was much worse than a bruise.

It’s scary being a mama.

Bookworm

Sarah Carolyn, Reading

Today I read Carrie at least 40 books. She brings one over to wherever I’m sitting, and when I take it she raises her arms to be picked up, settles into my lap and waits for me to read to her. It’s so sweet it makes my breath catch. And then, when we’re done reading the book, she signs “more”. Sometimes we read the same book 4 or 5 times before she tires of it and goes to get another. If we’re reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, and I don’t help her put her finger in all the holes in the foods, she grabs my hand to remind me that I’m supposed to be doing that. And I love it when we read books about dogs and she signs “dog” every time she hears me say the word.

The thing I find amazing is when Carrie digs through a pile of books to find two specific ones for me to read at bedtime or first thing in the morning – it’s part of those two “routines” to read two stories. She’s pretty good at only picking two, I guess because it’s one for each hand. And they’re not always the same two – she obviously knows specifically which books she wants to hear and recognizes the covers.

I love that I have a little bookworm on my hands, and I can’t wait until I can share all the wonderful books I read when I was young with her!

Is Your Mama a Llama?

Sarah Milestones

I think we have an official first word! Today Carolyn demonstrated that not only does she know how to say “llama”, but she knows exactly what it means. If I show her the llama, she’ll say “llama”; if I ask her to find her llama, she’ll go and pick it up.

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If you click on the image, it will open up a video (536 KB) of Carrie saying “llama”. She needed a little prompting for this one, she was too fascinated with the camera to care so much about the llama! (Sorry for the poor quality – the battery on the good video camera needs to be charged so I took the video with my cheap digital camera instead.)

Watching Carrie acquire language – both spoken and signed – is simply amazing. (Although it’s probably not as endlessly fascinating to anyone else as it is to me!)

Babies and Toothbrushes

Sarah Carolyn

Today Carrie and I went to a baby shower. She has met Nina (the guest of honor) once before, about 6 months ago. And although Carrie’s really starting to give lots of hugs to Denis and me, she hardly ever bestows them on anyone else. So I was absolutely shocked when she walked right up to where Nina was sitting on the couch and gave her a really long hug, right around her tummy. Do you think she knows there’s a baby in there?

And tonight we finally admitted that there is definitely a tooth in Carrie’s mouth – you can even feel it if you bravely stick your finger in there – so we broke out the toothbrush I bought for her when she was only 4 months old. It came with flouride-free fruit-flavored toothpaste, which Carrie apparently thought was divine. She got this puzzled little look on her face when I stuck the brush in, but then started munching away happily. (She didn’t read the directions on the box which clearly state it’s for brushing, not chewing.)

Eleven Months Old!

Sarah Monthly Updates

Dear Carolyn,

It’s only one more month until your first birthday! This time last year I was home on bedrest, watching you do somersaults and have hiccups and wondering what you’d be like. And now…now you’re a busy little toddler who still gets the hiccups and is trying to learn how to do somersaults.

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I realized the other day that it’s been two whole weeks since you crawled for any length of time. You spend most of your time walking, and you’ve even started running sometimes. The dogs are very worried about this development. We finally got you a pair of “real” shoes last week, since you’ve been walking everywhere, even outside. It’s hard to let you get down and walk when we’re out though, because you and I have vastly different ideas about which direction we should be going. You also need to stop and pick up or touch everything in your path – even if it’s the 27th pine needle we’ve encountered in the last two feet we’ve walked.

20050924_crazy.jpgWe think you have your first tooth! I noticed a white spot on your bottom gum about a week ago, and although it hasn’t gotten any taller yet I’m confident it will eventually become a tooth. It was preceded by about 4 days of total misery, especially at night – there was screaming, wailing, and gnashing of gums. I hope that they’re not all so bad for you.

You haven’t tried quite so many foods this month as last, but there have been a few: pork, honeydew, eggplant, pumpkin, watermelon, fish, spinach and strawberries. Your favorites haven’t changed much from last month, either, but you have tried a lot of different table foods. I don’t generally have to make anything special for you to eat anymore – you just eat what we do, although you aren’t too fond of meat yet.

Just in the past couple of weeks your signing vocabulary has exploded! In addition to “milk”, “more” and “all done”, you now sign “cheese”, “ball”, “binky”, “shoes”, “dog” and “play”. I’m pretty sure you’re trying to sign “peas”, and you’ve made up your own sign for water (you pat your flat hand against the side of your head). Your babbling also sounds a lot like words sometimes. I think you really do say “dog” (“daw”), “duck” (“duh”) and “llama”…but we haven’t decided which is (was?) your first word yet. Your “mama” and “dada” can really mean anyone or anything at this point – we’re still waiting for you to figure out which of us belongs to each name.

Your favorite things to do are generally pretty simple – you look through books (sometimes babbling to yourself as you turn the pages), you nest your stacking cups, you try to climb in and out of your little rocking chair. You love to feed the dogs Cheerios from your snack trap: you sit in front of the gate and drop them over the bottom rail.

20050924_kneeling.jpgIt’s great fun watching your personality emerge, even if sometimes it’s a little more stubborn than I’d expect! I love watching how busy you are, walking from toy to toy and making little puttering noises. (Your grandma says your little engine is running.) You’re definitely unhappy about being contained anywhere – even the living room and dining room, which are very toddler-friendly and packed with toys. And you can immediately pick out the things you shouldn’t be doing wherever we are – like pushing the buttons on Grandma and Grandpa’s television – and will repeatedly go do them, all the while looking back at me to see how I’ll react. It’s OK, though. If you weren’t so persistent, you probably wouldn’t have learned half the things you’ve learned so far. And there’s a benefit to me, too: eventually, all the running after you I’m doing will get me in shape, right?

Love, Mommy

See more pictures!

Hugs and Kisses

Sarah Carolyn

The other night at dinner, Carrie did the cutest thing ever. (I say that a lot, don’t I?) My parents were over, and we were all sitting at the table together. Carrie looked at my dad and blew him a kiss – her kisses are preceded by a sort of lemon face, she really works hard at them – and waited until he blew one back. The she looked at the next person at the table, Denis, and blew him a kiss. And so on all around the table. It was so sweet!

She also gives really good hugs now, to people and toys. In fact, my mom bought this enormous stuffed dog for Carrie to play with at her house, and if you tell Carrie to go hug her dog she’ll run over to it and collapse on top of it to hug it. She really likes it if you stand the dog up on its hind legs – it’s about her height, actually – and make it hug her back.

(Sometimes I worry that my blog is becoming an incredibly boring “look how cute my kid is” sort of blog, but I don’t want to forget any of this. Besides, it’s my blog, nobody else has to read it if it’s that boring, right?)

Of Balls and Binkies

Sarah Carolyn

We’re having a mini sign explosion here!

Today Carrie signed “ball” and “binky”. (There isn’t a standard ASL sign for “binky” (or pacifier) that I can find, it’s just something we made up because she was using “milk” sometimes when she really just wanted a binky – I just point my index finger to my mouth.) “Ball” was completely out of the blue – she was rolling a ball across the floor and I asked her if she was having fun playing with her ball. She signed “ball” right back to me, and that’s not one I’ve really used all that consistently lately. She also signed “shoes” yesterday. I think. At least, she banged her fists together and tried to take my shoes off my feet. So I think that’s “shoes”.

So Carrie now has a vocabulary of 7 or 8 signs, not counting waving bye-bye. And all but three she’s picked up in the past week!

Oh, and there’s a funny thing she’s been doing lately. Every morning I ask her if she has any teeth in her mouth and stick my finger in there to check. (Brave, I know.) Now if you ask her if she has any teeth in her mouth she sticks her own finger in her mouth. But no teeth yet. My brother says I ought to stop pushing them back in, because I check so often.

Cheesy

Sarah Carolyn

Carrie has picked up another sign: “cheese”! This brings the total number of signs she does (mostly) correctly to four – the others are “milk”, “more” and “all done”. She also consistently makes the same hand motion (but not the correct one) for “play”.

“Cheese” is sort of problematic, though, because I spent two whole meals with her today explaining that she couldn’t have more cheese after she’d eaten quite a lot of it. I think she’s just trying out the sign and making sure it works the way it’s supposed to, but I don’t think it’s good for her to have unlimited quantities of cheese.

She does know what good cheese is, though. We were making macaroni and cheese for dinner using Velveeta, so I tried to give Carrie a little taste of the cheese Denis had cut up…she spat it back out with a look of total disgust on her face. I had asked Carrie if she wanted cheese so that Denis could see her sign it – the poor baby was expecting cheddar or monterey jack and got icky Velveeta instead!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Sarah Carolyn

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Well, we finally made it to a baseball game – the last afternoon home game of the season! It was a really nice day for a game, and Carrie had fun – mainly watching people rather than the game. She did get a little upset whenever the whole place would erupt in cheers, and she liked the seventh inning stretch right up until everyone started cheering after that. We skipped out not long after that, as we’d been there for most of the game and Carrie was starting to get tired.

Would you believe she ate all the ice cream in that plastic helmet? OK, not really, but she did get a few tiny tastes of it. I think she likes ice cream!