Milestone check: weight, words, and woofs

As I noted a few months ago, I'm not as big into tracking the milestones as I once was. But for the sake of continuity, here's an update from LG's 15-month doctor's visit (performed much closer to the 16-month mark). Her height is a bit over 30 inches, right around the 50th percentile, which they had a tough time measuring because LG didn't want to lay still. Weighing in was easier, since she apparently didn't mind sitting naked on the scale. She clocked in at 22.8 lbs, enough for 35th percentile, up 10 points from her 12-month visit.

For me, though, more interesting than height or weight these these days is cognitive development. In an effort to provide the most accurate, least boastful accounting, I set forward the following challenge to Hollie on her most recent day home with LG. Keep track of all the full words that LG uses consistently without prompting. To meet my criteria for a full word, it had to be something that LG spoke clearly and completely, and used in the appropriate context without any encouragement from either Hollie or myself. I kept the list going until I finished this post, so we've tracked roughly over 36 hours.

What follows is the list of 25 words that LG has used repeatedly and properly in the last 36 hours.

Ball (first alphabetically, and probably the first word she ever used to specifically reference another object)
Blue (used to identify blue things, such as blueberries, a blue dish towel, and a bottle of blue water that she plays with from time to time)
bowl
boy
brush (she even knows there are different kinds of brushes. she knows that she uses a different brush for her teeth and hair.)
burp(while I'd love her to say excuse me, shouting BURP! after she's burped is at least an acknowledgement that she's done something.)
bye-bye
cheese
Daddy
duck (this is significant because every other animal she knows is identified by the sound it makes, not its name)
egg
hat
help
hi
Mama
me (this is a new development in the last day or so, and is her response when she sees her reflection in a mirror)
milk
more
no (what's hilarious is that she often puts "no" and "more" together, primarily when she wants you to sing "Five Little Monkeys", but also when she's done eating.)
please
poop (gross, yes. But also helpful.)
shoes (this was probably her second word after "ball"
teeth (saddest thing in the world is when her mouth hurts, and she looks up at you, points at her mouth, and mournfully says "teeth")
toes
up

This list does not include the partial words or sounds that Hollie and I recognize as referring to an object, but aren't entirely words... yet. An abbreviated list of those words looks something like this:

bana (banana)
ba (bottle)
boog (booger or boogie. We can thank her cousin Alissa [or 'Lis'] for that one.)
cook (cookie or cracker)
broc (broccoli, which she loves, for the moment)
has (house)
gu (girl)
peesh (peas)

There are many more words on the partial list, but we didn't do as good a job at tracking those. And when you add in the litany of animals sounds (baa, woof, meow, sssss, neigh, quack, tweet, gobble, honk, hoo, moo, ooh ooh, boo & Ho Ho Ho [shut up, ghosts and Santa count as animals]) she still makes on a regular basis, her communications skills are really impressive. At least, they're impressive to me. But I'm her dad, so I'm probably a little more easily impressed.

Also, she loves to shout "CONK!" when she's smacked her head, or when singing "Five Little Monkeys." If you have any suggestions on where to categorize that, I'm open to ideas.

This is a phone she got for Christmas. It will come in handy with all the talking she does now.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Baby

Happy New Year!  LG's Mama here filling in for a very busy Daddy.

2011?  Let me 'splain.  No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.  LG started the year an adorable little blob with zero neck control, few preferences, and no vocabulary.  She ended the year an adorable little girl who runs through the house at full speed with no regard for sharp edges or slippery floors, has a new favorite book, food, shirt, toy, and animal every few hours, and just this weekend started using her rapidly progressing speech to manipulate her Mama into giving her anything she wants by saying "please" in the cutest toddler voice ever released into the air.

I had been planning a a big ol' end of the year wrap up, but honestly, there was too much to write about. She's been pretty darn cool this year, and as evidence I offer the following picture:

Alright, so to most people this maybe not seem that cool, (In fact, I think it makes Matt a little queasy...) but painting is the most fun LG and I have together.  In a day that involves the systematic moving of toys from one end of the house to the other and reading the same board books over and over, it's one of the only activities she really enjoys that I also really enjoy.  We started small.  Some finger paints while she was strapped into her highchair.  By the end of 2011, we were painting once a week, making huge paintings like the above which became wrapping paper for her Christmas gifts to family, and even using a paintbrush.  She even has dedicated "paint clothes." Sure we make a mess.  Sure we sometimes eat a little paint.  But that's why God (via Crayola) created washable, nontoxic paint. 

She loves mixing colors and experimenting with ways to get the paint from the bottle to the paper.  I love watching her swirl all the paint together and discovering that sensation of paint squishing between her fingers.  I like noticing the patterns in her finished pieces of art, and she likes the messy hand prints on the bathtub before the requisite post-creative-process bath.  Most of all, we both love it when she paints her feet. 

She does this a lot.

I like to think that I'm helping her on her way to being a creative child and eventual adult.  I like to think that I'm providing the groundwork for years of art creation and appreciation.  I like to think that she'll follow in my footsteps and love everything from coloring books to modern art.  Mostly, I'm just enjoying the time we spend together making really big messes.

Christmas Time is Near

Earlier this month, in much the same manner as last year, we took LG to G-Boys Garden & Christmas center to visit Santa. Every year, the good people of G-Boys build an animatronic Christmas village-y thing. It's fun, in a slapdash, trademark-infringing kind of way. What am I talking about?

Behold!

 Yes. One significant scene in this Christmas village is a recreation of a McDonald's drive-thru staffed by a mouse. No. I have no idea why.

 And then, of course, we have non-licensed Winnie the Pooh and Rabbit.

Finally, we have Batman. Or rather, a mannequin in a Batman halloween costume circa 1995. What does any of this have to do with Christmas? Well, we go see it in December. I guess that's close enough.

At the end of all these shenanigans, you get to meet and have your picture taken with Santa Claus.

Things that worked in our favor this year:

1. LG is way cuter this year than last year. If you recall, she was kind of a lump.
2. Cute outfit. We had a tough time finding an outfit we liked this year, but in the end, I'm proud of it.
3. This year's Santa was a Real Bearded Santa.

Things working against us.

1. LG has been very hesitant about meeting strangers of late. And the bearded fellow with the bright red suit? Very strange.
2. The photographer was dead set on getting a picture of LG's happy face, and WOULD NOT start snapping until we got her smiling. It lent itself to more hysterics, rather than less. Eventually we got him to take a picture while she wasn't wailing. The picture below is the result of that compromise.
3. Four hours later, we realized LG had a fever, so the earlier fussiness could also be blamed on that.

Without further ado, here's the Santa picture we managed to get.

 

Sure, it's the whole family, which was not our original intention, but I like it.

Makes me laugh every time I see her little face.

Paternity Leave: And then we came to the end

Today is my final day of paternity leave. Technically, it should've ended around LG's first birthday, because FMLA only covers that sort of thing for 12 months after a life-changing event. But for one reason or another, I had to go to work on a few paternity days over the past year, and so I worked it out with my boss that I'd take those extra days after my term was officially done. Frankly, since I didn't start taking the days until LG was three months old, I don't feel at all bad about stretching it out. I only wish we could make it last longer.

It's a cliche, but a lot has changed in the last 10 months. To be honest, when I first started taking these days off with LG by myself, I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. Sure, I had watched her on my own for a few hours here and there while Hollie worked part of a weekend, or went out the occasional evening. But by and large, it hadn't just been me and the baby for a whole day, 1-2 days a week.

It wasn't as though I was worried about it, per se, but it's fair to say that you don't feel like a parent--I mean, really, like a parent--until you've taken care of your kid from the moment they wake up in the morning until you lay them down for the night. Naps, feedings, just doing stuff all day long, all while trying to keep after the house, and feed yourself from time to time. It's big. To all those out there doing this every day, I raise a glass in salute.*

* By no means does my experience, by the way, compare to Hollie's. She did it for three months, during the hardest part, and suffered from pneumonia for the bulk of that time.

However I felt at the beginning, whatever trepidation I may have had then, I'm comfortable now. I think I do most of the things I'm supposed to do. I watch her, but I don't hover. I protect her, but I don't live in constant fear of the unknown. We play, but I let her choose how (most of the time. I can only play "take everything out of the toybox" so many times in one day).

When I started this, she had no teeth. Now she has nine. Then, she couldn't talk. Now, she can say "Dada" when she feels like it, has a litany of animals noises at her disposal, and will proudly point out every shoe in the house. She certainly couldn't walk then; I'm not even sure she could push herself up on her arms. Now, in bare feet, socks or shoes, she runs.

When I started this, she barely smiled, and I'm pretty sure it was just mimicry most of the time. Now, when she smiles, I know she's happy. I know I am.

III IIII II IIII I IIII IIIII II (Translated from sparrow, "Happy Halloween!")

Been a bit busy around but these parts of late, but that doesn't mean we haven't been celebrating the season. As I think I made clear last year, I'm a huge fan of Halloween, and having a kid means I get to celebrate that much more.

We got the outdoor decorations up over the course of a few days, and LG's been enamored of them this year, now that she's actually big enough to investigate on her own.


As big as she's gotten, it's kind of funny to me that these things are still bigger than her. I suppose it won't be too long until the reverse is true.

As noted last year, we ran through several ideas before we came up with the Tribble for LG's Halloween costume. It was more or less my idea, so this year, Hollie got to pick. I'm pretty sure we've only got maybe one more year before LG starts picking her own costumes, so we're trying to make the most of it. Next year's effort may have to be collaborative. I'm thinking maybe a family costume, since we'll probably take her trick-or-treating. Any ideas?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. As I said, Hollie picked this year's costume (and my mom put it together), and if you know Hollie at all, then the costume should be pretty easy to guess.

 
Come on, you can do it!

Yellow comb... a fan tail....

Got it?

Alright, here's a big hint.

Yes, that is a beagle. Although I'm betting there's not a biscuit in the world that would've gotten him to perch on that house naturally.

If you notice that the costume looks a little similar to last year's, it's because the body is basically the same as the Tribble. It turns out that a lot of baby costumes are just big ol' fat suits. Who knew?

Also, I seem to have started a Halloween tradition of awkwardly Photoshopped costume pictures. I am okay with this. And since the cartoon picture above made Hollie laugh out loud when she saw it, I think I'll keep it up!

Run and Squeak and Squawk with the Animals

I'll be honest. After the heady milestone monitoring days of the first year of LG's life, I'm a little burnt out on worrying about whether she's sitting/crawling/walking/talking according to a particular schedule. Now, this may sound like the kind of thing that someone whose child isn't meeting those milestones might say. But truth be told, I'm at the point where I don't really think about it much anymore.

Instead, I find myself thinking the following: Is she struggling with anything day-to-day? Does she learn something new every week? Is she having fun?

As long as I have a satisfactory answer to those questions (and the doctor doesn't tell me to worry about something), I'm just going to go with the flow.

And the flow over the last few weeks has been all about animal noises. It probably started some time close to when we visited the zoo and she walked through the reptile house going "HssssssHssssss." A day or so latter, Hollie was driving her somewhere, singing Old MacDonald, and when she got to ducks, LG started shouting "kack kack kack" (give her a break! 'Q's are hard.)

Since then, her animal vocabulary has grown daily. Will she say "doggy"? Nope. But she'll say "uf uf uf" when you mention dogs. Bring out her favorite owl, and all you'll hear for the next five minutes is "hooooooohoooooo."

These Melissa & Doug puzzles may have helped somewhat, although, to be perfectly honest, most of the animals sound like they're talking over a bad drive-thru speaker.

 

Despite that, she will "moo," occasionally "meow," and very proudly and loudly "BAAAAA!" whenever she sees a sheep. Seriously, a couple of her books have sheep in them, and she'll stop you from reading, grab the book and shout "BAAAA!" You just have to wait until she's done.

And if she doesn't know the sound it makes, it quacks.

She loves the monkey noise, which sounds a lot like an owl, but much gruffer. And she's pretty good at the elephant, pressing her lips close together and blowing like a trumpet.

Excuse the messy shirt. I just had pasta with red sauce.

I really wish I could get some video of this, but I've got to be sneaky. As soon as she sees the camera, she becomes single-mindedly focused on running away with it, and she usually wins.

Belated 12 Months: State of the Baby

Hollie took LG to the doctor for her one-year checkup almost two weeks ago. It was a bit of a rough week, since it was also the first time LG has gotten sick. We've gotten super lucky on that front, but that doesn't mean dealing with everything that comes with a sick child is any fun, regardless of how infrequently it's happened.

So she weighed in at 19 lbs., 10 oz., only 9 oz. more than her 9-month visit. However, I blame the small gain on the fact the aforementioned sickness. Four days of being sick will drop your weight no matter how much Pedialyte you drink. If I had to guess, I'd say her weight should've been closer to 20 lbs. Something like 19 lbs., 15 oz.

Her height (which we can officially call it, since she spends more time upright than prone) came in at 29 3/4 inches, although, again I think that was a little off. Every time I watch the nurses measure her, they just don't get the yardstick in the right position. I'm pretty sure she's over 30 inches.

In any case, aside from the stomach bug she was dealing with (which had almost run its course by the time she went to the doctor), she was just fine for a one-year old.

As for the recovering sicky, there are two things worth noting.

Thing the first: LG isn't a very snuggly kid. She likes to move around. She never stops moving around. When you get a hug, it's a quick squeeze, then she's off to the next thing. But when she got sick, all she wanted to do was sit quietly and be held. Other symptoms (gross, gross symptoms) aside, that's how we knew she really wasn't feeling well.

This was actually a few days after the sickness had passed, and she still just wanted to be held from time to time.

Which leads me to Thing the second: Since she's been sick, she's been super needy. She doesn't like it when we leave the room she's in, even for just a few seconds. She cries a bit more before it's time for bed, like she doesn't want to be alone. It's like she's constantly afraid we're not coming back. I know it's silly to psychoanalyze a 12-month-old kid (even if I were qualified to do so), but it seems to me that being sick finally made her feel a little vulnerable. Even now that she's feeling better, she still feels a bit of that vulnerability, and she wants us nearby all the time. It's the sort of thing that breaks your heart a little.

That said, I'm pretty sure it's just a phase (I hope so, anyway), and we'll get through it like anything else. In the mean time, the season agrees with her. She looks adorable in Halloween outfits, and as it turns out, she really, really likes pumpkins.