Summer Update

Summer II has begun for me and Charlotte and we are settling into a routine.  Life is good.  She enjoys being outside either in the backyard or at different green spots we jog to with Pancho along the Mississippi.  But her favorite thing still is looking at books, which I'm sure makes her Suze very proud.

Wait I forgot.  Eating.  Her favorite thing is eating.  And taking a long to time to eat.  She'll eat for 20 minutes or so and then say "all done." But really this initial "all done" just serves as a statement that she plans on being done eating sometime in the next five to 15 minutes.  She loves everything about food, even the shopping and cooking.  For an easygoing child, Charlotte gets really upset if I'm cooking and she can't watch.  So I either hold her while I cook or have her sit in a chair in the kitchen.

And no matter what when she sees food, no matter in what state it is, ingredients, trash, pictures....  she'll say, "mmm good."   Really Charlotte?  Onions frying in oil after only ten seconds deserves the "mmmm good" label.  Cripes, how about a little critical thinking?

Like I said, cooking and eating aside, her favorite thing is books.  Lately she has become very particular about what she wants to read.  Her favorite books right now are Mother Goose books, especially a Richard Scarry Mother Goose I got for her at Wild Rumpus (I never knew he made a Mother Goose book until I found it there).  But she is also fond of the Mother Goose editions her aunt (my sister Sarah) got her.  Part of our morning routine is to sit in her room and read together; I read my book and she reads hers.  Just last week she started asking me to read her books to her instead.  Usually that is something she only likes at bedtime.  So it's a pretty nice time.  And it's really cool because she is now often picking the book we read at bedtime the night before.

At work I use this website called Tarheel Reader for the students I work with who are emerging readers/writers or non-verbal.  I also use it with the autistic kids to get them to ask questions of each other and me and process the answers.  Anyway, here is one of many stories I wrote with the kids this year:

http://tarheelreader.org/2012/01/13/favorite-things-2/

These were two of my lower-level autistic students so they didn't get to the point to even do a project like this until April, when Charlotte was first getting into Richard Scarry's Mother Goose book.  Read it for page 13 only.  Jonah, one of the kids in the story, would come up to me the rest of the schoolyear and say, "Read Richard Scarry to your daughter" and then start quoting passages from What Do People Do All Day?  It was pretty awesome.  I miss a lot of my students but am enjoying the break.

In terms of other skills, her fine motor is as solid as ever and her language is chugging along.  Two word phrases are commonplace and I love getting insight into her lexicon.  Like "table" means "I want to sit in a seat and do an activity," be it sitting at the table to eat or read or sit in her stroller to look at flowers.  She also loves to scoot around the block in a foot scooter Emily got at Savers.  If you ever want to know the #1 reason why Charlotte doesn't walk, carve out 45 to 60 minutes in a day to take her around the block in her scooter and you'll see why.  The question "hey what is this in my hand?" is so much more interesting to her then "hey what's over there?"  If they did a toddler play about Christopher Columbus, the role of the person who spent twenty years at her table whittling a block of wood into a BEAUTIFUL steering wheel for the Santa Maria's would be played by Charlotte Nawrocki.

So i takes forever because she stops every thirty seconds to focus on each yard, house, blade of grass, sound.... She best appreciate being an only child with a daddy who is no hurry because most kids don't get the chance to take this long to go around a block and comment on each sound, say to every tree, and watch other people.

Kind of an interesting language aside: she uses the word "owl" to mean, well, an owl, but it also means every animal decal she can see from her changing table.  And "doggie" is still the catch-all phrase for four-legged animals but she will also name some of them by specific name.  She might even say, "doggie cow" when she sees a cow.  So I think she is getting semantic categories.  I never knew toddlers at this age can already express categories and use words in double-meanings as starkly and competently as Charlotte is.  Like I wrote in an earlier post, my surprise largely because I worked with toddlers who were on the other side of the language spectrum.  Charlotte's personal lexicon does lead for funny moments like when she saw a picture of a cat in a barn scene and pointed to it, assuming it was a cow and said, "Doggie moo."  Try again, my dear.

Gross motor is coming.  She'll be walking by the end of the summer and probably as soon as mid-July. She takes one or two steps a day but never out of purpose of moving from A to B; she's doing it more to experiment.  Well, until today.  We were at music class this morning and she took four whopping steps across the room.  It was the first class of the summer and we are going at a new time (summer hours for me!) so I didn't know anyone.  So when Charlotte took four full steps (and this time it WAS just for the purposes of locomotion), of course no one cared because they had no idea how big of a deal it was.  It was also the end of class so all the parents were busy getting their kids ready to go.  But I saw it and was so privately excited and wanted to clap and cheer but no one cared, including Charlotte.  This is partly because she took a decent spill after the fourth step and was too busy brushing off the fall to notice the gravity of the moment (pun fully intended).  But it was exciting for me and really somewhat bizarre to just sit there and quietly watch it happen.  Regardless, she is getting bolder and bolder with her gross motor each day.

So it's been a nice start to the summer.  If I get my act together maybe I'll take some pictures of it.

This is a Special News Bulletin!

It is warm and sunny outside and everyone should put their shorts on and go swimming.

In other news, Charlotte took a step today!  I met a couple friends at Menchies this afternoon and I brought Charlotte along.  We were sitting outside and Charlotte was cruising around our chairs and then she just stood there for a while and took one step.  Then she sort of leaned forward and put her hands on the ground.  Then she got up and did it again.  Very exciting!  My friend was a former occupational therapist turned epidemiologist, so maybe she worked some OT magic on Charlotte. 

I love that there are frozen yogurt places popping up in the twin cities.  Menchies has a flavor called original tarte and it is basically plain flavor frozen yogurt.  It's my favorite.  I get it with fruit on top.  Today they also had peanut butter so I got some of that with Kit Kats on top.  Yummers.  Charlotte was not interested in having a few tastes from my yogurt cup - so I had to scoop a little into her own cup.

We lost our Bubbe one year ago.  We miss her everyday in so many ways.  On the weekends when she would always stop by on her way to Half Price Books.  Random weeknights when I want to call her and talk about an episode of Law & Order, or how the leaves are changing on the trees, or how the springtime birds just started chirping, or about what I ate for dinner.  Her rants were so awesome.  Some of the times I miss my mom the most are just when I watching Charlotte eat.  My mom loved to feed people and she loved to feed babies and watch them eat.  I don't think anything made her happier than being a Bubbe and watching the babies eat.  We only have a handful of pictures of Bubbe and Charlotte.   

Babysitting

Last night we had the privilege of babysitting our newest cousin, Mae.  Mae is almost 3 months old and she is a doll!  I dug out a boppy from the closet so we could all sit on the floor and  play.  Mae seemed to be interested in what Charlotte was doing, if that is possible for a 3 month old?  Of course, Charlotte had to say "hi" to Mae.  Like a dozen times.  Then she pointed to different parts of Mae's face and named them.   Eyes.  Nose.  Eyes.  Mouth.  Eyes.  All in all, it went pretty well, except when they both seemed to be ready for bed around the same time and I couldn't figure out how to take care of that by myself.  So, I decided to let Charlotte stay up late - until Mae fell asleep or Mike came home, whichever occurred first.

Charlotte saying, "hi."

Charlotte leaning for a kiss.  

The Wow Table

One of Charlotte's friends, Alma, just turned 5.  Alma has outgrown her water table so she gave it to Charlotte.  Charlotte has been really enjoying it, even when it is empty.  We can't leave standing water in the yard lest we breed mosquitoes!  Anyway,  it is fun to watch Charlotte do her "experiments" at the water table.  She likes to try novel methods of pouring and splashing.   At the end of this video she is saying hi to a neighbor's dog who is barking.  Earlier this afternoon she was also saying, "hi doggie" to a squirrel.

Language Update

Boring language post.  The post only a grandmother would love.  Consider it your early birthday present Suze.

We're still getting a new word or two a day.  Most words stick around and you hear them again, but some she only says in repetition.

And over the past week or so the two word phrases are really starting to take off which is fun for me.  Off the top of my head these are the ones I can think of (you will notice a food and music theme in this child's life):

more please
eat pancake (pronounced kaycake)
pancake please (she freaking loves pancakes.  The new Sunday routine is I make a double batch of pancakes and Emily and I freeze them.  Then Emily gives them to Charlotte for breakfast.  Charlotte wakes up saying "pancake" now).
mmmm good
mmmm yummy (these count as two word phrases because she also uses mmm, good, and yummy as single words)
more music
music aye-yi-yi (we have a CD of Mexican songs, two of which have a singer crooning the stereotypical "aye-yi-yi" in it, which she loves).
cat down (she is taking after her mom and trying to control that which cannot be controlled: cats.  She is also just as unsuccessful as her mom)
shoe/sock on
shoe/sock off
hi doggie

There are other examples but I can't remember them.  She says "thank you" more than she says "no" which is awesome for now.  But I want the opposite to happen when she is dealing with peers in her teenage years.

A few other language observations:

1. No colors.  She is good with mouth and nose, and says "eyes" for "ears."  She loves counting, especially when she climbs the stairs.  First she says "butt" for button, which is actually the light switch on the stairway she wants me to turn on.  Then she counts each stair.  Only she sucks at counting.  I mean she is really bad it.  Horrible.  Perhaps if she could give up her love for the number nine she wouldn't suck so much at this.  "One... nine.... two.... nine.... nine.... three.... nine" and then when finally get to the ninth step she says something else.  Come on Charlotte.  Get your act together.

2. She says "sorry" a lot.  Only in her language world, "Sorry" means "Mommy (or Daddy), move your feet, I want to sit there."  It is feet specific so far as I can tell.

3. Serious generalization with the word doggie.  Cats and cows are the only four legged mammals she sees that are not called doggies.  I spend my working hours with kids on the other side of the language spectrum.  At my previous job I worked quite a bit with non/limited verbal two to three year olds.  By the time the kid progressed to the point of being able to speak in two word phrases one of two things happened.  Either the kid was old enough to know the other words for animals, or I had to correct those errors right away because, well, that's my job.  So it is really fun to watch a child on Charlotte's side of the language bell curve develop her lexicon and sit back and relax and just let the natural errors take place.  And it is so much more awesome when it's my own kid.

Along those lines, it's just so exciting to have this independent personality come out in words now after only knowing Charlotte through outbursts (of all kinds, mostly happy ones), routines, instinct, and body expressions.  I am stunned by how profound that part has been for me, after having worked with hundreds of toddlers to get this point in the past.  Now I know why at my old job parents became so attached to our clinic or to me, once their kid started talking.  I was just doing my job and it's not all that special... but now I can see at a new level (a level that I can hardly articulate) why it was appreciated by the families.

Doggie Appreciation Book Club

Here Charlotte is in her new favorite place, doing her favorite thing: looking through books for any four legged mammal and calling it "doggie."  Just last week she insisted on sitting at the dinner table without a highchair.  We complied and she hasn't turned back since.  So we figured now it was time to get the chair out of storage in the basement to go with the table her Texas cousins used to use.  She loves having her own place to sit and look at books.

The mistake I made last week was breaking out the chair 30 minutes before bedtime.  When I got her out of her chair for bed she cried and cried and kept pointing at the chair and table with all her books while I changed her diaper and got her pajamas on.  It was so sad for her and the only time to date that she has protested her bedtime routine.  Usually I'll just say "Okay it's time for bed," and she starts crawling to stairs (still not walking but she's getting closer) ready to get the bedtime routine started.  But not the night I broke out her new chair to go with her table.  But she bounced back quickly and by the time I was halfway through "The Effing Gambler" she was totally recovered and into the bedtime routine.

Fancy Scooting

Here is a video from our road trip.  Charlotte had so much fun climbing all over everything at the Fabulous Children's Museum in Kansas City.  I like how she scoots up AND down the slide.