Happy is figuring out this bipedal thing. It's fun for everyone!
I always forget that I have to turn my phone horizontal!
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
August 18, 2014
November 13, 2012
A Video Only a Physical Therapist Would Find Interesting
.... or someone whose daughter is in physcial therapy.
From a gross motor standpoint, there is A LOT of cool progress in this video. Walking on uneven surfaces easily. Going up and down steep stairs with one hand only on the railing. The general ease with which she is moving. Other things that are even less interesting.
We are still in physical therapy but Charlotte has progressed to the point that this Friday she has to try new things for the first time since we started. Specifically she has to work on balancing on one leg. I am here to tell you that she will not be stoked about this.
From a gross motor standpoint, there is A LOT of cool progress in this video. Walking on uneven surfaces easily. Going up and down steep stairs with one hand only on the railing. The general ease with which she is moving. Other things that are even less interesting.
We are still in physical therapy but Charlotte has progressed to the point that this Friday she has to try new things for the first time since we started. Specifically she has to work on balancing on one leg. I am here to tell you that she will not be stoked about this.
October 18, 2012
Mulching
Today and tomorrow there is no school in the state of Minnesota, ostensibly so teachers like me can go to our annual union convention. On the radio they said 10,000 teachers are expected to attend. I don't know any of those 10,000.
Instead Charlotte and I walked to one of her favorite places to go and she had a convention with other toddlers whose parents, I found out by overhearing them chat, were also teachers not at the Education Minnesota convention.
Anyway, here we are starting out on our walk before she opted for the stroller. She still loves leaves as you can see.
Instead Charlotte and I walked to one of her favorite places to go and she had a convention with other toddlers whose parents, I found out by overhearing them chat, were also teachers not at the Education Minnesota convention.
Anyway, here we are starting out on our walk before she opted for the stroller. She still loves leaves as you can see.
September 09, 2012
Boomtown
Charlotte is undergoing another little language growth spurt. It's kind of neat. Her expressive vocabulary is really exploding and every day I hear at least one new word out of her. And today I heard her first four word phrase. For the last week or so, when Charlotte is in the car, she will say "push button" or something to that effect right when we turn into the alley. She is anticipating when I push the garage door opener. So today she said, "Daddy push the button."
What's kind of interesting is while she is using three word phrases and all sorts of novel two word combinations, she has these little artifacts from almost a year ago when she was using single words exclusively. For example, she still uses the word "table" to mean sitting in something that she needs help getting into, be it a seat at the table, a stroller, her Burley, or when she puts her doll into one of these things. She has so many ways to explain this, including "chair," "help," "stroller," "sit," and the ability to combine these words. Yet she doesn't need to. "Table" is actually a much more efficient and specific to express this sentiment, so it makes sense that she is still doing it. But I'm stlil kind of surprised to see her still using the word this way.
And on the gross motor front we were goofing around during our post-dinner walk and she walked backwards intentionally for the first time. It was fun to see.
What's kind of interesting is while she is using three word phrases and all sorts of novel two word combinations, she has these little artifacts from almost a year ago when she was using single words exclusively. For example, she still uses the word "table" to mean sitting in something that she needs help getting into, be it a seat at the table, a stroller, her Burley, or when she puts her doll into one of these things. She has so many ways to explain this, including "chair," "help," "stroller," "sit," and the ability to combine these words. Yet she doesn't need to. "Table" is actually a much more efficient and specific to express this sentiment, so it makes sense that she is still doing it. But I'm stlil kind of surprised to see her still using the word this way.
And on the gross motor front we were goofing around during our post-dinner walk and she walked backwards intentionally for the first time. It was fun to see.
August 22, 2012
Sweet Feet
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| Sweet feet |
So, the big news is Charlotte is finally walking. We are all very happy, especially Charlotte. She runs around the house laughing she is so giddy. When Charlotte, Netta, and Bailey were little babies my sister and I would marvel at their tiny little feet that were soft and smooth, it was as if there was no friction when you touched them. Those feet had never done any walking and their skin was, as they say, soft as a baby's bottom. I knew the day would come when Charlotte's feet would get dirty. It's the most grown-up thing she's ever done. It's bittersweet.
August 21, 2012
Walkasuarus
This is not the best video of Charlotte walking but it is representative. The biggest issue is my phone was freezing up for some reason towards the end so you will the video skip a bit. Oh well. Also, take note: jackets in August.
That would be how I define Minnesota.
August 20, 2012
Get Your Motor Running
This morning Charlotte was assessed by Children's Clinic (physical therapy) in Roseville, MN for her gross motor delay. Kind of weird being the consumer and not the provider in these assessments, and watch this parallel world where things play exactly like a language/speech/fluency evaluation, only for motor skills instead.
The physical therapist that assessed Charlotte was awesome and we are now on the waiting list for their services. Back in my private practice days I referred kids to the Roseville clinic about five times a year so it was kind of a no-brainer in terms of where I wanted to go once Emily and I decided to pursue private physical therapy.
The assessment went really well and Charlotte did a great job in a new environment with a new person as the PT poked, prodded, and assessed. The bottom line is Charlotte is kind of loosey goosey (hypotonia) with her muscles, including her ankles, legs, and trunk. This gives her a lot of range of motion at all the joints as well as a lot of instability. This why she uses her whole body to walk and has to sway and use her arms for balance the way a cat or monkey uses its tail. She can't just stablelize herself at the calves and ankles like most of us do.
Also she pronates significantly. So at the end of the assessment we came up with the plan to have orthotics made for Charlotte to help correct the pronation and we are on the waiting list at the Roseville Children's Clinic for physical therapy. We could look elsewhere but I'd rather wait and go to the clinic I trust the most.
After all that I took Charlotte to the Children's Museum and for awhile we had Habitot to ourselves. Then a few other kids her age came in and it is always kind of fun to watch them quasi-interact as they climb, slide, and explore. But then the Waltons and the Von Traps all showed up at once and there was like 18392 siblings running aroud and Charlotte had enough and went to the "resource room" to chill out.
She is clearly her mother's daughter.
The physical therapist that assessed Charlotte was awesome and we are now on the waiting list for their services. Back in my private practice days I referred kids to the Roseville clinic about five times a year so it was kind of a no-brainer in terms of where I wanted to go once Emily and I decided to pursue private physical therapy.
The assessment went really well and Charlotte did a great job in a new environment with a new person as the PT poked, prodded, and assessed. The bottom line is Charlotte is kind of loosey goosey (hypotonia) with her muscles, including her ankles, legs, and trunk. This gives her a lot of range of motion at all the joints as well as a lot of instability. This why she uses her whole body to walk and has to sway and use her arms for balance the way a cat or monkey uses its tail. She can't just stablelize herself at the calves and ankles like most of us do.
Also she pronates significantly. So at the end of the assessment we came up with the plan to have orthotics made for Charlotte to help correct the pronation and we are on the waiting list at the Roseville Children's Clinic for physical therapy. We could look elsewhere but I'd rather wait and go to the clinic I trust the most.
After all that I took Charlotte to the Children's Museum and for awhile we had Habitot to ourselves. Then a few other kids her age came in and it is always kind of fun to watch them quasi-interact as they climb, slide, and explore. But then the Waltons and the Von Traps all showed up at once and there was like 18392 siblings running aroud and Charlotte had enough and went to the "resource room" to chill out.
She is clearly her mother's daughter.
June 28, 2012
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.
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.
February 13, 2012
Cousins, Cousins, and more Cousins!
My cousin, Amy, is expecting a baby in March. Last week a friend of mine asked me if I had a "very pregnant cousin who works at the University of Minnesota." Why, yes I do! She said she recognized her tatoo and thought she must be a Parker. Isn't that cool?
Anyway, this weekend was a baby shower for Amy. It was fun to get together with lots of cousins. I really wanted to get a picture of two generations of cousins, but there was too much going on. Unfortunately, my sister's babies were sick, but all the cousins of the next generation were there. It was a treat to watch Charlotte have fun with her cousin Aline.
Charlotte just starting trying to use her legs. It's weird to see her upright. She looks so short when she is scooting around on her butt. When she stands up she is tall!
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| L to R, Emily, Jessie, Cait, Amy, Hannah |
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| Charlotte and Aline scooting together |
November 17, 2011
Update
We haven't posted in awhile. No pictures today. Just words. Lots of them at that, because that's what I do. Life is busy for both Emily and me. Yet as busy as it is, it is very linear. Our days are full, but not hectic, and I do get to spend a lot of time with Charlotte. I soak it up and sense that she does too.
Here's what she has been up to since Halloween.
1. At Charlotte's one year check-up the pediatrician recommended we contact the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) because of Charlotte's lack of interest or ability in doing anything with her legs. Muscle tone and coordination were fine, said the doctor, but maybe a visit from ECSE (specifically the physical therapist) would help spur things along.
ECSE did a home visit and the physical therapist said that thanks to a perfect storm of Charlotte's gigantic size, mellow disposition, and lack of tummy time (that last one is on me) she doesn't hasn't developed the ability to go from lying to sitting. Once she gets that ability, she should progress quickly from crawling to walking. They gave us some tips to speed the process up. We followed the tips and two days ago Charlotte went from lying to sitting for the first time. She's done it once with me but I was cooking and I missed it. I saw her on her tummy, turned to chop an onion or something, and turned around and she was sitting. She thinks she's a freaking magician or something.
Kind of interesting: her fine motor and play skills are advanced for her age. Makes sense, given that she spends most of her day in one place and can hold her interest with one toy or object for a long time. My hunch is once she gets to walking, all development in the attention, play, and fine motor areas will subside and her gross motor will catch up. Meanwhile some little bugger her age is tearing around the house running like crazy, but will soon catch up with the things Charlotte can do. It all evens out by kindergarten, but these individual variances at such a young age always interest me.
2. Language is taking off. She signs "more" appropriately and independently by pointing with her right finger into her left palm (not an accurate sign... so much for her fine motor skills). But when she signs "more" she is actually saying "feed me something I like." She can have a plate of peas in front of her and she will sign "more" in hopes of getting something different. Or one time Emily and I were at the hot food bar at our local co-op and Charlotte started signing "more" when she saw all the food. And every night right around 6 p.m. if we haven't started feeding her, she will stop what she is doing and sign "more." Good stuff.
Last night I started feeding her yogurt and she loved it, but as per usual did not want to be spoon fed. So I gave her the spoon and it was messy as can be (again with the fine motor skills), but she fed herself just fine. Problem is she isn't ready to scoop the yogurt onto the spoon by herself because the cup offers no propioceptive feedback of course. So I need to take the spoon back from her and re-load it with yogurt for her. Last night she refused to give up the spoon. And that was that. I'll be damned if I'm going to get in a power struggle with a one year-old. But tonight I started signing "me" consistently for the first time (I've signed it here and there in the past), and she gave up her spoon. I put more yogurt on it, had her sign "me" (a little hand-over-hand modeling). After that one time, she didn't fuss once and was using her new sign. She signed "me" and "more" totally appropriately and on her own, fed herself on her own, and hardly fussed.
None of this is new to me nor should it be new to anyone. I did this for ten years at my old job with all sorts of nonverbal kids of all abilities and temperament. I don't miss any of that, but I do love seeing Charlotte do it. Old boy Chomsky knew what he was talking about when he said we come equipped with a black box for language. But I've never seen it unfold in a baby with absolutely normal language skills and it stuns me how fast humans pick language up. And it is all the more powerful and suddenly more emotional when that little human is your own child. She is doing exactly what she is supposed to do and what billions of babies have done before her and will do after. But now that it is my own child, it is a sight to behold. Like my mom once said, "Your child is special to you and your family, but may not be special to the rest of the world." Yet here I am writing an essay about Charlotte.
Charlotte has a few words too: kitty, hi, birdie, moo, and it seems to me like daddy is emerging (Emily agrees) but that could be wishful thinking. It's too early to call that one. She also waves hi and bye. And loves to imitate all sorts of things: laughing, coughing, kissing, and sighing.
Totally normal stuff but totally awesome for us.
3. She still loves music and dancing. She enjoys listening to Throwback Jamz with Emily. For the uninformed, Throwback Jamz is a music station I stumbled upon for my two favorite ladies on our Comcast cable. It is a radio station on your TV that plays "all your favorite R&B and hip-hop jams from back in the day to the 90s."
4. Her favorite toys are pots and pans (real original Charlotte) and my face in the cat door. I lie prone on the basement stairs, with the basement door closed,and stick my head through the cat door. Yesterday when I was washing dishes, she went over to the cat door and pushed it open and said, "Hi!" I was like, "Ummm, hey genius, I'm over here standing by the sink, Charlotte." It was pretty funny.
5. She also likes to open and close books over and over again (again, way to be a cliche, Charlotte) and she does love a farm that Emily got from her mom's after she died. So it is always nice to see her play with those farm animal toys and the barn. Unfortunately she also really loves my smart phone as much as I do and is absolutely giddy when she sees it. She can't wait to push all the buttons on it, just like I do. It's a little unsettling. So the phone now goes straight into hiding when I get home.
6. Charlottes LOVES to be outside. Again, how unique. Winter is going to suck for the both of us. She will learn to hate the indoors as much as I hate the cold. Misery loves company.
7. Her disposition never ceases to amaze me. I don't know how to articulate it beyond this: Charlotte guided us and continues to guide us through the pain of losing her Bubbe. And as fall colors turn to dark mornings, early nights, and stark months of ice and snow brought in by the winds from the west, there is no one I want by my side more than Charlotte.
Here's what she has been up to since Halloween.
1. At Charlotte's one year check-up the pediatrician recommended we contact the Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE) because of Charlotte's lack of interest or ability in doing anything with her legs. Muscle tone and coordination were fine, said the doctor, but maybe a visit from ECSE (specifically the physical therapist) would help spur things along.
ECSE did a home visit and the physical therapist said that thanks to a perfect storm of Charlotte's gigantic size, mellow disposition, and lack of tummy time (that last one is on me) she doesn't hasn't developed the ability to go from lying to sitting. Once she gets that ability, she should progress quickly from crawling to walking. They gave us some tips to speed the process up. We followed the tips and two days ago Charlotte went from lying to sitting for the first time. She's done it once with me but I was cooking and I missed it. I saw her on her tummy, turned to chop an onion or something, and turned around and she was sitting. She thinks she's a freaking magician or something.
Kind of interesting: her fine motor and play skills are advanced for her age. Makes sense, given that she spends most of her day in one place and can hold her interest with one toy or object for a long time. My hunch is once she gets to walking, all development in the attention, play, and fine motor areas will subside and her gross motor will catch up. Meanwhile some little bugger her age is tearing around the house running like crazy, but will soon catch up with the things Charlotte can do. It all evens out by kindergarten, but these individual variances at such a young age always interest me.
2. Language is taking off. She signs "more" appropriately and independently by pointing with her right finger into her left palm (not an accurate sign... so much for her fine motor skills). But when she signs "more" she is actually saying "feed me something I like." She can have a plate of peas in front of her and she will sign "more" in hopes of getting something different. Or one time Emily and I were at the hot food bar at our local co-op and Charlotte started signing "more" when she saw all the food. And every night right around 6 p.m. if we haven't started feeding her, she will stop what she is doing and sign "more." Good stuff.
Last night I started feeding her yogurt and she loved it, but as per usual did not want to be spoon fed. So I gave her the spoon and it was messy as can be (again with the fine motor skills), but she fed herself just fine. Problem is she isn't ready to scoop the yogurt onto the spoon by herself because the cup offers no propioceptive feedback of course. So I need to take the spoon back from her and re-load it with yogurt for her. Last night she refused to give up the spoon. And that was that. I'll be damned if I'm going to get in a power struggle with a one year-old. But tonight I started signing "me" consistently for the first time (I've signed it here and there in the past), and she gave up her spoon. I put more yogurt on it, had her sign "me" (a little hand-over-hand modeling). After that one time, she didn't fuss once and was using her new sign. She signed "me" and "more" totally appropriately and on her own, fed herself on her own, and hardly fussed.
None of this is new to me nor should it be new to anyone. I did this for ten years at my old job with all sorts of nonverbal kids of all abilities and temperament. I don't miss any of that, but I do love seeing Charlotte do it. Old boy Chomsky knew what he was talking about when he said we come equipped with a black box for language. But I've never seen it unfold in a baby with absolutely normal language skills and it stuns me how fast humans pick language up. And it is all the more powerful and suddenly more emotional when that little human is your own child. She is doing exactly what she is supposed to do and what billions of babies have done before her and will do after. But now that it is my own child, it is a sight to behold. Like my mom once said, "Your child is special to you and your family, but may not be special to the rest of the world." Yet here I am writing an essay about Charlotte.
Charlotte has a few words too: kitty, hi, birdie, moo, and it seems to me like daddy is emerging (Emily agrees) but that could be wishful thinking. It's too early to call that one. She also waves hi and bye. And loves to imitate all sorts of things: laughing, coughing, kissing, and sighing.
Totally normal stuff but totally awesome for us.
3. She still loves music and dancing. She enjoys listening to Throwback Jamz with Emily. For the uninformed, Throwback Jamz is a music station I stumbled upon for my two favorite ladies on our Comcast cable. It is a radio station on your TV that plays "all your favorite R&B and hip-hop jams from back in the day to the 90s."
4. Her favorite toys are pots and pans (real original Charlotte) and my face in the cat door. I lie prone on the basement stairs, with the basement door closed,and stick my head through the cat door. Yesterday when I was washing dishes, she went over to the cat door and pushed it open and said, "Hi!" I was like, "Ummm, hey genius, I'm over here standing by the sink, Charlotte." It was pretty funny.
5. She also likes to open and close books over and over again (again, way to be a cliche, Charlotte) and she does love a farm that Emily got from her mom's after she died. So it is always nice to see her play with those farm animal toys and the barn. Unfortunately she also really loves my smart phone as much as I do and is absolutely giddy when she sees it. She can't wait to push all the buttons on it, just like I do. It's a little unsettling. So the phone now goes straight into hiding when I get home.
6. Charlottes LOVES to be outside. Again, how unique. Winter is going to suck for the both of us. She will learn to hate the indoors as much as I hate the cold. Misery loves company.
7. Her disposition never ceases to amaze me. I don't know how to articulate it beyond this: Charlotte guided us and continues to guide us through the pain of losing her Bubbe. And as fall colors turn to dark mornings, early nights, and stark months of ice and snow brought in by the winds from the west, there is no one I want by my side more than Charlotte.
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