A Tribute To Fritter

Tags

baby, development, peekaboo, seven months, social referencing

Poor Fritter.

When Owl was a baby I posted constant updates on his many advances and progress, while Fritter has gotten almost no blog attention. But I promise that the neglect is only in writing. I enjoy her so much that it is ridiculous, and I want to really introduce her to you.

She is seven months old now.

She can roll around, eat solid food, and say “ba ba ba”. She creeps around on her belly but she still can’t sit up completely independently. Her growth is perfectly on the 50th percentile, making her much bigger than Owl was at the same age but nicely average. She actually wore 6 months clothes at 6 months, can you believe that? Some of the clothes are handmedowns from Owl, which he wore at 9 months.  She sleeps better than Owl did but still wakes up multiple times in the night.

But that’s all just data. It doesn’t tell you who Fritter is.

I love this ridiculous, derpy little baby.

Fritter is a people watcher. She especially loves to watch her brother’s antics, and she gets a big grin on her face when he comes into view. A game of peekaboo with him will have her laughing out loud.

She  doesn’t laugh out loud super often, though. Her laugh is a rare and delightful thing. Usually she just grins, or if you give her kisses or blow raspberries at her she chortles.

She loves dogs. My friend the Farm Fairy has a puppy who is only 2 weeks older than Fritter and they are great friends. I’ve taken her to a couple of dog training appointments, too, and she just grins at the dog and watches everything quietly.

Her smile blooms.

It starts out just gently tugging at the corners of her mouth, and then slowly grows over her whole face, until the emotion overwhelms her and she has to hide it, usually in my chest if she’s in the carrier, otherwise behind her own arms or behind a blankie.

She loves to cover her face and eyes. She rubs her “Sleepy Sheep” all over her face as soon as we hand it to her. She will cover her face with the sheep blanket, or a curtain, or anything she can get her hands on and wait for us to say “Where’s Fritter?” and then she whips it off of her face with a big grin.

She is definitely shyer of strangers than Owl is, and she’s a little overattached to me. And by “a little overattached” I mean that she bursts into tears when I leave the room, or if I hand her to anybody, including her own father.

I think part of this is nature, and part of this is nurture. I think she is naturally a little more easily frightened. She went through a period when she was 2-3 months old where the slightest unexpected sound, even if it was just her father coughing or someone speaking when the room had gone silent, was enough to throw her into an angry pout followed by a protesting cry.

This is an unfortunate situation when you have an active five year old and a dog in the house. Every bark, every shout would send her into a fit of fear-rage.

Thankfully she has adjusted a bit, and now only does her angry pout if a genuinely startling noise happens.

On the other hand, she hasn’t been as well socialized as Owl in some ways.

Sure, she sees people more often  than Owl did at that age, since she comes along to drop off and pick up at school, and on many play dates. I didn’t have a car when I was on mat leave with Owl so I was housebound, but now that PH is home on disability I can take her out shopping and she is out of the house almost every day.

But she is always on ME. I am her primary and virtually sole caretaker.

She is almost never held by anyone else except her father, and that’s only for short periods. We haven’t had a date night out since she was born, partially because we were unable to get her on a bottle and partially because PH has been unwell and has very little energy for evening shenanigans, so she has never been left with a sitter.

Owl, on the other hand, was FORCED onto a bottle and left with a sitter on a bi-weekly basis from a month old onwards. He was cared for by a rota of friends and I think he learned early that lots of people have the ability to care for him.

Fritter, on the other hand, probably thinks she will die if I leave the room because she doesn’t know otherwise.

Now that she is on solids we are working on this problem. Our first step is to get her to trust her father to look after her. Now that she’s past the screamy newborn stage he can play with her and put her in her high chair and feed her and she will learn that I am not the only person in the world who can feed and clothe her. Then we’ll start leaving her with other people.

Mockingjay Part 2  is in theatres now, so we consider this an emergency. We missed Mad Max and The Martian but we aren’t missing MOCKINGJAY.

Sorry, kid.

Now, let’s talk about her looks.

Everyone says she looks just like Owl, and it’s funny because she does, and she doesn’t.

Owl has my eyes and his father’s eyebrows. She has her father’s eyes and my eyebrows. Overall she looks more like me than Owl, and people have noticed that.

That being said, there really is a resemblance, especially when I compare photos of them at similar ages and clothing.

No matter whose various body parts she has, her face ultimately looks like herself. I do love her little face. She gets such derpy expressions sometimes that it seems easy to underestimate her, but I think she’s actually pretty bright.

She was reaching for things early, and she studies how things work. She studies my reactions, turning to search my face for clues about what is happening around her. As I have already mentioned, she will initiate peekaboo and listens for a specific verbal cue before whipping the blanket off of her face.

It’s hard to explain but I just have this creeping feeling that there is a keen intelligence behind that cabbage patch face. Maybe I’m just being a doting parent. We’ll see.

In the mean time, I am just enjoying her babyhood. I can’t stop cuddling her like she’s a stuffed toy and kissing those chubby cheeks. And even though I know that I need to get out to see Mockingjay, and that she needs to feel comfortable with other people, I have no real desire to pass her off to other people.

She’s my last baby, and it goes so fast.

When I Close My Eyes – by Owl.

Tags

bad guys, development, insomnia, Stories, three year old

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I go to a bad guy place.

So I go out the window.

And I go up up up.

And I get into the bed.

And I hide under the blankets.

And the bad guy can’t find me.

That’s all.

Airplane – By Owl

Tags

development, imagination, story telling, three year old

One time, there was an airplane and a little boy.

And I was on the airplane.

And you weren’t on the airplane.

And Mommy wasn’t on the airplane.

It was just me.

I was all by myself.

And you had to get the airplane.

And you didn’t have a car.

And I went to a lot of airports.

And I sat down all by myself.

And then I came home.

And then you saw me.

And then we had breakfast.

The end.

Happy Face

Tags

art, development, drawing, happy face, toddlers

Owl LOVES drawings of faces. It is his favourite thing. “Draw happy face!” is a command heard multiple times every single day.

He wants us to draw happy face, after happy face, after happy face.

This kid may be an extrovert. He may need a sibling.

And now he’s trying to make his own happy faces. He has seen us draw them so many times that he has the steps down pat:

1. Make circle.
2. Make dots for eyes.
3. Make smile.

Sometimes he adds ears or a hat, when he’s feeling elaborate.

Now, Owl’s artistic skills in general are on par for his age.

He can draw a straight-ish line, or squiggles. If asked to draw, say, an apple, he’s likely to make a single line and say “dere!”.

But his happy faces are getting quite good.

Is it just me or does this look like a tamagotchi?

this one has ears and a “hat”

Smug face

Sad, hunted face

Learning to Read: Toddler vs Dog – An Update

Tags

development, dogs, first words, intelligence, reading, symbol recognition, toddlers, training

Back in March, I proposed a battle of wits between my baby and my dog.

It didn’t seem so far fetched, back then. Owl was still speaking in mostly single-word sentences, although with signs he often made two or three word combinations. The average dog has been judged to have the intelligence of an 18-22 month old.

My fellow dog trainer has seen dogs who have learned to differentiate between written words.

So!

To be honest, I was sort of rooting for Beloved Dog, because COME ON, that would have been an AWESOME result.

The problem was, it wasn’t really a fair contest. I could work on Owl’s word recognition at various points throughout the day, like after breakfast, and in the bath, plus he got alphabet work at Daycare.

Beloved Dog got maybe a couple of minutes before his dinner every night.

Within a month, Owl had learned to recognize five words: Ball, Apple, Dog, Car, and Foot. Eye gave him some trouble, as did Bear.

I figured out pretty fast that Owl was not recognizing the word as a whole: he was recognizing the word based on the first letter only.

I was disappointed with this result, but he was still doing way better than Beloved Dog.

I managed to teach Beloved Dog to sit when I held up the “sit” card within a single session, and things were looking good. Unfortunately, when I introduced a second word, things went downhill.

Beloved Dog is paying zero attention to the actual words on the cards. He knows that he should sit sometimes, and down other times, but he’s never sure which he should be doing.

I got disheartened and put the cards away, which wasn’t quite fair to him. I should bring them out and work them more, give him another chance, because Owl has left Beloved Dog IN HIS DUST.

I was able to introduce some more written words to Owl’s vocabulary, but Owl continued to recognize them based on first letter. Watch this video, how he’s guessing the word before I’ve even finished writing it, based on the first letter.

In fact, I began to feel that he was getting entirely the wrong idea from his alphabet work at daycare, and now believed that A MEANT Apple, and B MEANT Ball, and so on. So he just dismissed the trailing letters as meaningless.

And then (and I’m still debating the wisdom of this choice) I downloaded a trial version of a toddler iphone app.

Yes, let the judging begin.

Aside: I have very mixed feelings about letting kids use technology like iphones. First, there’s health. Cell phones are known to give out radiation. Now, I don’t have an iphone, I have an ipod, but I’m not sure that’s really the point.

Second, I think that interacting with the real world is an important part of growing up, and that too many video games robs children of active play.

Nor do I agree with people who say that children should be exposed to technology, since they’ll need it to function in today’s world. I didn’t have an ipod until last Christmas, and I learned to use it within days. I didn’t need to start from toddlerhood. It’s not that hard.

On the other hand, videogames aren’t the demons some make them out to be. People who play a lot of video games have been found to have faster reaction times, better decision making skills, and better fine motor control. Put it this way – if you’re ever looking for a heart or brain surgeon, choose one who owns a video game console and plays it regularly.

Anyway, I couldn’t be a hypocrite – I was always playing on that ipod and Owl wanted to play too, so I found something educational and let him at it. The game was First Words Sampler, a free version of several different paid game options. The idea is for the child to take letters scattered over the screen and slot them into  the correct order to spell the word.

So it’s basically a matching game – put the C in the slot that says “C”, and so on. But a voice announced each letter, and when the word is complete, the word is spelled aloud and then a moving picture and an accompanying sound bite of the object in question – a cat meowing or whatever, is played.

Owl loves it. He could play it forever, which is a problem so we don’t let him have it very often.

Then I discovered something. One day while were playing with words on his magnadoodle with the usual mixed success, I wrote out and spelled aloud one of the words from his game. He recognized it immediately.

I found that he could identify all of the words from that game. He sits there and actually puzzles it out, letter by letter, and then announces the word.

Meanwhile, Beloved Dog has learned to spin in a circle on command. So that’s something.

Let’s give them both an A for effort, shall we? That ought to confuse both of them.

Little Owl: 16 Month Omnibus Edition

Tags

16 months, babies, development, language development, milestones, nursing

Two years ago I was newly pregnant, very freaked out but also hoping that I was on the verge of something awesome.

Boy, was I.

Today, Owl is 16 months old.

I’ve never been big on toddlers. Little babies are good because they’re so simple to interact with. Hugs and tickles = good. The end. Kids are fun, too, because you can play imaginative games and read stories with them and listen to their peculiar world views.

But toddlers are just sort of… in between. Especially the 1-2 year old set. They LOOK like little people. They walk like little people. They have strong opinions like little people. But really… they’re babies. They can’t have a conversation with you, they don’t understand English all that well, and they certainly have no capacity for reason.

And they always seem to have baked beans on their face.

So I always saw the toddler stage as something I would just suffer through.

But actually? It’s been SO MUCH FUN.

Watching Owl’s language capacity expanding day by day is frigging awesome. Before you have kids, you wonder how someone can get so excited just because their child learned where his own nose is. But when you realize that you MADE something that can identify the location of its own nose, you can’t help but get really excited.

Especially when you remember the days when this self same person couldn’t even hold up his own head.

It’s hard to keep track of language milestones when you’re doing baby sign language, because it isn’t mainstream enough to provide a large enough statistical pool. 

That being said, I think that Owl is about average for his age. When it comes to actual spoken words, he says “mama”, “dada”, “da” (which means dog, cat, duck, and several other things), “nana” (meaning my mother or a banana), “brr” (meaning book or bear or bird or boat), “ho” (horse), “ball”, “down”, “uh” (up), a strangled “ggraaghhh” which is his attempt at “cracker”, “uh-oh”, and today he developed “awa” (whale or water).

But when you add in his signs, his vocabulary is much larger. It is thanks to the signs that we know the difference between dog, cat, and duck, or between bird, book, bear, and boat. The vast majority of his words are beyond his sad little attempts at pronunciation. We find it hard to keep up with him, but we estimate his total vocabulary to be around 40-50 words.

Sounds impressive, but really, since he only has 8 or 9 spoken words, I think he’s bang on average for his age.

It’s still fun to watch. He is hungry for words and will turn through a book obsessively, identifying nouns, and studying us closely when we show him a new sign.

Do you mind? My book and I are having a private moment.

In fact, he largely ignores all other toys, choosing instead to identify things in his books again and again and AGAIN.

His walking is pretty good now, and he’s almost running. He does a funny little  waddle run, which is usually ended by a tumble and a little voice going “uh-oh…”

This seems totally safe to run on!

He’s just full of giggles and silliness (my in-laws complimented us on his “advanced” sense of humor. Not sure what that means considering that he still thinks that being dangled upside down is the height of comedy, closely followed by me pretending to be scared of him).

Daycare Lady still praises his easy going and cheerful nature, which should be hilarious to anyone who remembers his newborn days. 

I’m not sure I’d really call Owl easy going. He’s… INTENSE. When he’s happy, he’s very, very happy. When he’s upset, he’s VERY LOUD ABOUT IT. Thankfully he is confidant and generally disposed to be happy most of the time.

The only thing that he really has tantrums about is nursing.

He is still a savage nurser, insisting on milk constantly when I’m around, although he happily goes all day without it at daycare. If milk isn’t delivered the second he starts signing ‘MILK, PLEASE, PLEASE, MILK, MILK, PLEASE?” he starts to freak out – getting clingy and whiny and then I need to talk him into a calm state before I will actually let him nurse.

If I’m holding him and he wants to nurse but I need to put him down so I can, say, take off my coat to expose my boobas, he pulls his legs up to his belly and clings to me like some kind of simian.

He’s a little crazy about the boobas. 

I know that if I cut out all nighttime nursing he’d probably be sleeping through the night – we cut down to just one nursing at 3-4 AM and he started sleeping from bed time (the earliest we seem able to get him down is 8:30 pm, which seems late, but he JUST WON’T GO DOWN earlier) until that early morning nurse.

The last few days that seems to have gone to hell, but I think he’s teething again.

I should probably work on getting him off of that 3 AM nursing session, and then I’d have a baby who sleeps through the night, probably, most nights. Some nights any way.

But it’s so hard to stay conscious long enough to put him back down any other way. This is my failing, not his.

The nursing demands cause so many problems that I think I would consider weaning if it weren’t for two things:

1) Clearly he’s not ready to wean, and I can’t imagine what forcing him away from the booba would be like. VERY LOUD, no doubt.

2) He’s still tiny. He’s 9.5 kg, according to the scale at daycare, and that’s in light clothing, including his cloth diaper. Now, he hasn’t dropped his percentiles much (for a while there he slipped down to, like, the 9th percentile, but as you folks predicted, he has regained that lost weight.) but still – he’s wee.

I’m okay with his teenyness, but right now the last thing PH and I want to do is deprive him of any possible extra calories because clearly he needs them. His enthusiasm for food rivals the average Labrador Retriever.

Last month Daycare Lady handed him a piece of cheese, and he was so excited that he fell right out of his chair and knocked his face on the side of the table. He then screamed until he ran out of air and contiued to scream silently for a while BUT NEVER ONCE RELINQUISHED HIS HOLD ON THE CHEESE.  He then proceeded to continue to cry for the next 5 or 10 minutes – a long time, for him – WHILE DEVOURING THE CHEESE.

No, I don't beat my baby. There was just an incident with some cheese.

Today I fed Owl several mandarin oranges, some waffle, some crackers, and then two bowls of spaghetti with meat sauce and cheese. Then we want to a friend’s house where he spent the next THREE HOURS eating grapes, strawberries, nuts, pretzels, carrots, brocolli, and more NON-STOP.

This is NORMAL for him, and still you can see the knobs on his spine when he bends over.

Wee Owl

In fact, since we’re afraid that giving him cow’s milk will bring back the diarrhea, and since I can never seem to pump more than two or three ounces in a day, we’re seriously talking about buying him some formula for daycare, because I have forbidden juice, and water just doesn’t have enough calories.

We have to keep up his calories, because clearly he’s burning them somewhere.

Either that or he has a tapeworm.

I wish I had this problem.

10 months and not imitating?

Tags

10 months, babies, baby sign, development, infant development, language, milestones

Some of you will read this and roll their eyes. For those of you who do, please understand: I HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER. I worry unnecessarily about things. I’m working on it, really, I am.

Babby is ten and a half months old now. 

I haven’t done a full update, because besides the biting, nothing really amazing has happened since the nine month mark. He was still pointing at everything, pulling himself up, signing for milk constantly, handing me objects, making me bleed and so on.

Yo. Boob lady. Book me.

He is pointing at pictures in books now, and if possible is even more obsessed with them. As soon as I put the book down he is practically throwing it at me with impatient “Ah! Buh!” noises.

So really, I shouldn’t be at all concerned about anything.

But I’m me, so I am.

Here’s the thing: Babby has learned how to wave, which is fun.

But the sign for milk disappeared.

This baby was signing for milk CONSTANTLY. It wasn’t always to get milk. I think he knew it would get my attention.

"MILK NAOW PLZ?"

While we think that to him “milk” and “mommy” were the same thing (since I am just a big booba to him, clearly), he did know what it meant because if I said “milk?” he’d start signing away, and if I signed it back he’d get all excited and start pulling at my shirt.

"BOOOOBS!" - Babby's maniacal response to me signing "milk" a week or so ago..

Then he picked up waving, and now he doesn’t sign for milk at all. 

He doesn’t react if I say the word, he doesn’t react if I sign it at him. If I try to withhold the breast until he signs it (which he was doing with alacrity a week ago) he just stares at me. He is getting very frustrated and starting to scream a lot, because I no longer know what he wants when he gets thirsty.

PH says that regressions happen and the sign will come back. But of course I’m catastrophizing all over the place.

Especially since both signs, the milk and the waving, were captured behaviours. I mean that he happened to make them on his own, and we made a big fuss over it, so he did it again.

They weren’t imitated behaviours.

He doesn’t imitate us if we wave at him, or do other hand motions. He likes the waving thing, but it’s hard to get him to initiate it, because he does it randomly, not when we demonstrate waving or tell him to “say hi!” or “say bye!”

Should he be imitating us by now? He doesn’t imitate facial expressions, or try to mimic the words that we say, either. Meanwhile, an acquaintance on facebook has posted an adorable video of her three month old girl imitating sounds.

He enjoys watching itsy bitsy spider, but he doesn’t try make the motions himself.

He does SOME imitations. Sometimes, if I clap, he’ll clap too. He also watches how we interact with objects and then tries to do it himself.

We just had a fun little session today where I was showing him how to put his block IN a cup, and he was trying to do it too.

He also enjoys the “it’s on Babby’s head!” game, invented by PH which involves (cleverly enough) putting stuff on Babby’s head. When it falls off, he’ll try to put it back on.

So that in itself tells me that I’m being a little crazy. 

But seriously. Where did “milk” go??

In Which Babby Tries To Figure Out A Jack-in-the-Box

Tags

babies, development, jack-in-the-box, toys

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Did I Miss Something?

Tags

abnormal, age, alertness, babies, comparisons, development, mothers, normal, parenthood

Every now and then someone says something to me about young babies that  goes right over my head.

For example, when Babby was small(er) they would give me strange assurances that I did not understand.

just under two weeks old

“Don’t worry, it gets much better when they get older. They don’t spend so much time unconscious and they get much more interactive!”

…More?

“Oh, flying with them this young is easy, because they still love their sleep!”

…They do?

 

“You can cut his nails while he is sleeping.”

…But then he wouldn’t be sleeping any more…

I had no idea what they were talking about. Babby has always fought going into that good night with all the rage of Dylan Thomas and spent all of his waking hours demanding constant interaction.

Then I saw a baby at a restaurant.

babby at 12 weeks old

Over Christmas, I left Babby with my mother and went to dinner with some friends.

A lady at the restaurant had a tiny baby girl.

She still had that floppy, wobbly, curvy look that new babies have, and her flimsy neck was carefully supported by her admirers as they passed her around.

She mostly slept or squinted into the middle distance and was about as interactive as a potato.

I felt like an experienced women at that moment.  This lady had just entered the wonderful and exhausting world of motherhood, with her newborn and I felt worldy by comparison with my ancient twelve week old, who was so insistent on standing all the time that you couldn’t fold him, let alone cuddle him floppily.

“How old is she?” I asked the proud new mother indulgently.

“Nine weeks,” the woman responded with a glowing smile.

…

…?

…?!!

Babby at nine weeks old.

I just managed to prevent the look of shock from spreading over my features.

Nine weeks? NINE EFFING WEEKS? She was only three weeks younger than Babby was at the time.

This baby, at nine weeks, did not remotely resemble my baby at that age.

That was when the comments of strangers and the perplexing references made by other parents came rushing in at me, and this time they carried a different meaning of what “normal” might mean.

It’s such a flood of mixed maternal emotions when one surreptitiously compares one’s own baby to someone else’s. Everyone secretly wants to believe their baby is advanced, smart, more special than other people’s babies. But at the same time, no one wants to feel that their baby isn’t “normal”

…and there’s a fine line between “good different” and “BAD different”.

Looking at that dozy, uninterested, spineless nine week old, I found a little senseless pride that my own baby was so much more advanced (and I felt heartily ashamed for feeling proud of something so meaningless) but there was another emotion there, too:

I felt cheated.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore my baby. I miss him whenever he isn’t in my arms. I love his big smiles, and I am proud of huge eyes, and of his sturdy little legs, and his indomitable spirit.

But.

I feel like I missed a whole stage of babyhood – one where two month old babies are still floppy lovebugs who get passively passed around in public and can even go to a restaurant and sleep through the meal.

It’s better now. He can go to a restaurant without screaming. He sits and looks all around and grabs at the forks drops Sophie on the ground and looks to see where she went and then tries to eat the napkins.

But that feeling of envy keeps coming back, sometimes when I least expect it.

For the last three weeks, I have attended a “Baby Bonding Group” at the Women’s hospital where my shrink is. A girl there had a 10 week old. Guess what she was complaining about?

“I feel like I never get to spend time with my daughter. She’s only awake for a certain amount of time each day, and then everyone passes her around and when she comes back to me, she’s asleep again.”

…She is?

There was that feeling again. The feeling of jealousy. Of confusion. Of realizing that a mother with a baby younger than mine was experiencing things I had never experienced. Sure, there are clearly downsides to her experience. But it seems like hers is more… usual. More normal.

A friend of mine has a newborn baby, and has posted adorable pictures of him slumped over and sleeping in everyone’s arms, curled up like a sweet little bug and people were like “I love that stage!”

…and I realized that I never really had that. I tried to take pictures of him being all cute and curled up in my arms. But they never looked right.

10 days old

He was always holding himself stiff, and straight. The legs always dangled down, often stiffened like tent poles.

The cute Anne Geddes style pictures other people get of their baby adorable curled on a furry rug in the fetal position, or snuggled into their mother’s chest in a bug-like ball or cupped peacefully in loving parental hands… just never happened for me.

It’s not that he didn’t want to be held. He insisted on it. But he has always seemed to be in a battle. A war against sleep, against the environment, against his own body. Even when he slept, it was stretched out, or tightly swaddled.

Ever since he was born – even now – the first thing anyone says about my baby is

“Look at those eyes! He’s very alert for his age!”

Seriously. Every. Time. I was out with him yesterday. Three people told me that he is very alert.

4 weeks old and still damn well alert

I’m sure alert is good. I’m glad I have an alert baby.

“Has it occurred to you that he’s just very, very bright?” asked the leader of the post partum group when he was three months old. Sure, it has. Babby’s father is a genius. I’m sure my baby is bright. But my mother in law says that PH slept great as a baby, so there goes that theory.

While everyone else’s babies (geniuses included) were curled up all cute and sleepy, mine was alert. Alert and screaming, or alert and interactive, but always alert. I have sleep logs to prove it.

I’m happy. I’m happy with my son. But when I see small babies doing things mine never did, and I hear parents talking about things I never experienced, I feel a little sad, too.

It makes me wonder if I did something wrong. People in non-Western cultures have never heard of colic, and consider it strange for a baby to cry for more than a minute or so at a time.

WHY AREN'T YOU A BETTER MOMMY TO ME??

I carried my baby, I wore my baby (more so after my mother left) and  I breast fed him on demand. But still he was always awake, always screaming. Could I have done something differently?

Is my baby born different or was I not satisfying some inner need of his biology?

I wonder… did I mess up my chance?