The 17+ months update

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I don't know what happened to October, but November got away from me because of job applications. The first weekend of November Paul went up to Carefree, Arizona (Phoenix-ish) for an art show. Since it was only about a 2 hour drive, Audrey and I went up to support him, and to see what doing an art show with a toddler would really be like. We thought she might be bored, but she really loved it - lots of people to charm, and she thought the whole show area was a big game of "chase Audrey." She would walk away from Paul's booth, then turn around and smile to see if one of us was following her, and then she's scoot a few more feet away, merrily walking in front of show visitors and their babies and dogs. Though I didn't get any pictures of her at the show, I did take this one of her eating breakfast at the pancake house one morning before we went out to sell some art.

After we returned from the show, I was buried in job applications and presentation preparation for a few weeks, and then we headed to Virginia on Nov 25 for Thanksgiving and, for me, a trip up to Philadelphia for the AAA meeting the next week. Audrey has been enjoying hanging out with Nana and Poppa (and she can now say both of those names) running them ragged by being in constant motion and making most of her desires known with her still somewhat limited vocabulary. Although many of her words sound alike (dog and duck both sound kind of like "doh") she often uses a sign to distinguish which word she means. She also has some words that she exclusively says (like "plane," that we don't know the sign for) and others she exclusively signs (like "cereal," apple" and "signing"). Though she's enjoyed being the center of attention as the only grandchild on this side, she also had fun playing with her cousin Owen, about 8 months older,one day after Thanksgiving, and all the Guilford Avenue roommate's kids a couple of days later (she is the youngest of a 6-kid group, the oldest being 5 1/2 and the closest to her age being 3 months older).

One of the funniest moments of this trip to my parents' house was that they bought her a little kid cell phone that makes noise when you press the buttons, and also, if you close the phone, it waits about 5 seconds and then rings. Audrey was attempting to wave bye-bye and leave the room (one of her favorite things to do, followed by a re-appearance a few seconds later) but every time she closed the phone and said bye bye to us, the phone would ring. The first couple of times, she answered it, but after about four times, with all of us laughing as she got more and more put out, she handed the open phone to Paul and then successfully left the room.

The Tao of Bei: Linguistic Development a la Audrey

Anal PhD mom that I am, I was recently making a list of all the signs and words Audrey now uses at 14 months (at least 6 signs and 8 words, in case you were wondering) and I started thinking about one of her favorite multi-meaning words, namely "Bei" (or maybe "bay"). This is a word Audrey uses, with slightly different inflections and associated hand signals, to mean "belly button", "baby", "bird", "cat" and "dog."

If it means belly button or baby, she points at the item in question (typically real babies but sometimes her baby doll). If it means bird, she makes a hand signal that looks a little like the sign for "bird." For cat, she uses a sign that looks a bit like "cat." For dog (which can be prompted by real dogs or our neighbor's dogs barking) she doesn't use the American Sign Language sign for dog, but instead a hand motion that looks a little like summoning a dog.

She is also experimenting with stringing words together. Her longest phrase so far has been 4 words ("No, mom, no, mine!" when I closed the refrigerator door before she was finished positioning her water bottle appropriately inside) and she's also signed a two-word phrase ("more signing" when I turned off the Signing Time DVD)

Audrey's first road trip

So we have finally taken the plunge and gone on a long-overdue trip to San Diego. This is a seven-hour drive for us, pretty easy and boring. BUT Audrey has never been in the car for longer than it takes to drive to Oracle (or thereabouts, for Jessica and Sean's wedding) We tried to be cunning and leave just in time for her morning nap, but she saw right through us. She refused to sleep, trying to figure out what we were doing and where we could possibly be going that took more than an hour.

After the first hour I moved to the back seat but still couldn't convince her to go to sleep. Finally as we approached Yuma (and lunch at Subway) a little after noon, she fell asleep. But as soon as we carried her into the restaurant, she woke up. This enabled her to fully participate in the ritual eating-of-food-that-is-not-good-for-you of road trips.

By my estimation, here is what Audrey ate yesterday, in addition to some milk...

• about 10 french fries


• a sandwich bag of grapes


• a small container of "dry snacks" - graham crackers, goldfish, cheerios and yogurt melts


• chocolate milk and bites of chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia cookies


• bites of turkey, bread, black olives and apple


• bites of hamburger, veggie burger, more french fries and an onion ring


• bites of ice cream from a root beer float

After lunch Audrey stayed awake the whole time until we got to San Diego around 5 pm, and then through dinner and playing at the park after dinner. She was tired but didn't want to go to sleep by herself in a strange pack and play in a strange room, so she stayed up until 9:30 before finally falling asleep!

Memorandum of Understanding

I am amazed at what Audrey understands. She is 13 months and one week old and I talk to her a lot, but still. Just today she was able to come down ten stairs at my friend Jenne's house by herself because I reminded her to sit down and then put her feet down on the lower step. No physical guidance, just talking her through it. And tonight she spit out some cheese on the floor, then continued on with her activities. I said "Where's your cheese? Can you give it to me?" and she stopped doing what she was doing, went over and picked up the cheese and handed it to me. Also today, she was heading toward the above-mentioned stairs for the tenth time, and I was able to distract her by asking her to pick up a toy and bring it to me. Which she did, and by then she had forgotten that she was going to try to go up the stairs.

On a related note, if asked, she can point out her belly, her nose, and sometimes her toes. I don't know when kids are supposed to know these things, but I like to think she's advanced for her age. She also uses the word "lights" (this is probably her fourth consistently-used word after mama, dad, and ah-da (Audrey)) and also has a word that sounds suspiciously like "mine!" when something is taken away from her.

Sometimes I ask her to do something or find something, and I can tell I've used too many dependent clauses (or something) because she sort of stops and looks at me blankly. But most of the time she understands. Amazing!

Do Unto Others

So Audrey has discovered the Golden Rule. Not that she grasps its philosophical implications, mind you, but she has discovered that some of the things we do to her, she can now do to us. It all started a couple of weeks ago (or probably earlier) when she found that if she didn't want to eat a cheerio or goldfish cracker, she could hold it up and whoever was watching her at the moment (Paul or I) would eat the cheerio or cracker out of her hand. She always gets a little smile on her face when she feeds us, a sort of self-satisfied "see, that's what it's like when you feed me!"

These behaviors have now expanded beyond feeding us to a sort of "bathroom valet" role. In order to keep her interested in using the potty, we've started reading to her and allowing her to look at books as she sits there. She does sit there longer, and the books do hold her attention. But now she has a potty-book link in her mind. So as she follows us into the bathroom when we use it, she inevitably brings over one of her books for us to read on the "big potty." And today I asked her if she would close the door so I could have some privacy (well, quasi-privacy, with the one-year-old still in the bathroom), so she closed the door. She's very solicitous - "Are you comfortable, mommy? Can I get you anything else?" I half-expect her to one day hold out her tiny hand and ask for a tip as I walk out of the bathroom. But for right now she just does it out of the goodness of her heart, and a fondness for the Golden Rule.

Happy First Birthday, Audrey!

Audrey is one today. Today at 1:09 pm, pacific time, to be exact. I will probably be at mom-baby group at that time, although our group days may be numbered because most of the babies are so much younger and Audrey's favorite thing to do is to dash off into nearby rooms where she is not allowed to go, meaning that I spend the whole group chasing her down. She is now a full-fledged toddler, though she still looks too tiny to be walking around and getting into things.

Motor-skill wise, walking is the big thing. She still scoots across the floor when she wants to move fast but she walks well and only starts tripping and falling when she's tired. She can climb stairs (although getting down is more challenging) and can go down small slides at the park by herself. Verbally, she's making lots of sound that might be words, but they're still in "baby", so we don't understand most of it. Sometimes she gets frustrated because she'll walk up to me and say something like "Bob" and I won't respond, so she says, louder, like maybe I'll understand her if she speaks up, "BOB!" Socially, she's still the same social butterfly. She feels it's her job to greet everyone and make them feel welcome. She waves and smiles. For all I know she's saying "Hi, my name is Audrey, what's yours?"

Her sleeping is getting a little better, she still wakes up a couple of times a night but only eats once. We've run into a few people who said 13 months or so was the magic "sleeping through the night" age, but we're still dubious since people have been telling us since 6 months that she's supposed to be sleeping through the night. Oh well. She's napping now but may be up soon - I think I hear her moving in the crib on the other side of the wall. Happy Birthday, Audrey!

First Conversation with Audrey

So today, Audrey and I had our first two-way conversation. She is now 11 1/2 months old, and has a few words that are intelligible, at least to Paul and I. She says Da and Dada for Paul, Mei-mei and sometimes ma-ma for me, and Ah-da for herself. Also sometimes "up" and "eat." Today at lunch, however, I was feeding her turkey and vegetables, which she did not want. She showed me she did not want them by trying to sweep them off her tray onto the ground. I said to her, "Okay, so you don't want your turkey and vegetables, what do you want to eat?" And she looked right at me and signed "milk."

She is now also walking about 90% of her movement time, as this 10-second video clip shows...