Saturday, June 13, 2009

Singing baby!

I'm going to stop apologizing for the drive-by updates -- I can't think of a better format, since she's all over the place with the doing and the learning and the whatnot -- and I certainly can't update more often, try though I do ... so let's get right to it!

Singing!
Thanks in part to the Learn 'n Groove table Mom got her, this baby sings her ABCs! Of course, it's in her own style -- typical rendition goes something like "A B C D E I G, A B E she M O B, D D A, C I B ... Y C! Now I know my ABsheesh, no my no my no my ... meeeee." It is beyond hilarious, and she'll start over sometimes, or let you do part of it, or put numbers in there, but she's got the tune down for real. And besides the ABC song, she'll also just entertain herself by singing whatever comes into her head -- she's getting to be a really good mimic of sounds, and can match pitch really well. 

Counting!
Numbers are starting to come into focus -- she's excellent at "one ... two ..." but still hit-or-miss on 3, 4, 5 etc. if she's on her own. If she sees the numbers, she can say them all, up to ten. And now we're working on actual counting (grapes, blueberries, the Wonderful Magical Goldfish Crackers), which is one of those things where you can actually see the wheels turning in her head as she connects the various concepts. She's already better at math than I am, heh.

Questions & more two- and three-word phrases
She's starting to really get the idea that you can string words together and either declare yourself or get answers -- recent acquisitions have included: "Let's go," "Where'd it go?" and "Whoa -- what's that?" And of course, there's our personal favorite, "Yeah, OK," which no matter how many times she says it, is so cute it kills us. 

Kisses
She's been giving kisses for a long time now, but she's refined her process, and has now added Eskimo kisses (nose-to-nose). SO sweeet!

Even more Yankees!
So last Sunday, there was a photo of Mariano Rivera on the front of the sports section of my NYT, and I held it up and asked, "What's this?" She thought for just a second and announced, "YANKEES!" Today I asked her what that sign was on her bib. She looked at it -- upside down, mind you -- and hollered "YANKEES!", then wrinkled her brow and said with great concern, patting her head, "hat?" I confirmed there's supposed to be a hat with it, and she asked the next logical question: "Ball?" (You see how she's making connections here? heh.) Yesterday afternoon, after a long day of working and toddler wrangling, I sat down with her in the middle of a destroyed living room and said all conversational-like, "I can see why most parents use TV to help them entertain their kids -- am I right?" And she looked at our TV (which was off), and lit up and said, "Yankees!" Annnnd of course there's her little cheer, which she busts out at random intervals all day long: "Gyo yah Yankeesh!" It's her own interpretation of "Let's go Yankees!" (with or without the hand-claps -- she likes to mix it up a bit). So as you can see, we're making sure we teach her the really important things. 

Swimming, and drums
They do go together -- when we're down at M&H's house! They invited what's left of the old Sauce crew down a couple weeks ago, on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, so we took off (it was easy -- we hadn't unpacked anything but the baby monitor from the last Sauce weekend, yay us!). Annika got to play drums -- she holds the sticks like a champ, and her technique's pretty damn good; she doesn't whale on the drums with all her strength! And of course she got to swim in the pool -- she has really started to love it, and she'll let other people hold her in the water (she seemed particularly taken with Mike, aka "Mok") or sit and ride around for awhile on this little baby float K&K left there, like a ring with leg holes so she can be a little independent. Can't wait to get her back in the water!

Words!
It's getting to the point where there are half a dozen new words a day, and if I don't write them down immediately, I forget -- but here's a few I did manage to write down:
--come
--go
--back
--boat
--warm
--smooth
--rough
--balloon
--brush
--sandals
--bite
--pick (as in, guitar pick)
--detector (as in, smoke detector -- "eh-kaka")
--Mason ("Mayn")
--Ethan ("Etan")
--Heather ("Etu")
--Mike ("Mok")
--Tom ("Bom")