the serious question

Summer was huge this year.  And in no small part because of the Olympics.

The Olympics were even more huge than the summer itself.  First of all, they were in England, in London, home of Princess Kate and all things *Royal*.  What more could you ask for.  But then, there's a Queen, and some fireworks and dancers and "costumes" and stuff.  And gymnastics (another post entirely). And swimmers. And runners. And jumpers.  And flags. And music. Lots of music. 

And in the midst of it all, especially the music, the brilliantly-adorable five-year-old, who'd been concentrating with intensity throughout every single musical interlude, posed the question of the millenium:

"Mama, what did God save the Queen from?"

Love her.

... words, words and more words

Today, the original baby-adorable will speak for herself.

On proper nouns:
The name of her black bear is Adeline Jewel.

The name of her boy baby is Errol Ridley*.

The name of her first baby is Crawlia. The name of her second baby is Shyla. Both are girls.

The name of her favorite place for french fries and horse-watching: Five Man Burgers.

On her baby sister:
I eat meat. But Iwah doesn't eat meat. She's not a carnivore yet.

Iwah is tired of being wakened, Mama. she wants to be asleep.

No, no, Isla. You can't be in that room unless a grown-up or a big sissy is in there. Because you know what's in there? A whole bunch of choking hazards. And you know what you'll do? (Picking her baby sister up and half-carrying, half-dragging her back into the 'safe-zone') You'll go in there and you'll pick up those choking hazards and you'll put them in your mouth and then you'll choke. So you just have to stay out here.

Iwah, grab the leash. Come on, Iwah, grab the leash. There you go. Ok, come on pup. Hold on, Iwah.

On fashion:
But I don't wear jammie bottoms , Mama. I only wear dresses and skirts and gowns.

On Architecture:
Mama, I'm trying to build grandpa. I'm building him out of a cheerio and another cheerio. It's hard to build grandpa because he's very very big. Boys are big and girls are little. Mama? is Dadoo big? Mama? Is mama little?

On picking up her toys by herself while Dadoo rubs Mama's back:
But I'm so sick and my back is weak.

On kindergarten:
Oh Yay! It's kindergarten day!

On counting using the counting blocks:
Woo-hoo, mama! This is so cool!

On affection:
I love you, too, Mama. But you know who I love best of all? Dadoo. Yeah. And you know who else I love? Poosie-pants. She's so cute, isn't she mama? And she does funny things.


Random quotes:

Mama, we have tiny wittle necks. Mama, we can't see very far because we are not giraffes. Giraffes and brachyosaurus-es have verwee wong necks, so they can see far.

Mama, I need a band aid on my lip. I bit my lip and I need a band aid on it. And on here and here, too.

Mama? I'm wetting it catch on my tongue so it doesn't get on my band aid. Because it always gets wet and it can't go. I'm so glad I have a band aid. But, one day it will be all healed.

Watch this, Mama. I'm gonna suck it all up.

Tell me a story, Mama. Tell me about Jesus.

------------------

**We-the-parents reserve the right to utilize the name Errol Ridley in any form for any potential future offspring. We think this is a pretty cool name and are super impressed that the baby-adorable chose it for her baby.

. . . George feeds Bill's bunnies

That's the title Averie provided when asked what her mother should post about her. The following is the rest of her response.

"Iwah Meeway." (tran.: Isla Mireille) "Um, Ariel. Mama, can I wear a different dress? Can I wear my Cindalella dress. I think that's Dadoo. Mama, why can I not spill?"

So there's a lot of language going on, but it's more conversational these days, and much of it is made up. She makes up names for places and people, names for animals, names for pretend people, places and things, and includes all of these in her speech as if the rest of us are all in on the specifics of these made up lives.

The biggest change from our baby adorable's lips involves pronunciation. There is so much less of that baby-speak now. Nearly everyone she speaks to can understand her, and there is barely a need for a translator (mama) to intervene. Words like 'wadi' (Remy) don't even exist in her vocabulary any more, and we-the-parents are resisting any urges to correct the few remaining mispronunciations still in her oratorial bag. Right now, "fwirty" stands in for "thirty", but that's one in a handful left for her to learn.

All this talk is just one more reminder of how soon these days of smallness will be gone. We-the-parents want to hold on to every single one of them, as long as we can.

. . . an educational conversation with Dadoo

Life as a nursing mama provides lots of moments for sitting and listening. At chez-adorable, those listening-moments also provide lots of smiles. Take this afternoon's moment for example:

(Overheard from the mound of pillows in the nursing room bedroom while Dadoo and Averie are playing in the living room)

Averie: Dadoo, look! Look at this! Look at this fuzzy thing! Your leg! It has fur all over it.

Dadoo: Averie, that's hair. I have hair on my legs.

Averie: (puzzled) Why? Why do you have hair on your legs?

Dadoo: Well, that's the way God made me. (brief silence) Does that make sense?

Averie: Way-ul, yes. (Emphatically) But Dadoo, girls don't have that on their legs.

Dadoo: No, Averie. No they don't.

Mama: (Smile)

. . . lotsa language

There are lots of new words here at Chez Adorable as our tiny toddler finds new ways to express herself and alert us to all that she sees and experiences.

A walk two weeks ago took we-the-family past a small, yappy dog's residence. 'Puppy!' the girl cried as the little, wildly-barking dog ran up to us. 'Chihuahua' said Mama as we continued our walk.

A walk a few days later took us past the same residence with the same little, wildly-barking dog. 'Kih-wah-wah! Kih-wah-wah!' the girl shouted as we continued our walk. 'Bye, bye, kih-wah-wah!' she said. "!!!!" said Mama & Dadoo to each other, speechless as we realized she remembered.

Other words, bigger words, words with more and more syllables are joining her vocabulary. 'Humidifier' is a recent favorite, along with 'negotiable' - as in 'Putting your jacket on before you go outside is non-negotiable'.

The biggest language change, though isn't just the sheer volume of new words the toddler is learning. It's more about the way she uses them. These days there are very few of those baby-type phrases spoken. These days, it's all about a multitude of words, all the ones she knows that are relevent to the current situation, pouring out into as many sentences as she thinks it takes to explain herself to us.

'Mama, Dadoo fix milk for Averie. Dadoo come see us milk.' ... 'Dadoo, one, two, three, four, jump! My turn!' ... 'Come on, Mama! Come on!' ... 'Dadoo! Open. In there. Now!' ... 'No! Other ones! Other ones! Heark ones!' ... 'Mama an' Dadoo, see? Wah-Wah (flower)!' ... 'Hi Wee-ull (Will, our neighbor)!'

And last night, a new line, more evidence that she's got stuff figured out:

Dadoo: (eyes tired, arms covered in spaghetti and cookie crumbs) - "Averie, we don't play with our food. Eat your cookie or I'll take it away. Do you understand?"

Averie: (mouth full of cookie, eyes shining) - Nods head. "Yeah." (In stronger, determined voice) - "No, Dadoo. Dadoo, I take it away. Now." (Cue small hand holding cookie stretching away from Daddo until cookie is out of his reach, meanwhile toddler's eyes gleam.)

Mama: (sits silently, hand over mouth, stunned by the mocking-bird voice of defiance coming from her tiny girl . . . wondering if Dadoo understoond what just happened, then realizing he didn't.)

Dadoo: (suddenly becoming more aware) - "What just happened?"

Mama: "Um . . ."

Averie: "All done. Get down. Now."

Fin

. . . the ninth day of Christmas

That's ladies dancing, for those of you racking your brains for the ninth verse of one of the best ever Christmas songs.

And ladies dancing it is these days as our baby-adorable becomes more adept at her pliés and pirouettes. The last weeks have been a blur of turkey and music and lights and family, all infused with the laughter of our twirling toddler who has been more than pleased to execute her ballet positions for anyone willing to watch. She had plenty an audience with visits from both sets of grandparents, three of her Aunties and her Uncle Tony who, bless his heart, willingly worked the same puzzle 32 times in a row - just to keep a smile on the face of his niece.

Our second Christmas with baby-sweetheart was filled with wonder for all of us. We-the-family spent nearly every night driving around to see the 'wi-iiights' and the angels ('bye-bye an-johs' was a sweet and sad refrain as we passed any such display on the road). The girl attended her first Christmas party, and had a chance to play 'Secret Santa' for her friend. There were cookies and treats and presents and 'toh-eese' and tickles and hugs and singing and so much laughter that Mama doesn't know enough words to describe it all - the sheer joy of celebrating with a girl who just sees it and experiences everything with a sense of amazement and happiness.

The Brilliant Babydaddy (dubbed Dadoo by the girl) chose our tree-theme this year, and Mama declares it to be the best idea ever. Since the baby-brilliant loves looking for letters everywhere she goes, Dadoo decided we should deck-the-tree with the ABCs. A little planning, two cans of spray paint, three rolls of ribbon and 26 staples later, our alphabet ornaments were born. We-the-parents decorated the tree during an afternoon naptime, and when the sweetest girl woke from her nap, she ran to the tree with her bear, smiling and calling out each letter to us - 'A, Dadoo! A! Y, Mama! Y! Y! Y! - over and over and over. She still does it, and every morning before breakfast, her first words are, 'Tree dark, Dadoo. An-johs dark. Lights!'

Here she is, fresh from that day's nap, checking out her tree. And as we move closer to Twelfth Night, we-the-family hope your holidays and new year are merry, merry, merry.

. . . her first enigma

We-the-parents have been feeling pretty lame over the past month after realizing that our baby-brilliant has outgrown most of her toys. Our ephiphany came after watching her play with an adorable little boy who's a little shy of 2 years older than our girl. She loved him, and she loved his toys - little cars, a table and chair set, some great art stuff, etc. Our return home was a sad one for all of us: she, tiny and disappointed to be home again, missing her new pal and stuck with a bunch of baby toys, and us, older and disappointed in ourselves for not seeing the obvious.

But hark! Thanks to John Spilsbury, a remedy (albeit one in-progress) has begun, and our recent toy shopping selections included three wooden puzzles. Even though the puzzles are designed for older kids, they've turned out to be the perfect fit* in the tiny one's daily entertainment schedule.

Baby-smartest figured out the shapes puzzle right away, even managing to get the confusing diamond, rectangle and square shapes into their respective homes. The other two puzzles are farm animals and jungle animals, and the sweet girl loves to work on both of them at the same time.

Speaking of animals, the girl loves them, and can demonstrate even more animals sounds than before. She does the most amazing owl imitation. She's so good at it, in fact, that when we-the-parents awakened in the dark a few nights ago, it took us both several minutes to figure out that the sound we thought was coming through her baby monitor was actually a real-live owl outside our window. Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoooooo!

*That one is just to make daddy smile. It's a joke, see? A perfect fit? You're laughing, right?

. . . a new dance move and an expanded vocabulary

Just in time for your mid-week fix, Babymama offers this fast dose of adorable for your Wednesday bloggy consumption. But first, a photo of baby-sweetest checking out a fountain:


The tiny toddler knows lots of things these days*, and we-the-parents are surprised daily with a new word, phrase or action from the baby girl. Phrases like 'stomp, stomp' are spoken with great authority and are accompanied by expertly executed little stomps. Little fingers point at early morning coffee cups as a little voice says, 'hot! hot!', and an exuberant 'Tal-yon' bursts from her lips during dinners that include items like pasta and pizza. We are impressed, of course, and happy as we can be over our girl's emerging knowledge and understanding of her world.

In the mornings, we look for trucks on our way to school, and baby-friendly cheerfully says 'hiiii!' and waves as we pass every pick-up, SUV and 18-wheeler on the road. She loves to walk up the sidewalk on the way to her classroom, and asks mama 'dat?' when we encounter a jackhammer, the fence or the pool that's been set up for a water day. In the evenings, kisses and hugs abound for everyone, including her bear, her lion and Remy the cat. She loves to dance to the ringtone on mama's phone, and can do all the motions to her favorite songs, including the raised-arm-fist-pump and 'hooray' in the last verse of 'If you're happy and you know it'.

Her newest dance move surprised us, but not because it was in itself a new one. She loves to watch Bunnytown in the mornings, and we-the-family all sing and dance together during the daily performance of the 'Bunnytown Hop'. Even in the early days of the show, baby-smartest picked up quickly on the 'hop, hop, hop' verses, and did her athletic best to perform her own version of this bunny activity. Of course it's the cutest thing ever. Or it was. Until that tiny little sweetie added a new step to her routine. Only a few days ago, baby-bunny picked up the pair of these that mama gave her for easter, and after carefully placing them on her head, she stood up in her dollbed and loudly proclaimed, 'HOP! HOP! HOP!'

It's ok to say, 'Awww'. You know you want to.

* Babymama is proud to announce that baby-brilliant has added many new words to her vocabulary, including head, stomp, grape, tortilla, pasta, apple, jump, duck, shoes, Italian, palm tree, help, please, thank you, up, stop, step, and a wide variety of animal sounds, the strangest of which is 'macaw' - you know, for the bird.

. . . a little 'Taken by Cars'

Baby-adorable loves to use her words. She hasn't many of them*, but those she has are put to good use at mostly appropriate times. Her favorite word of the moment is 'uh-oh', and she uses it as a pre-cursor to any action on her part that involves dropping something. This 'something' could be a toy she's about to toss over the baby-gate into the small, but unknown spaces of the kitchen, or it could be the slimy and partially mushed broccoli that she's decided to pull out of her mouth and hurl to the floor. The key thing about 'uh-oh' is that it always comes before the fall, so to speak, and is a type of emergency alert system for we-the-parents, putting us on notice that something which should probably not be, is about to be sent to the floor.

Hearing our baby-sweetheart utter the 'uh-oh' often comes early enough that a quick parent, or one in close proximity can step in and avert the upcoming disaster, so when Babymama heard 'Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Uh-oh, Mamamamama!' as she was washing sippy cups yesterday morning, she quickly stopped and looked around to see what the 'uh-oh' was bound to be. Strangely, the baby had nothing in her hands, and mama coudn't see anything spilled, dropped or broken. The tiny toddler smiled at mama, and walked off to play with her toys, and mama, satisfied that nothing was amiss, continued her work at the sink.

It was moments after leaving the kitchen that Babymama realized she'd missed something. A few steps from the doorway, mama felt something cold, wet and a little squishy under her bare foot. Holding her breath, she looked down to see what horror lay under her foot. It was a baby-wipe . . . that led to another baby wipe . . . which led to another baby wipe, which in turn led to a pile of baby wipes nearly eight inches tall. Nearby was the nearly empty remains of what had been a brand new package of wipes picked up specially by Babydaddy only yesterday. Seems they somehow made their way, one by one, out of the package and onto the carpet, and baby-truthful came to let mama know right away.

Luckily for Babymama, wipes are easily rescued from the carpet, so the 'accident' was only a tiny hiccup in our morning routine. The real problem here is the timing change of the language. It seems our system of recognizable foreshadowing is disappearing in favor of a contextual expression of the word, leaving we-the-parents without an early alarm, less time for accident interception, and more time for berry juice to soak into the carpet. Uh-oh for real.

*Some of the words Baby-brilliant loves to speak: Daow, hi, bye, stars, mama, daddy, tack-tack (quack-quack), hot, dat? (that, as in 'what's that?'), truck, juice, ruff-ruff, hop, tree, all-done and of course, uh-oh.

. . . the cognitive process of deriving meaning from written & printed text

Baby-sweetest comes from a long line of readers and writers. Both her Grammy & Grampy and her Gram & Grandpa spend many of their days wrapped up in the printed word, and even her great-grandparents were poets and journalists. Babymama herself is an avid reader and has been since she was a baby - (Gram & Grandpa often tell the story of how it took 50 books before bed to get the infant babymama to fall asleep). Babydaddy is a writer and reader as well, though he refuses to consume one of the best books on the planet (- under 100 pages, free to download here, and a great read for a myriad of reasons). Needless to say, we the parents had hopes that our baby-brilliant would take to literature, and we began pumping various authors into her ears even before she was born.

Seeminlgy, our efforts to help baby-smartest develop a love of books and reading are beginning to pay off. It started with one to three books at bedtime - books chosen by the parents from the baby's ever-growing bookshelf. Babyparents would try to help the not-so-sleepy baby focus on the stories, or at least the pictures, and baby-tolerant would humor us with a few minutes of her time before returning her attentions to the contents of her toybox (our living room floor).

Recently, however, baby-brilliant is bringing her very own choices to us for story time, which now takes place several times a day. She toddles over to her book pile(s), picks out a book and walks it over to whichever parent she decides is the best to interpret the story within. At the conclusion of the story, she makes her way back to select another book, and again, chooses the appropriate parent for the text. This process repeats itself, oh, roughly sixteen times a session. Baby-mama knows this because that's how many books are currently strewn about the carpet after last night's storytime.

Baby-cerebral's current favorites include Hippos Go Berserk, The Belly Button Book, Barnyard Dance, Pat the Bunny, Moo, Baa, La La La, The Going to Bed Book, A to Z, Christmas in the Manger, Clifford's Animal Sounds, Dear Zoo, Big Little, Prayer for a Child, Little Bee and My Many Colored Days. Here is a picture of her with that Seussical story of color and emotions as she makes her way over to babymama's lap.

. . . a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds

Do what?

Yep, that's right, baby-smartest is starting to talk. A little bit. And mostly, it's very difficult to understand, but still. She's talking! Babymama & daddy, of course are ever so pleased and more than proud.

For months we've had some sneaking feelings that somehow, as parents, we weren't doing quite enough to feed the brain of a growing baby-adorable. Sure, we read to her (thanks much to A and T for helping us discover one of our favorite authors), and we expose her to lots of music (most recently we've purchased this), and we try to only buy learning toys and we go over her Spanish/English flash cards, but, still. Shouldn't we be doing more to teach her? So she doesn't fall behind? And what about that super-smart 18-month-old reading baby? How are we gonna rock that in less than 6 months?

Babymama's been keeping an eye out, watching the other babies, (some of whom are already walking) in baby-sweetest's class, listening as they shout out garbled phrases as their parents pick them up. Prompting, cajoling, trying desperately to get a little language out of our cute girl. Ok, yes. She said ma-ma and da-da a long time ago. But who's to say that she really knew what those words meant? Babymama's been looking for something in context. And finally . . . it happened!

It started one morning in the recent past. As reference, each of baby-adorable's days begins with the same ritual:

• Babymama begins falling off the bed and wakes just in time to catch herself, thanks to the soft, but insistent sounds of baby-hungry, who is lying perpendicular in between mama and daddy (this is a story for another day).


• Then, the least disoriented parent makes his/her way to the kitchen to heat up a bottle - a feat which suddenly takes much longer than it did previously, largely due to our recent transition to whole milk.


• Said parent returns to the bed with warm bottle, where baby-adorable wrests it from her parent's hands and plugs it quickly into her mouth. Both parents snuggle back into bed and doze to the happy sounds of the baby with her bottle.


• A very few minutes later, baby-sweetest is full, and she pushes her bottle out of her mouth and away from her. If there's any milk left, Babymama tries to give it back. If baby is hungry, she takes it, smiles and finishes the rest. If baby is full, she pushes the bottle away, and Babymama says 'All done! Thank you' and takes the bottle.


• Then, Babydaddy picks up baby-sweetheart and gives her a big hug while saying, 'Hi Averie!' He takes her over to the changer and says, 'Hi, Mama!'. Usually, Averie turns her head toward mama and waves, and mama waves back and says 'Hi Averie!'.


• After a diaper change, the family heads out for coffee and Clifford.

That's how it goes . . . how it's been . . . nearly every morning for months. Except for the other morning, when baby-smartest surprised us with a very clear and audible 'Hi Da-da' as she patted her Daddy on the back. What?!? We both heard it, realized it had really happened, burst into laughter . . . and were promptly joined by the cutest little laughter from our baby girl.

Since then, 'Hi' is a regular expression, along with others including 'maooow' (meow), 'Dar' (darlin' the cat), 'wrah?' (always accompanied by a questioning look, so we're guessing this is some interrogatory expression) and the latest, just yesterday morning as she took her last bite of breakfast banana, 'Ahh done' (all done). Outstanding, says Babymama.

Talking is tough work, though, and all that smartness can really wear a girl out. Here's what our talking baby looks like after a long day of babbling . . .

. . . le langue et le petite singe

In recent weeks, baby-licky has become more aware of her tongue. At first, it was just this cute little thing she did on random occasions. The cuteness began with a slow, shy smile and then a sudden flash of pink as she stuck her little tongue out at whoever happened to be looking. Now, however, baby-adorable is truly enjoying the taste of nearly everything she can maneuver to her mouth, and with her newfound grasping abilties, (ta-da! Superbaby is here!), that's a lot of stuff to cover with drool.

Her most favorite things to lick are her tummy-time boppy . . .



her little monkey toy . . .



and daddy's hand . . .



We are told by our books, our pediatrician and various other sources that this licking, or "mouthing" is good and means that baby-brilliant is getting smarter and smarter with each lick. Wonder if now's the time to work on finding the answer to that age old question . . .

"How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?"

. . . those crazy bugs & officiality

Baby-coordinated gets more so each day and is accomplishing feats of dexterity at the tender age of 10 weeks that even older babies are unable to perform. Take, for example, today's exhibition of bug batting.

For the past several days, baby-brilliant has been eyeing her Bugs on Board toys, but until today, there was no other action. Late this afternoon, Baby-sweetheart, Auntie Sarah & babymama were visiting the Clinique counter at Macy's when Averie began reaching for the dangling bugs.

Everyone present was excited to watch baby-adorable as she stretched every part of her little body, toes included, toward the ladybug and dragonfly attached to the handle of her car seat. She focused, concentrated, and reached, but couldn't quite touch them. Still, she persevered.

A short walk through the mall later, right next to the Dippin' Dots Stand, baby-coordinated made her move. See photos below . . .

Averie studies the bugs . . .



She focuses on her objective . . .



Success! Baby-advanced swats the dragonfly . . . with authority. Who dat think dey got the smartest baby? Who dat? Who Dat?




In other news, baby-official took a trip down to the county's Vital Records office and picked up her Official Certificiate of Live Birth after lunch today.

More accurately and specifically, baby-legal took a trip over to the docs office, came home, pooped out of her diaper, changed her cute outfit, threw up on mama, changed her second cute outfit and then picked up her papers. After that, a short trip to the mall, during which time she spit up on mama again, (hitting her third cute outfit of the day in the process), was the last stop before the grocery store and home.

It was a busy, but triumphant, day for all.

. . . her bunny slippers and a book

Nothing's better for lounging around than a pair of soft, fluffy, slippers. Baby-bunny-toes models her very own pair of house shoes while waiting for daddy to finish grilling her dinner on Friday evening.


Early Saturday morning, that smart baby spent some quality time with Daddy, Leonardo, and one of her favorite books.

. . . Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 9th

plus various themes from Wellington's Victory - all together with a bunch of cute babies and furry toys. This celebration of sound and cuteness comes courtesty of the Baby Einstein company, where "discovery begins".

Ordinarily, babymama doesn't let baby-smartest watch tv. Many theories abound on this subject, and we're really not sure which is the right theory, but we feel certain that too much tv can't be good at such a young age. That said, Averie received Baby Beethoven dvd at her shower . . . and since she's really interested in music and colors, we decided to try it out.

Let there be no skeptics! She loves this dvd. She sat in her little pink flower chair and watched the entire thing - smiling, laughing and staring, transfixed at the lights and colors on the screen. Babymama has decided to go shopping for Baby Mozart and others soon. In the meantime, check out baby-brilliant watching her very first round of video . . .