Week of August 6 - This & That

It has been an interesting week with Emily. One of those weeks where she seems to learn so much. But First.... for my photo lovers, I thought I would share this photo of Emily sleeping. Note that she very much prefers to have one or both legs resting up on the side bumper of her crib when sleeping. :)

We never really know what position (orientation) she may be in when we go in to check on her, but one thing we know for sure is that 9 out of 10 times she will have at least one leg up on one of the side bumpers.

Emily has learned a number of new things over the last week. For starters.... after just about giving up on ever having her hold her own milk bottle, just a couple days ago she promptly began taking the bottle in her own hands and holding it while she drinks. Since she is a year old now, we have begun to wean her over to milk and off of the Similac. She loves milk and so we are seeing a renewed interest in drinking milk after having gotten fussy over the last month about drinking Similac. Emily also will finally self feed herself little crackers and other nibbles.

In the area of learning word recognition and responses, we were very surprised to see that over the last week Grandma has taught her to clap her hands to a short traditional Chinese song and has also taught her to clasp her hands together and move them up and down in the traditional Chinese hand gesture that goes along with "thank you". She recognizes both english for thank you as well as Chinese (xie xie). Upon hearing either, she will clasp her hands together and move them up and down. This was a big hit at a family pot luck over the weekend with all the family elders quite impressed that she was able to recognize the words and clasp hands at one year old. Emily's mom of course was very proud of her for this :) With respect to clapping of hands, one of the things we have Emily in a routine to recognize are the words "good job!" when she does something correctly or that we ask her to do. She has now taken to associating "good job!" with clapping hands and will often do so in response to our saying this.

One thing we have been working on a lot with Emily is the word "no" as are most parents I suspect :). Since Emily loves to watch Teletubbies in the morning as we get ready for work, we have taken to the Teletubbie pronounciation of "no" which is more along the lines of "nooooooo'" and she in fact responds very positively to this, stopping whatever it is we are asking her not to do and usually turning and smiling. Sometimes of course she tests and we are abliged to repeat a couple times, but she really does comprehend and complies most times now.

Emily has also begun to show sharing. when she has a toy or some other item of interst, she will hold it out for one of us and will actually place it in our hand. In turn, of course she expects us to return it (which we do). This can go on and on during play time and so we play this with her to continue to reinforce the sharing.

So far Emily has been great about not putting things in her mouth that she may find, expecially on her play rug (little threads, whatever) . In fact, she has now adapted to handing such little items to dad or mom and seems pleased that she has found something and heard the words "good job!". I am sure this will suddenly change one day and everything she finds will want to find it's way to her mouth to be tasted (cringe).

Emily has developed the desire to climb up on the couch in our family room now and can pretty much make it on her own if I have left a pillow at the edge. So we are in the process of also teaching her that the way to get back down is to turn around and put feet and legs down first. This is one we have to get established pretty soon as it won't be long before we find her up on the couch even without the assistance of a pillow and currently she thinks it is fun to head off head first (much to dad's horror) and therefore required constant supervision while up there.

Vocally, Emily has not developed any additional new words as yet, but vocalizations are becoming more and more diverse, emphatic, and prolonged. She loves to make motor-boat sounds with her lips and has learned to make clicking sounds with her tongue, just like dad does to when he wants to attract her attention. There is one very loud little squeal she makes as well, which is something we hope she grows out of before too long as it is kind of hard on the ears.

Evening bath time is becoming a bit more hectic for Mom (who usually does the bath gig with Emily) as Emily thinks it is totally fun to toss toys and wash cloth out of her little tub and watch mom retrieve them. She also tends to want to try to stand up in her tub which does not make bathing any easier as mom wrestles with her to stay "in bounds".

All in all.. baby is developing rapidly and is quite the hand full sometimes. But it is a hand full we would not trade for anything in the world either :)

.....wandering off now.... to ponder what the little munchkin will learn this week...