posted by Kristin on Sep 05, 2009 |
As of Friday August 7, 2009, Elisa turned one year old! When we finally got to the doctor 2 weeks later, her stats were as follows:
- Weight: 22 lb., 9 oz.
- Height: 28.5 inches
- Head Size: 18.5 inches
We celebrated on our own and then with extended family in Berlin, NY – 21 of us around the table. She got a pink and white outfit, shapes puzzle, palm crayons, Noah lift-the-flap book, a feed and learn croc, and a Busy zoo activity cube. Perhaps the favorite was a mylar balloon…which came with us camping for a few days in Maine after we left Berlin. She would walk around with the (weighted) balloon inside and out.
A few other notes about Elisa at a year old (and some 13 month updates):
- Teeth: We have been holding steady at 6 (4 top, 2 bottom) for a couple months now. She has seemed to be teething a few times since, but we haven’t seen the results yet!
- Stairs: although after a fall in July she was very slow at starting down the stairs. She really started becoming fluent with going down stairs while we were on vacation in Maine. At 13 months she is now quite fluent at going down stairs, frequently putting her right leg down straight and immediately going down to her left knee rather than standing on a stair before going down to her knees.
Communication: Still no clear words, although there are many syllables: ma, da, ki, ti. She does seem to associate “ki” with kitty, but we’re not sure. There are far too many piercing screams for Mommy and Daddy, although we seem to be past the worst of the last round. After a hiatus, we are back to signing “all done” at the end of meals, sometimes spontaneously, and after 12.5 months, she has developed her own sign for “food” or “more” – currently multipurpose. We modelled two fists touching and she came up with a finger pointing to a fist. Now that has morphed into a fist into an open hand. And she is insistent! While we are still waiting for spoken words, we know she understands a lot since she will respond to many phrases – even things like “Why don’t you bring your book into the bathroom to read” a few times. She almost always turns when called and frequently comes when asked a couple times in a row.- Food: Eating what Mommy and Daddy are eating with a few exceptions such as beef or apples, which are only half eaten, along with some other hard things (but she likes worrying a thin apple slice and taking little pieces off – at almost 13 months she stole a small whole apple from another child and ate, or at least bit off, a sigificant portion!) Her favorites are noodles and Daddy’s crusty homemade bread (she seems to prefer crust) although she doesn’t seem to really like storebought bread at all…
When it comes to noodles or tortellini she can eat a serving that is close to adult size. She will eat almost anything.
- Walking: Well, yes, it seems a long time ago now. One of her most interesting traits is that she will just take off without looking back – at home or in public places. She has confidence and will go. Of course, she still prefers to be carrying something (books off shelves in the library, a ball, etc.) A recent favorite is shoes. At almost 13 months, she learned that she could walk backward as she had taken off and turned back when Mommy called, but still kept moving away. Since they she has purposely practiced walking backward a few times.
Outside: She loves the outside! When camping she proved that she is a girl not afraid of dirt. If she is fussy, a stroller ride is the perfect cure. At about 12.5 months, she started bringing us our shoes and encouraging us to put them on so we could take her outside. We often go to a little park in town with small slides and toddler swings and she has gotten much better at slides – she can start herself down the slide and go on her own and enjoys slides enough to try to walk up them on her own. Of course, she doesn’t sit down on her own at the top of the slide – if she gets to the top of the slide herself, she goes down the slide backward as if going down the stairs!
Clothes: Beyond Elisa’s love of shoes (and she will pick out a pair to wear many mornings – usually a matched pair!), she seems to be happy in whatever we have her wear. She does enjoy carrying anything on a hanger and really likes Mommy’s nylons – she likes the texture. She definitely knows where different pieces of clothing belong (on her), trying to put shoes on her feet and shirts over her head and becoming much more cooperative in the dressing process.
Comforters: Elisa has adopted a blanket and a stuffed moose as her favorite comforters in the last few months. The blanket is a cue for sleep and the moose is her favorite to hold in her car seat. When she wakes up, she has to take the blanket out of the crib and hold onto it for a few minutes until she is fully awake and distracted by something else. She will frequently hold the moose in a strangle-hold for the full 20 minute trip up to Mommy’s work and her day care.
Favorites: Elisa loves bouncing balls, climbing up into her rocking chair, and carrying things from place to place. The last month or so she has developed a deep joy in music. For the last couple weeks we’ve been listening to either Bible songs or toddler songs in the morning for a half hour and when it comes on she will usually stop what she is doing, raise her arms and bounce/dance. She will frequently wave her hands almost as if she is directing. She also quickly learned how to turn the volume up – she agrees with her Grandpa Rood that music should almost shake the floor boards. With this, she has also been using the various musical toys more frequently and with longer attention span. She also enjoys stroking the strings on Mommy’s guitar and went right after Uncle Jeff’s guitars for the Guitar Hero video game!
Milk: Elisa has made the switch from hot formula to cold whole milk in the last two weeks. It wasn’t easy, but not too bad considering…it has taken extra opportunities to drink because she didn’t like it at first, but we mostly went cold turkey with occasional formula if she hadn’t drunk anything and was overly fussy. At this point she is drinking her 16 oz. or so a day and we are starting to move it more toward meals and snacks, where the formula had been associated with getting up from naps. - Nighttime routine: Elisa tends to get a last few sips of milk and then we read a few books. She might race through Pat the Bunny (except for the waving) or walk around while we read one of our favorites. Then we close the night with a page out of a Bible story book that she likes enough to carry around and a prayer. With kisses from Mommy and Daddy, she grabs her blanket and is laid down – and usually asleep in less than 5 minutes. Most of the time she is sleeping 8 or 8:30 p.m. until 6:30 or 7 a.m.
We are so blessed by our little girl! Overall, she has a very good temperment, being generally happy and reasonably independent.
posted by Kristin on Jun 24, 2009 |
Elisa and her cousin Donovan have been having fun together – well, at least most of the time! Besides heading to church, our two big “outings” have been to the fire station when they were having an open house and to the backyard to play in the pool. Both trips were definitely a success, with Donovan more able to enjoy the fire trucks and Elisa revelling in her first time in a wading pool.
Both kids had fun sitting in the fire trucks, with Donovan really getting into steering and wandering around the back of the fire truck to look at things. It was also a great time to hang out with his Daddy!
Elisa wasn’t quite aware of what to do with a steering wheel (who knows if she’s ever noticed one before since she 
still rides backwards!), but she did put her hands on the wheel. Both kids were adorable sitting in the old fashioned fire engine.
The pool was – pun intended – a big splash. We had a nice cool spot in the shade for the adults on a sultry day. Elisa got in and immediately started splashing with great exuberance. She ended up basically in the pool for 45 minutes, just getting out a few times. Donovan was much more in and out, running around the yard and heading into the house once or twice. 
Still, they both had a lot of fun! Elisa is fearless around water, crawling around in it and a couple times diving in face first. The first time she scared herself a little and appreciated intervention and reassurance but the second time she pushed herself up immediately, sputtered a little and went right back to playing. Donovan was more interested in the toys than the actual water. He played with the bath toys and the balls and netted rackets we had. Once Elisa got hold of the rackets, the nets were quickly detached and used for her signature over the head and across the neck/back move.
The two have also enjoyed bathtime together (except fighting over the toys – any maybe they enjoy that). Donovan gets placed toward the drain since Elisa really likes pulling out the bath plug. And yes, that goes over the head and around the neck, too! There are more pictures, but many of them are not suitable for publication!
posted by Kristin on Jun 20, 2009 |
Elisa has discovered the joy of waving and used it to charm multiple people at this point. The fact that it is still unpredictable makes it all the more enjoyable. She will spontaneously wave hello to the cat but refuse to wave when Mommy and Daddy encourage her to wave goodbye. At the end of May, she had her musical debut at a church talent show singing “Inright Outright Upright Downright” with Mommy. [Grandma recommended starting early before an audience since it seemed to help Mommy have no fear of performing and Mommy tries to follow Grandma's instructions...especially when it shows off Elisa!] Mommy helped Elisa do the actions, which Elisa regularly enjoys – for a couple months, the song got her out of a bad mood every time – and everyone was delighted and clapped hard. Once Elisa understood that the applause was for her, her face lit up and she waved both hands very hard. The double handed wave is a sign of great excitement. It also showed up last weekend at church: while Mommy was leading songs up front while playing guitar, Elisa shouted out (singing?) and waved both hands very hard. While not entirely conducive to worship, this provided a good moment of group laughter.
Elisa has continued to walk, walk, walk. It is still a rolling sort of gait – Grandma says it is like she is riding a horse – but she can move pretty well. Most of her falls happen when she gets so excited about moving that she gets ahead of herself and trips. We went to visit Great Mama and Great Papa Greene in Berlin, NY at the beginning of June and during our two days there she moved from a few forays into the middle of the room to ignoring walls entirely and walking 10-12 steps at a time. One of the big advancements toward this was learning to stand in the middle of the room rather than pulling herself up. This is also much more graceful since she has not learned to plant her feet and line them up with whatever she pulls herself up; instead she may have her legs all twisted and stay on the tops of her feet until the very end. Last week in church was the first time she was truly mobile and at the first opportunity, she left the pew (2nd pew, piano side) to come visit Mommy at the piano. Mommy was considering letting Elisa stay until she starting plunking the keys on the piano – apparently the Clavinova is enough lower than the home piano to provide good “plunking.” Now Elisa is almost running – but her rolling gait keeps it from working!
We have “invested” all of ten dollars in a baby pool – one that is inflatable and has a giraffe neck and toys built in. We have yet to use it for swimming, but we did blow it up to see what it was like and discovered 
that it makes a great jungle gym. Elisa will get in or out on her stomach and will happily play inside with the built in toys or her own toys.
Elisa has two favorite expressions at the moment, one with her tongue out and another that we call the turtle-face – she makes a fish face, but then sucks in the bottom lip so the top lip hooks over the bottom one. She also has continued to make very expressive sounds, although not words. She inherited the ability to project her voice well and prefers to belt at meal time. We’ve just been working to make sure she sticks to lower pitches rather than that of a fire siren!
posted by Kristin on Jun 19, 2009 |
As of Monday, Mommy and Elisa are visiting Grandpa and Grandma Rood in Minnesota. Daddy will join us after SCSC training in Wisconsin for a couple more days to make a total of almost two weeks. Uncle Jeff and cousin Donovan are here now for a week, too, so we’re having a big family party! Elisa is charming her family (even though it took 16 hours after Jeff and Donovan got here for them to see Elisa because of mixed sleep schedules from different time zones!) and meeting some of Mommy’s friends from church and college.
We all drove overnight Saturday to Milton, WI with Elisa sleeping almost the whole way (except for brief waking overnight every time we stopped!) 
and showing off for folks she met in the rest area where we had breakfast. We then rested with our friends the Lawtons for the day and on Monday, Daddy went to SCSC training and Mommy and Elisa went to Minnesota – another good trip. Elisa has done a very good job adjusting to a new place and seems to have some memory of Grandpa and Grandma from Christmas. So far, some of her favorites are playing with Grandma’s lanyard (everything goes over her head and around her neck anyway!) and dancing to the Toddler songs Grandma bought. We’ve also wandered to the nearby school playground, but pea gravel is currently not a good match for Elisa.
We have been up to St. Olaf and saw one of Mommy’s mentors and Elisa, besides being charming, also proved that she is starting to obey Mommy. In a very non-childproofed environment, Grandma saw Elisa heading for a mousetrap and when Mommy said no she immediately stopped and turned around!! Mommy was so proud – and she repeated this feat the next day when she stopped before putting her fingers in a fan when Mommy said no! After our visit to St. Olaf we went to a Chinese restaurant and Elisa made a good friend. One of the waitresses came over to Elisa to say hi, touching her head and arm and talking to her, and Elisa soon was ecstatic to see her. She would see her 20 feet away and just starting screaming with glee – a reaction we’ve not seen to anyone else! She even let the waitress pick her up and hold her while Grandma was nearby and Mommy went to wash the bib. (The previous day she’d screamed bloody murder to be left with Grandma while Mommy showered.)
One milestone since coming here is we have finally gotten sippy cup success! She has had problems with the valves and even those without the valves never quite clicked with her. So Mommy bought a couple new sippy cups on Tuesday and immediately she was drinking from the sippy cup almost exclusively. We still do a bottle before bed – at least for another week – and she does still prefer the bottle, but she is already reaching for the sippy cup! Now she only needs to learn to drink from it when not laying down (even though it is nice to have one activity in the day that you can expect her to stay in the same place for five minutes!)
Yesterday, we met one of Mommy’s college roommates who has 2- and 4-year-old daughters. Elisa, having no sense of personal space, was all over them and eventually they warmed up to her! Elisa had fun shrieking with laughter and ate her first meal entirely of finger foods – bread (with crust!), watermelon, blueberries, cheese, and some puffs. We have been making the transition to finger foods very quickly the last two days, going from Tuesday having two containers of baby food and some finger food to Wednesday having only one container of baby food to yesterday a meal without any baby food…and of course, Mommy had just bought baby food for the two weeks! I’m sure it will still get used, but more slowly than originally thought!
posted by Kristin on Jun 02, 2009 |
We are enjoying the new discoveries of Elisa’s personality and traits every day! She greatly enjoys cameras, which makes it difficult to get candids. When she hears the camera turn on or sees the lens, she is immediately focused on it and usually comes toward the camera, ready to crawl up into the lap of whomever is using the camera. In this picture, not only is she ready to climb up into Mommy’s lap, but she has stuck her tongue to one side of her top teeth, something she has been doing the last few days – possibly related to some teething!
She has been exploring her clothing as well. She has long been interested in her shoes, chewing on them not unlike a puppy. She frequently gets one of her shoes off, but rather than leave it behind, she picks up the shoe and carries it with her. She will often take the shoe and put it in the seat of her playstation as one of her treasures. 
A couple weeks ago she got her pants off for the first time. Of course, she is always stepping on the hem of her pants and pulling them down, so that helped the process! Not content with getting them off, the pants also became a treasure that were carried around and around the playstation and then on around the room!
Elisa enjoys looking under things. She sometimes stops to look under her
playstation and has tipped over her truck numerous times and played with the wheels! Of course, she has had a number of opportunities to work with Daddy on various projects (most to baby proof the house!). Once Daddy took apart an old hard drive or two to satisfy his own curiosity and Elisa sat fascinated the whole time. Maybe there is a bit of an engineer in there!
The amount and types of food Elisa eats is also growing rapidly, many times at her initiative rather than ours! In the picture, she has co-opted some fresh baked bread that Daddy was handing to Mommy, only to discover that Mommy wasn’t paying attention and another hand had intervened. She did an excellent job eating the bread! Today she filched an apple slice from mommy’s lunch and put her teeth to work, gnawing at the slice and eating (or at least biting off and dropping on the floor) about 3/4 of it. She has been eating grape, pear and blueberry pieces for a while as well as crackers, Cheerios, and other cereal-based finger foods. We haven’t found any food that she refuses! In fact, she watches every bite that goes into our mouths when she isn’t preoccupied with her own food and has climbed on top of book lying next to Daddy’s chair to see what he was eating (not unlike the cat!). 
The only issue with eating is keeping her hands busy! She likes finger foods so much that just having Mommy or Daddy spoon-feed her isn’t satisfying. Therefore, she frequently has finger food to eat and we wait for a piece of food before giving the next spoonful. The other option is to give her something like a spoon to occupy her hands so she doesn’t miss the finger foods. Yesterday she had discovered a pine cone outside and with one hand held the pine cone and with the other an extra spoon – this meant a few minutes of undistracted spoon-feeding!
posted by Kristin on Jun 02, 2009 |
Ink has wisely been wary of Elisa since the beginning. As she is becoming more mobile and more responsive to direction (we won’t go so far as to say she follows her parents directions), he is becoming both quicker to run away and more willing to stay close!
We have been working on “gentle!” with Elisa, helping her to pet Ink when he is sitting and calm. These pictures were taken a Sabbath afternoon that we came home from church in a thunderstorm and after dashing into the house, found a very scared cat. As Ink cowered close, Elisa had a good opportunity to practice “gentle!” as we helped her pet him. Of course, she would prefer to grab a nice fistful of hair, but she has been learning to keep her hands open and not in fists all the time - this also shows up in the fact that she finally learned to clap a couple weeks ago. Before that she always kept her hands in fists and could never make the nice noises that she loved when Mommy and Daddy clapped!
Elisa enjoys watching Ink as he drinks water in the bathtub. This is a favorite way to pass the time as Mommy is drying her hair or brushing her teeth. It may not be Ink’s favorite way to pass the time, though, but he has learned to sneak in and of the tub quickly to avoid getting his tail pulled – because there isn’t anything as exciting as a long tail that moves!
Of course, Ink does run away very well. When Elisa starts creeping/crawling toward him (she hasn’t achieved a normal crawl) or walking along furniture, he can make a very quick escape. Elisa has gotten her first scratch, though, and overall, relations between the two of them seem to be fine in the aftermath. Hopefully Elisa is wiser as well, but we’re not sure about that since she still chases Ink!
When Ink really needs to get away, he goes outside or hops up on top of the bookcases via the back of the futon. Sitting on top of the bookcases is new in the last couple months – so it is probably an Elisa- coping mechanism!
posted by Kristin on Jun 02, 2009 |
Recently, Elisa has showed a tendency to pick up her parents pack rat habits. Besides enjoying paper from day one (of course, she prefers to eat it or crinkle it rather than read it), she is now collecting objects in a couple different places.
She has been using the seat of her playstation to carry toys while she pushes the seat around for a month. However, she usually takes the toy back out. Yesterday, she had the electronic metronome (she likes the blinking light and sound), her favorite noise-making toy, a cardboard box a bible came in that she had filched from a book shelf, and the birth announcement of her second cousin Zachary in her seat pushing it around. She even had the birth announcement set up so she could nicely see the pictures as she pushed – although I don’t think it was intentional since the big photo was upside-down! Of course, keeping these things in a seat with leg holes provides a challenge – and keeps her occupied picking things up!
Her Tonka push truck has also become a collection spot. At first it was very much for toys – the plastic blocks that came with the truck and a couple soft activity blocks. However, it has now collected an envelope (filched from the trash…), her Elmo music toy (the first thing she has ever danced to), her Lamaze peacock, and a few other things on occasion.
In both cases, she ends up looking like a baby bag lady pushing her shopping cart – but it is good to know that she is picking favorites and thinking about how to have them with her! This even gives hope that someday she will put things away rather than just take them out! Thankfully she seems to want Mommy and Daddy with her, too – and she hasn’t tried putting us in her storage spots yet!
posted by Andrew on May 30, 2009 |
Once upon a time, a child turned and said, “Dad, why is that every time Mommy gets tired I have to take a nap?”
That story generally brings a smile to our faces because it helps us see an interesting facet of life: parental logic. A child may never understand, but the need to take a nap will depend occasionally more on the energy reserve of the parent than that of the child. Why? Because when the parent hits the metaphorical brick wall and has to get sleep for sanity or other health-related reasons, that sleep can only be restorative when there is secure knowledge that the child is safe. That is parental logic at work, and it isn’t as crazy as we might think at first.
Sometimes, though, the logic doesn’t really seem to work. I’ve been pondering one of those cases for much of the last month. When Elisa goes down for a nap, sometimes she gets mad, throws a fit, and cries. Sometimes, she sees the swaddling cloth, gets antsy, and cries. Sometimes she seems to know exactly what is going on and just drops off to sleep. In all of these cases, I conclude, with parents’ logic, that she was ready for a nap.
In the first case, I simply state, “Since she gets mad at a little thing like being put down for a nap, that is evidence that she is way too tired. She needs this nap.” In the second case, I reason that since she is unsure of what to do or how to react to something she has done hundreds of times, she must be too tired to cope with the world. The time has for a nap. In the last case, I simply figure that since she isn’t fighting it, she must know that she is tired and needs a nap to feel better. In other words, all circumstances lead to the same conclusion: she needs a nap.
Once we, as parents, have determined the time has come for her to nap, down she goes. We use the circumstances surrounding her going down for the nap—whatever they are—as part of the reason for putting her down to sleep. That is parental logic at its best. I’ve summarized it to myself as, “Napped if you and Napped if you don’t.” Isn’t parental logic great?
posted by Kristin on May 15, 2009 |
Monday Elisa had her nine month check-up – a very exciting one since there are no shots!
Here are the stats (up to the very inaccurate measurements possible with a moving baby):
Height: 28-1/4 inches
Weight: 18 lb. 4 oz.
Here are some non-conventional stats:
Three teeth
Favorite food: Almost anything, but really enjoying finger foods like pears, grapes and flavored puffs
Favorite sounds: She says “ma-ma” and “da-da” without knowing what they mean, but mostly say “WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH” – in capitals because it is loud and she opens her mouth up wide for each syllable.
Favorite book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (Well, at least it is the book she always picks off the shelf and she seems to actually listen to it. ..at least until the last page when the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. 
Perhaps she doesn’t realize the caterpillar and the butterfly are the same?)
Favorite toys: almost anything she can bang – especially her rattle. However, she does love her bunny and is learning to be gentle with Ink (yes, to her, I’m sure the cat is a toy!)
And of course, our cutest baby yet!!
posted by Kristin on May 15, 2009 |
It has been a few weeks of continued rapid development. A few weeks ago, as she was starting to move more, we got her a truck to walk with and she immediately took it for a brisk walk the length of the family room.
Tuesday, May 5 Elisa took her first unsupported step. She was probably as surprised as anyone! She has let go before and stood for a second or two before grabbing hold again or getting down on hands and feet, but this time she let go and moved toward another person and then realized what she’d done, stopped and got down. Friday May 9 , she also got up on her hands and knees – the first time she actually got her knees under her that we’ve seen. Of course, she didn’t just rock back and forth but immediately moved forward one “step”! She’s done each of these once or twice more in the past week. This week, on Wednesday (May 13), she started pushing up to hands and feet. To prove that this wasn’t an accident (the way the first step and crawling might have been), she spent the afternoon and evening repeatedly getting up onto hands and feet and has continued to do it.
Today (May 15), for the first time Mommy came into her room after a nap to find her standing in the crib! With Mayterm, Elisa has been with the babysister until 1 and doesn’t seem to like napping there, so we have had nice long naps every afternoon this week – which is providential for mommy as she has a week’s worth of material to prepare for every morning! Today Mommy was having a nap herself when Elisa woke up earlier than usual (after only 2 hours…). Mommy awoke to Elisa laughing in her gleeful overexcited way. Although she has become much more content as she wakes up – probably because she is able to move more – she doesn’t usually wake up laughing! So it wasn’t a huge surprise to find her standing. The picture was an attempt to recreate the experience – but she wasn’t very happy about the dramatic recreation.
We continue to expect that she could take off running at any moment – and not just horizontally!
As of Friday August 7, 2009, Elisa turned one year old! When we finally got to the doctor 2 weeks later, her stats were as follows:
A few other notes about Elisa at a year old (and some 13 month updates):
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