Furry Communications

The ability to communicate is, fundamentally, a two way street—you may, for example, speak impeccable English, but if you fail to get your point across to your fellow human, or to your dog, than you have failed at communication. Thus it is with the 19 month old.

“Lauren,” I said the other day as I was strapping her into her car seat, “you’ve scratched your face again.”

“Cut!” she said, holding out her finger to be inspected. For this particular child, “cut” doesn’t mean “I cut my finger” or “I cut my face with my finger.” It means “you need to cut my fingernails.”

“Okay,” I said, “I can cut your nails when we get home. But why did you scratch your face?”

“Bunny!” she said. Sometimes it is entirely unclear what your toddler is talking about.

“Bunny?” I asked. “Where is the bunny?”

“Face!” she said. When confronted with absolute non sequiturs, close the car door and keep going. It will all become clear in time. And it did.

A little while later when we got home, I mentioned to my husband that Lauren had managed to scratch her face again. I didn’t know she was within earshot, but from the living room I heard her exclaim, once again, “bunny!”

This time I can’t ignore it, so I go into the living room and I say, “What is bunny? You said that before. What do you mean by bunny?”

Ever the helpful little child, she runs past me, goes into the bathroom, points upwards towards the shelf at a box and says clearly, “bunny!”

She’s pointing at bandaids. She wants a bandaid for the scratch on her face and her nails cut so she doesn’t do it again. Obviously.

NooNoo & NydNee

Because she is second we have been quietly confident that Lauren would progress from the babbling baby to the talking toddler, but that doesn't make the journey any less significant.  The sudden leaps and strides Lauren makes in vocabulary are coupled with the creative way she uses the words and syllables she posesses, which means she says alot by saying very little, or rather, saying a little over and over and over again.  Witness:

"Lauren, please don't push the buttons on the dishwasher."
"My!"
"No, mommy's."
"Mommy!"
"Yes."
"nnnDaddy?"
"Yes, Daddy too."
"Nnn...NydNee?"
"Well, sometimes Sydney can too."
"Mommy."
"Yes, it is mommy's button."

Some words are brave approximations of the actual word in question.  Where Sydney called both olives and avocado (both favorites at the time, adding to some confusion) "a-a", Lauren spit out something the other day with way more syllables than necessary, ending with something like "avoficiandocco."  Since we unfairly named her with advanced letters of pronunciation in both the L and the R of her actual name, she has gone ahead and re-named herself "NooNoo."  Other words, on the other hand, take on some attribute of the item in question.  "Dog" has become "Bow-wow,"  and the phone has logically become a "Hi."

These malapropisms are endearing and fleeting, as we have learned (I will always miss Sydney's version of "because" which instead came out as "kapuz".  I knew I would miss it and therefore I tried to find occasions for her to use the word as often as possible--possibly hastening its demise.)  Our favorite Laurenism to date, though, is her willingness to play along with our "Happy Song."  The object is to get Lauren to say the word "happy" at the right time:

"I like to be.."
"Happy!"
"I want to be.."
"Happy!"
"Daddy is..."
"Happy!"
"Lauren is.."
"Happy!.."
"Mommy is..."
"Happy!"
"Hoolio is..."
"...CAT!!"

Well, it's true.  Hoolio IS the cat.

Beware the masked turtle

On Saturday we began the now annual pilgrimage to find pieces and parts of Sydney's Halloween costume.  In prior years, she has been spinach and a bee, but this year she wants to be Buzz Lightyear, which challenged our costume making abilities a little bit.  Fortunately we found others who had gone through this already online, and were able to print out what amounted to a recipe for costume making complete with ingredient list.  The list found us making a trip to the nearest Michael's.

Often on shopping excursions I hand one or both children a "store toy", which is a toy that can be held or played with while we are in the store, but will be given back to the store upon our departure, relieving me of both the issues associated with boredom and also with constantly buying the children useless toys.  So far, both children have been fine with this arrangement.  So while in an aisle stacked with odd assorted toys we came across a plastic, and well formed, tortoise.  Lauren pointed at this toy and even handed back the squishy ball she had previously been playing with.  "Baby!" she said, which is her word for any stuffed animal which she will hold onto.

A little while later into the shopping excursion, Sydney informed me that she wanted to wear a mask with her Buzz Lightyear costume.  This was not part of the ingredients list, but we settled on a green eye mask which actually fit her.  We finished our shopping, which is when it became apparent that the tortoise was coming with us and was not a store toy, after all. 

"Lauren," I said, "We have to give the turtle back, now."
"Baby!" she said, looking very serious, and hugging it tighter.
"Honey, we're not buying it.  It has to go back."
"na na na na." She shook her head.  Then she pointed at herself.  "My!"

I glanced in the shopping cart.  All the items there were intended to make Sydney a Buzz Lightyear costume, and there actually wasn't anything in there for Lauren.  My Fairness Meter kicked in.  It has slowly dawned on me, as Lauren gets older and more aware, that things must be equal for the kids, or at least as equal as they can get.  And so the store toy became Lauren's baby.

"Okay," I said, "You can have it."

Later on, we went shopping for food.  Sydney, taken with the mask, wore it inside the store.  Lauren carried her plastic turtle.  Yes, I went food shopping with one masked child and one turtle-carrying child.  "Baby!" Lauren would respond to anyone who would ask.  I'm aware that we make a spectacle.  But I wouldn't change it, not for the world.

Kissing makes it better

While her sister is questioning the existence of the Tooth Fairy (she’s 4, okay, and hasn’t even lost any teeth yet), Lauren wholeheartedly believes that if you kiss where she got hurt, it will make it feel better.

Which is good, because this kid falls down, gets scratched, pinches her fingers..in short, she gets hurt a lot.

But the Kiss.. and it can be anybody’s kiss (I have recently employed Sydney to do the Kissing for me when I am otherwise occupied), it works wonders. Lauren will be wailing uncontrollably and holding her head, and wala....instantly upon being kissed she is smiling and pointing at whatever object she just fell off of, ready to give it another go.

Sometimes no words, or crying, are exchanged. Lauren falls down, gets up, wanders over, and presents the offending body part to be kissed, then wanders off, content that she has been medicated again.

The other day, though, might have shaken her faith in the Kiss a little bit. She touched a thistle, and a blister developed. She cried, and presented her finger to be kissed. I kissed it and she stopped crying. Two seconds later she looked at her finger with surprise. It still hurt! So she presented it again. I kissed it. No. Still hurts. Kissed it again. No go. Kiss. Wait! Try again? Kiss. Still hurts!

After awhile she simply forgot that her finger hurt and wandered off again. A little while later she was back, pointing to her head and crying. I kissed it. She smiled. Doesn’t hurt!

Phew! The Kiss still works.

For now.

The Endless Gravy Train

Somehow a whole year went by without my noticing that it was time for Lauren to move on from being breastfed. Certainly I was more aware of it when I had to pump constantly, but unlike the first time when I was counting the days until Sydney’s 6-month mark so I could move on with my life, Lauren, who has been a champion nurser the entire time, is somehow still attached.

So kudos to me for managing to breastfeed one of my daughters for a whole year and apparently beyond. However, the consequence is that the one year old is much more cognizant, communicative and aware than the 6 month old and thus getting off the gravy train is way more difficult.

I’ve stopped “offering” except at the very end of the day, a nighttime cuddle fest which usually (although not always) ends with her drifting off to sleep. But certain patterns have been established, and Lauren, like her mother, does not easily take “no” for an answer, so there are many times during the day when we find ourselves back where we started. Add to that, she knows where the substance comes from and the other day actually successfully procured it herself with no help from me. Note to self: wear button up shirts from now on.

So this morning I was putting my socks on to go to work and absentmindedly talking to Daddy while Lauren toddled around on the floor, when the Boppie pillow fell from its perch and landed right next to her. Up until that time she’d forgotten all about it, but the sight of the pillow reminded her that when we sit in the living room on a certain chair with a certain pillow, good things start to happen, and she was desperately trying to get mine or Daddy’s attention by pointing at the pillow and at the chair to no avail, and then finally decided to take matters into her own hands and tried to pick up the pillow to put onto the chair when she tripped and fell, causing much havoc and tears.

I left. Daddy prepared a bottle. I don’t know where the brakes are and the train is approaching the 1 ½ year station. If we don’t get off before she starts to talk, I might be doomed.

Stair Master

At a little over 12 months old, Lauren is fearless, headstrong, and completely clueless as to gravity or its consequences.  Hence she is the best climber in the house.

About a month ago Lauren fell down half a flight of stairs.  She'd somehow gotten through a closed door to the hallway and made it halfway up the staircase before succumbing to gravity, but upon her father's frantic arrival all she had to show for it was a bump on the head and a disappointed howl as he brought her away from the offending structure.  She had learned nothing except, perhaps, to be quieter next time she fell so that she could climb and fall to her heart's content.

Recently she has discovered the joy of flopping around on the couch, which turns out to be a fear inducing, high adrenalin game for anyone trying to ensure that she doesn't fall off the edge of that structure either.  The last time we played this game she stepped confidently off the edge right into my arms, entirely sure of my reflexes and my grip, I guess, because she promptly did it again and again.  Sydney watched this maneuver thoughtfully and then announced that she wanted to do it too.  "No!"  I said, sharper than I'd intended.  My heart was already racing for fear of missing the smaller one.  I couldn't imagine trying to catch the larger one.

I don't know where Lauren got this climbing gene from.  Neither I nor her father are natural gymnasts and I personally have an irrational fear of heights which keeps  me from attempting daring feats.  I imagine the world from the eyes of a 1 year old and I can't personally imagine having the courage to step off into the abyss and trust that either the ground or a fellow human was going to catch me.  But there is Lauren, climbing up onto everything and--somehow--climbing down.

A Lauren Turns One

Right around this time last year, Lauren came into this world. 

Unlike her sister, who pretty much came pre-named, we weren't entirely sure what to name her at first.  We'd narrowed it down to a few favorites, but our absolute favorite, Skye, just didn't seem to fit.  Skye was a forceful, abrupt name and the baby in our arms was quiet, confident, and definitely not a Skye at all.  So we finally settled on Lauren, and a Lauren she definitely is.

Lauren's first year was more of a blur to us in some ways than her sister's, and yet the details of her first journeys seemed more clear to us, since we'd gone through it before and knew what to expect.  Lauren sat up, crawled and walked earlier than her sister, but is taking her time growing teeth.   Her sister's hair all fell out and then grew back in, but Lauren's grew in just as her dark baby hair was falling out.  Her sister's hair is thin and straight; Lauren's appears to have a curl to it. 

So Lauren, here you are.  These days you have just begun to communicate in earnest, with a very cute and definitive nod when you are in agreement with a question we ask you.  At first you nodded your whole body, but now a few days into it, you've figured out you only need to nod your head.  You think it is hilarious when mommy jumps on the shovel to dig out the garden.  Your favorite pastime is to put toys on the cat or to steal his food bowl.  And the most amazing thing about you in your first year is:

You're almost as tall as our apple trees.

Happy First Birthday, Lauren!

Da!

Now that Lauren has mastered the elaborate art of walking (at nine months, 17 days…. But who’s counting?), she can take the time to do other things, such as point out in the correct order Mommy, Daddy, Sydney and Lauren in the family photo we have hanging on the wall—except when she doesn’t want to do that and will point to random things when you try to play this game to indicate her boredom: “Lauren, which one is Mommy?” points at the light switch. “No no… .Mommy!” points at the ceiling. “No, Lauren, which one in the picture is Mommy?” Points at Daddy in the picture and then tries to poke Mommy in the eye.

“Da!” she’ll say, delightedly.

“Da!” is the catch all for most everything, and can mean anything from “What’s that?” to “Look at that!” to “Give me that!!” to “Hey Mom look! No hands!!” as she climbs up onto some unstable structure and grins at me manaically.

“Da-da!” she’ll say, indicating that she wants to play the “say ‘ma-ma’” game, even though I know her palate hasn’t formed enough to make the necessary sounds.

“Say ma-ma!”

“Da-da!” she’ll grin.

“Ma-ma!”

“Da-da-da!!” with an uplifting screech, and then she’ll segue into her version of conversation. “a-baba ba ba ba, baba BA BA ba!!”

Sometimes she’ll seem genuinely interested in the name of a particular thing, which she will point at, again and again and again. If the thing is, say, the ceiling, we can be relatively confident that that is the object she wants to know the name of, but if she points at the crowded book case we have to do quick calculations to decide what she actually wants to know. Sometimes the finger will move slightly. Is she moving it because she wants to know the name of that particular book? Or because her spacial perception hasn’t matured yet and she can’t point in the same exact location twice in a row? I worried about this with her sister, too, but I shouldn’t have, since her sister can speak full coherent sentences and doesn’t seem to get “book” and “bookcase” mixed up. Although she does often call me “dad” by accident.

Even though we seemed to be paying attention to every little milestone her big sister reached, it seems to me that we missed this whole pre-verbal communication stage and are only just now realizing how much is really going on in that little head of hers. Whether it’s the big open-mouth on my nose when I ask for a kiss or the successful retrieval of a ball halfway across the room, we are definitely on our way to having two big talkers in the house. The more noise the merrier. Right? Right??

The Serious Business of Growing Up

To judge from the very serious, quiet baby in the arms of the swimming instructor at the Y, I could honestly say that Lauren was clearly having the time of her life. She took the entire experience in quietly, mesmerized, calm.

I knew that she was happy because she was so serious. Two seconds before I had been trying to console an angry and frustrated baby who didn't seem to understand that she could not simply dive into the pool like her sister. In earlier lessons she had been content to remain on the edge of the pool and splash, but today she was having none of that. It was time for her to learn to swim too, thank you very much.

The instructor noticed my struggle and offered to take her into the water. Neither of us knew what that would lead to... stranger anxiety? Fear of the water? ...but what we got was the calm, serious, content 9 month old who has finally gotten her way.

Lauren has always been this way, pushing us into things before we are fully ready for her to experience them, basically leading us to her next big developmental milestone instead of the other way around. Whether this is because she is eager, or we are forgetful of when these things occur, or a little bit of both, we have often had these episode of extreme frustration and unhappiness on her part and a sudden giving in on our part, only to realize that the thing she was asking to do was not beyond her comprehension at all.

The baby looked awful small in the big Olympic sized pool. It was a small thing, in the scheme of things. But to Lauren her first swim was another stride towards independence. And it's a long road indeed.

These shoes were made for walking

...not, as Lauren might have you believe, for eating.

When we last expressed dismay to the pediatrician about our apparent inability to keep up with Lauren's developmental pace, and how we found the difference in the 3.5 year old, who knows enough not to eat marbles or pencils, but does not know enough to keep them out of the reach of her sister, and the 8 (going on 9) month old, who is actively figuring out her world orally and kinetically, to be more than daunting, the woman laughed and said cheerfully:

"Well, the first one, you know, you worry about whether she is developing correctly and whether you are feeding her the right food and reading the right books and taking her to the right school and so on. The second one, you're just trying to keep alive."

To all you second borns out there, I know this sounds as though we parents don't worry about all that other stuff, but the truth is that what really happened is we experimented alot on your older sibling to find all that right stuff that we just practiced naturally on you, and that is why she is the way she is. So it goes both ways. Trust me.

In any event, I don't remember Sydney ever being so fascinated with, say, flushing the toilet or learning how to disembowel an entire roll of toilet paper, but I rather suspect that is because she was never allowed near the toilet or the toilet paper in the first place, whereas Lauren has a freer reign for lack of parental resources. Which leads us, her parents, to see an ever deeper side of babyhood; a far more complicated endeavor than people probably give it credit, and makes it a pity that none of us really have any memories that far back. What greater joy could there be than first discovering you can stand up on those two feet your were only recently trying to eat? What could be more fascinating than a helium balloon attached to a string? What greater disappointment than to finally find a choice morsel in the fact of a used tissue only to have it snatched away? .....well, maybe some things are best left to the far reaches of our memories, after all.

So far Lauren has both been kept alive and up with proper feeding and care and is growing into the cute babbling baby stage which is both endearing and way too short. Soon she'll substitute "dadadada" for "daddy" and will quit eating shoes in favor of wearing them. Just like her sister...only different.