Syl-vi-a

When Kip says 'Sylvia' it comes out something more like eea, with a slightly guttural sound before the e's and some other irreproducible vowel-ish sound before the a. It's a bit like when Sylvia says, 'no' these days, which is very much in the Adelaide style and sounds more like noe and almost has two syllables. 

The problem isn't the 's' or the 'l' sound; he's perfectly capable of pronouncing those sounds correctly in other words. When I try to reproduce the way he says it he tells me I'm saying her name wrong and shows me the correct pronunciation, and will only accept when I say her name correctly. I think it's pretty cute, but then I'm the mom.

That ended today. He looked at me while we were in the car driving to pick up Sylvia from school, and after pronouncing her name his normal way he said, "No, Syl-vi-a." Like a little language lightbulb went on in his brain, and now it'll stay lit forever.

Year update, a month late

Kip's been a year old for a month now (tomorrow, anyway) and I should write down a few stats before more time passes.

When Kip was just a year he had seven teeth. The seventh (on the bottom) poked through a couple of days before his first birthday. The eighth showed up a couple of days after. And then, last week, he got another tooth, this time a molar. I think he's excited about this food stuff. I made him a yellow cake with chocolate frosting for his birthday, which he mostly turned into a big, huge mess while I took pictures.

At his 1 year appointment (which was a week after his first birthday, but close enough) Kip weighed 10 kg and was 76.5 cm long. He got two shots that day and took them well. So glad one of them was the MMR since now we know measles erases part of the immune system's records of previous infections.

I can tell I haven't been as diligent about signing with Kip. After his one sign I expected him to add a few more to his vocabulary, but it hasn't been happening. Oh well. Makes me really miss the support system (read: local signing time) that we used to go to.

Sylvia also lost a tooth last week. She wiggled it and wiggled it and finally twisted it around so it was hanging on by almost nothing, at which point I reached in and plucked it out. We still haven't had a visit from the tooth fairy because we all keep forgetting to stick the tooth under Sylvia's pillow at night. I might just pay her $5 and let her keep her tooth.

Today was the last day of school holidays. We still have the weekend, of course, but today's the last non weekend day. Sylvia wishes she had another week of holidays, and I think Kip and Paul just wish I weren't working so they could be home with me. We don't really do that much when we're home. I took the kids to the South Australia Museum last week. Sylvia begged to go back, I suspect more because she wanted to catch pigeons (she was successful on our first trip) than because she wanted to see the museum. We didn't do much this week. It's been too cold so all we were able to do was hang around the house watching cartoons. I did make sure we had some outing or activity every day, even if just a trip to the grocery store, but it's so hard when it's cold. Looking forward to the next school holiday when it'll be warm enough to do stuff and go places!

Language acquisition

Tonight, Kip very deliberately signed 'milk'. So I gave him some.

Tonight, Derrick got Kip's attention with his name, and stopped him from getting into the trash by saying, 'no.'

It's so cool when kids get to the stage where communication takes on the first vestiges of true language. Wahoo!

Updates and milestones

Kip has two teeth! His first tooth came in New Year's eve while we were in Mount Gambier and another came in a couple of days ago. He's still pretty slobbery, and his sleep is most definitely disturbed, but I'm hoping the worst of this first round of teething is over. Of my three kids, Kip is most definitely the one who has had the hardest time with teething. I don't think he's having as hard a time as Derrick had when he was a baby, but we've had a couple of pretty hard nights.

Grabby

I've never had a kid who actually liked being in a baby chair with the grabby things. I always thought the little toys were more for the parents than for the baby (cuteness being a major factor in the decision to buy anything for babies). Turns out I just haven't had a kid who'd play with them before. Kip isn't happy in the chair for long, but he will spend two or three minutes happily playing with the toys on his chair. Such a lovely thing!

He loves grabbing things lately. He's found his toes--he grabbed them for the first time about a week ago, and now they're his favorite thing to hold on to (for which my hair is very happy).

If I set him down next to something fabric--a blanket or piece of clothing--he likes to pull it over his face and flail and snort. I seem to remember his older brother doing the same thing. 

Teeth and turning

Couple of big milestones this weekend: Sylvia lost her first tooth on Saturday and Kip flipped himself over on Sunday. He can only go one way--from his back to his belly--and he had to push himself with his feet to do it, but I can see his days of immobility are coming to an end.

I think Paul might have actually pulled Sylvia's tooth. She's had a tooth coming in behind it, and she's been complaining about it being loose since her last dental appointment about a week ago. She's only sporadically played with it, and hasn't been as interested in eating the apples and carrots the dentist suggested for making the tooth looser, which I think may be because it's a little painful. I got the impression that Paul is the one who took matters into his hands and twisted the tooth free.

Both of them were fascinated by the tooth, so much so they wouldn't stop playing with it and lost it a couple of times. It's such a tiny thing, I'm not surprised they had a hard time keeping track of it. The tooth fairy who came was pretty rich--Sylvia got $5. She used it to buy herself a watermelon.

Words, words, words

I've been meaning to make a list of all of Paul's words but I haven't yet and today I realized it's in a way too late--he's moved on to phrases.

We take Sylvia to school on the bus. Paul's been saying bus very distinctly for a while. He's also had a little phrase he says before bus a lot of the time. Today I finally understood he was asking me if that was our bus. When I told him no, he said some different phrase before bus that I'm pretty sure was him repeating the idea that the bus wasn't our bus.

Gads, I'm slow.

I don't know a lot about human development, but it's been clear for a while Paul has more than just words in his vocabulary, that there's a structure to what he's saying. Much of what he says sounds like gibberish to me, but it's consistent gibberish so it's obviously language. I don't know enough about language acquisition to know if he's making up the syntax or if he's trying to copy us more advanced speakers, but it's obvious he knows instinctively there's a structure to talking and he's imitating or creating it himself.

I know I loved watching Sylvia go through this language acquisition phase. It's just as much fun to watch the second time around.

roly poly

I admire people who actually keep records. This blog is, at the moment, the closest thing I have to a journal (which is why it occasionally includes posts that border on or enter into TMI territory, and why I sometimes put down thoughts on people, politics, and religion). I am lately especially impressed by people who keep baby books. Sylvia keeps dragging out her baby book, which I filled out all of one page completely. Lately I've tried filling in some of the gaps--mostly things I can look up on teh interwebs or things I actually recorded on this blog.

Since someday I may do the same for Paul, he's recently passed another milestone: he's rolling over. Derrick's dad got him to roll over from his front to his back on Sunday and I've gotten him to roll over several times over the last couple of days.

AGU was last week, so Derrick's parents came out to watch the kiddos while Derrick and I acted like adults for the week. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, mostly because I got to see friends I haven't seen in a while and hear about cool science. Oh, and eat out at the wonderful restaurants in SF. There's one Thai restaurant (The Old Siam) we went to three times during out six day visit.

The best thing, though, was remembering that I do like science a lot, and that there are still a lot of cool, useful questions to be asked.