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Oct. 10th, 2005 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThe last few months have been fairly busy for me and Delia. She's changing so rapidly that I really regret that I haven't managed more journal entries talking about her. I've just got little bits and pieces that I noted down at the time, and I'm going to try now to expand on them a little and put them up here so that I have them recorded. These fragments aren't in any real chronological order, and I don't always remember which things happened when. (I'll be posting several bits this evening. Feel free to skip them if you're not interested in Delia.)
Delia has always liked dinosaurs. Some of it is that the word sounds neat. Some of it is Sandra Boynton's Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs. The rest... Who knows? I was fascinated when she started insisting that the alligator and crocodile in her animal board book were 'dinosaurs.' I'm not sure where she'd seen real enough renderings of dinosaurs to make the connection because they look nothing at all like the Boynton dinosaurs. I didn't tell her they weren't dinosaurs because, quite frankly, they *do* look like certain types of dinosaurs and because I thought the explanation would sail right over her head.
I suspect that she still thinks of them as dinosaurs, but she now knows that that's a category word like 'animal' or 'book' that applies to many things that also have specific names. Some of that is that, about three weeks ago, we bought her a dinosaur board book. She can recite it more or less from memory as she pages through it, naming creatures like 'troodon' and 'liopleurodon.' Scott and I have had to agree on pronunciations for all of the names. We differed on 'coelophysis' until somebody else pointed out 'coelocanth,' and I conceded. We're pronouncing 'sordes' more in Spanish than in English because it sounds stupid to me with a silent e.
For about the first ten days after we bought the book, Delia wouldn't let it out of her sight for more than a few minutes at a time. She even slept with it. Now, she forgets about it for hours at a time but then will suddenly remember and insist on taking it with her to the playground (it does *not* improve her ability to climb) or on having it at bedtime.
Delia's dinosaur obsession has resulted in her taking an interest in some of our gaming books. Well, one gaming book. She keeps pulling GURPS Dinosaurs off the shelf and paging through it. We joke that she wants to play it.
I worry about the book on the playground because she's doing a lot of climbing these days. She's too short for some of the equipment, but that doesn't stop her from trying. Mostly, Scott takes her to the playground which works well because he's got a longer reach than I do (I can't reach all of the stuff she's clambering over, and I'm not certain I can catch her if she slips).
I think, also, that Scott's able to be more encouraging and less obviously worried than I am when she's climbing. I was managing okay until she had a fall off of the structure at the nearby playground. We were there with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
evalerie and her kids on a Saturday. Delia fell from about five and a half feet up and landed on her butt and didn't bang anything on the way down. We were very, very lucky.
But it was heart wrenching for me. She cried for several minutes after landing, and when she was finally ready to leave my lap, she whimpered and cried every time she put weight on her left leg. She kept saying, "Mama!" with the obvious implication being that I should fix this immediately. She she was obviously in pain, so with help fromevalerie, I took her to her doctor. The doctor recommended motrin and said to watch to see if the pain eased and to take her to the ER if it didn't. Since she was running around more or less normally the next day, we concluded that she'd just been bruised.
I did have a sort of adrenaline crash after Delia went down for her nap that day. Suddenly, all the energy that had kept me going through the trip to the doctor and so on was gone. I drooped and sagged and didn't move again until I absolutely had to.
We've had some cuteness as Delia works on figuring out English. She learned a lot of shapes from a Baby Einstein book, but her shape sorter had one shape that the book didn't-- the semi-circle. It took her a while to master that one. She knew circle, and she knew crescent, but semi-circle stumped her. I kept telling her that was what it was (though, really, it's more like half an oval than half a circle). For a little while, she called it a 'crescent-circle.' Scott never heard that one.
She's now more or less mastered the 'gimme five!' game. Her aunt has been trying to play it with her for months, but Scott and I were remiss in our duty as parents and didn't start teaching it to her until recently. It took her a while to comprehend that the hand slapping was part of the process. For quite a while, instead of slapping our outstretched hands when we said, 'Gimme five!', she'd responded by saying, 'Gimme six! Gimme seven!'
Delia can now climb into her crib on her own. She still can't get out on her own, however. We think that it's more that she's reluctant to try than that she actually *can't* do it. She's fallen out twice, both times before she learned to climb in, and we suspect that those falls taught her that climbing out is dangerous. I'm still expecting her to try it again any day now.
She's sufficiently proud of her ability that she refuses to allow us to put her in her crib any more. She always has to climb in at nap time and bedtime. Of course, that means we have to convince her that it's time for bed.
Delia has always liked dinosaurs. Some of it is that the word sounds neat. Some of it is Sandra Boynton's Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs. The rest... Who knows? I was fascinated when she started insisting that the alligator and crocodile in her animal board book were 'dinosaurs.' I'm not sure where she'd seen real enough renderings of dinosaurs to make the connection because they look nothing at all like the Boynton dinosaurs. I didn't tell her they weren't dinosaurs because, quite frankly, they *do* look like certain types of dinosaurs and because I thought the explanation would sail right over her head.
I suspect that she still thinks of them as dinosaurs, but she now knows that that's a category word like 'animal' or 'book' that applies to many things that also have specific names. Some of that is that, about three weeks ago, we bought her a dinosaur board book. She can recite it more or less from memory as she pages through it, naming creatures like 'troodon' and 'liopleurodon.' Scott and I have had to agree on pronunciations for all of the names. We differed on 'coelophysis' until somebody else pointed out 'coelocanth,' and I conceded. We're pronouncing 'sordes' more in Spanish than in English because it sounds stupid to me with a silent e.
For about the first ten days after we bought the book, Delia wouldn't let it out of her sight for more than a few minutes at a time. She even slept with it. Now, she forgets about it for hours at a time but then will suddenly remember and insist on taking it with her to the playground (it does *not* improve her ability to climb) or on having it at bedtime.
Delia's dinosaur obsession has resulted in her taking an interest in some of our gaming books. Well, one gaming book. She keeps pulling GURPS Dinosaurs off the shelf and paging through it. We joke that she wants to play it.
I worry about the book on the playground because she's doing a lot of climbing these days. She's too short for some of the equipment, but that doesn't stop her from trying. Mostly, Scott takes her to the playground which works well because he's got a longer reach than I do (I can't reach all of the stuff she's clambering over, and I'm not certain I can catch her if she slips).
I think, also, that Scott's able to be more encouraging and less obviously worried than I am when she's climbing. I was managing okay until she had a fall off of the structure at the nearby playground. We were there with
evalerie and her kids on a Saturday. Delia fell from about five and a half feet up and landed on her butt and didn't bang anything on the way down. We were very, very lucky. But it was heart wrenching for me. She cried for several minutes after landing, and when she was finally ready to leave my lap, she whimpered and cried every time she put weight on her left leg. She kept saying, "Mama!" with the obvious implication being that I should fix this immediately. She she was obviously in pain, so with help from
evalerie, I took her to her doctor. The doctor recommended motrin and said to watch to see if the pain eased and to take her to the ER if it didn't. Since she was running around more or less normally the next day, we concluded that she'd just been bruised.I did have a sort of adrenaline crash after Delia went down for her nap that day. Suddenly, all the energy that had kept me going through the trip to the doctor and so on was gone. I drooped and sagged and didn't move again until I absolutely had to.
We've had some cuteness as Delia works on figuring out English. She learned a lot of shapes from a Baby Einstein book, but her shape sorter had one shape that the book didn't-- the semi-circle. It took her a while to master that one. She knew circle, and she knew crescent, but semi-circle stumped her. I kept telling her that was what it was (though, really, it's more like half an oval than half a circle). For a little while, she called it a 'crescent-circle.' Scott never heard that one.
She's now more or less mastered the 'gimme five!' game. Her aunt has been trying to play it with her for months, but Scott and I were remiss in our duty as parents and didn't start teaching it to her until recently. It took her a while to comprehend that the hand slapping was part of the process. For quite a while, instead of slapping our outstretched hands when we said, 'Gimme five!', she'd responded by saying, 'Gimme six! Gimme seven!'
Delia can now climb into her crib on her own. She still can't get out on her own, however. We think that it's more that she's reluctant to try than that she actually *can't* do it. She's fallen out twice, both times before she learned to climb in, and we suspect that those falls taught her that climbing out is dangerous. I'm still expecting her to try it again any day now.
She's sufficiently proud of her ability that she refuses to allow us to put her in her crib any more. She always has to climb in at nap time and bedtime. Of course, that means we have to convince her that it's time for bed.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 01:04 am (UTC)Also, when Corinne didn't want her crib anymore, we turned it into a toddler bed. Amazingly enough she stayed in it. She *liked* being in a big girl bed. Corinne is such a big girl now, I can't even believe it.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 01:16 am (UTC)We've looked into turning our crib into a toddler bed, but we don't think it can be done safely.
I like reading about Corinne because it tells me some of what I have to look forward to. She sounds like a neat kid. Too bad we're not close enough for a playdate.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 02:01 am (UTC)And we used a rail to keep Corinne in originally, seems like the introduction of the bed made her a less mover-in-her-sleep kind a kid. I mean, it has to happen some day, right?
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Date: 2005-10-11 02:18 pm (UTC)As to the bed-- Goodness, I hope so. For now, I'm putting it in the same mental category as toilet training. It's bound to happen soon, just not today.
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Date: 2005-10-11 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 12:22 pm (UTC)She is so dang cute. I'm gonna come up there and eat her one of these days.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 02:31 pm (UTC)Delia still uses the blanket you embroidered for her (and will use it more this winter). She's also discovered that it's the right size and weight to make a cape out of.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 03:49 pm (UTC)Oh, neat! Try to get me a picture of the capeness?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-13 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-11 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-13 06:17 pm (UTC)Most of my Latin experience comes from singing in a choir during college. We did a mass just about every semester. But that's Church Latin, and pronunciation they taught us was aimed more at being singable than at anything else.