Farvewidigdo

Kate at 17 months

I can't believe a month has passed, but it makes me realize that we're really into toddlerhood now.  Kate's rate of change seems to have slowed and reading last month's post, I realize that she's not so different now. She also seems to finally be on a one nap schedule. 

The past month has been fairly quiet, giving us welcome time to spend with friends, especially Mike, Geeta and Kavita.  We had a great visit with Mina too, who came from Boston.

Kate has hundreds of words now, though they still mostly sound the same.  No phrases yet, but lots of interest in verbs like wipe, touch, tap, kick, jump.  We're also working on colors and other adjectives.

Reading is becoming more and more fun.  She's totally addicted to the Seuss books Fox in Socks and Hop on Pop.  It's really fun that she can "read" the first page of the former if you just point to the items in succession:  Fox, Sox, Box, Knox.  She also likes completing sentences in many of her books and she's getting good as spotting small details in pictures. 

At music class she's been through various phases but she currently spends almost the entire class on our laps.  She's quite affectionate in general these days.  A few weeks ago she was all about giving you a "pat pat."  Now she's into kisses, which are really more like head butts. 

 

New photos

We have (finally) uploaded a new photo album, with photos from our Christmas vacation in California. We were in Davis for about a week, which gave us plenty of time to find all of the nearby playgrounds. Here are pictures of "Papa" and Grandma Farver with Kate:

     

Sweeping

This is a video of Kate sweeping. Sometimes she says "pop, pop, pop" while doing this, which we interpret as evidence that Kate thinks that the broom is actually an adult-sized corn popper toy.

Kate at 16 months

After a relaxing New Year's, we were very busy the following week.  There was a big econ conference in town, which meant lots of activities for Dad and a few for Mom.  That coincided with visit from Jules and Fernando. Much food was had.

Jules stayed a while and was a big hit with Kate.  He indulged her with YouTube videos of lions roaring and taught Kate how to roar herself.  Then he demonstrated that phones can also be used to watch lions.  Weeks later, Kate still points to phones and says "rah!"  She also still goes running into the guest room roaring. 

And now a developmental wrap-up.

Kate has one of those push toys that makes balls pop around like popcorn.  We call it her popper and as a result we call all of her push toys poppers.  The other day she snuck into the closet and pulled out the broom and awkwardly pushed it around saying "pop pop."  She also observed yesterday that the snow shovel is a popper*.

These days Kate labels everything all the time and has enough words that this keeps her quite busy.  Some of the favorites balloon, hat and coat.  In fact, strangers are often barraged with a lot of enthusiastic babbling about their outerwear.  She's probably at around 100 words but there's not a lot of differentiation in pronunciation.

What's really fun is to see how many more things she knows but doesn't attempt to say.  She enjoys sitting down with a picture book and responding when you ask "Kate, can you point to the lemon/trapezoid/jellyfish?"

Speaking of shapes, she's mastered the shape sorter.  She can do all of them, but rarely has the patience for more than a few.  She's also pretty good at giving you the shape you ask for. 

Finally, on the gross motor front, she enjoys running and enjoys it more while vocalizing to produce that "uh uh uh uh uh" sound.  She's been walking backwards and has mastered going down stairs while holding someones hand.  She's also really into climbing and can easily get onto our bed and couch. 

* Unrelated brag:  Mom has shoveled the whole driveway twice in little more than a week.  It's about 100 feet long and it's been about 5 inches each time. 

 

Christmas Crackers

Radio silence and then a deluge.  I also wanted to write a few notes about our Christmas trip to California.  A few days before the trip, cracker madness struck.  The word and sign for cracker became Kate's favorites.  I think she *does* like crackers but I'm not sure she loves them as much as you would guess based on the verbal harassment surrounding them.  She was asking for them 2-3 times an hour.  And I was withholding them more than I probably needed to just because I didn't feel like I should give into the demands very often.  kaKaa!

Anyway, we decided to use this to our advantage for air travel.  We packed crackers for the flight and at both takeoff and landing on both flights we offered unlimited crackers, which of course caused her to swallow, be thirsty, drink water and swallow more.  It all went pretty decently considering she didn't have her own seat and is a wiggly worm at this age. 

The visit was leisurely and fun.  Grandma had a great spread of my old toys that Kate seemed to love.  It's really too bad Tupperware doesn't make many toys any more...they were great!  Kate didn't make much progress on saying "grandma" but quickly learned to say "papa" for my dad.  Christmas day itself was great...Kate really caught on to opening gifts.  She also succeeded in squirreling away the little figure that sits inside her new race car.  A lot of time on Boxing Day was spent looking for him.  A lot.  He was eventually found.

Shrimp Facts

And somewhere in December there was a 15 month pediatrician visit, so I'll report on Kate's physical growth too. 

She's got bottom molars that are all the way through and perhaps there is some progress on the top ones.  Canines also seem to be on the way.  And yesterday we witnessed the arrival of the belated and much anticipated fourth bottom front tooth.  She's had just 3 (which seem to be oddly centered) for a long time!

She's still about 75th percentile in height.  A bit lower in weight and about 90th in head circumference.  She's still baby-shaped, sporting a tummy that is bigger than her bottom.  Arms and legs are thinning out.

Since she hates meat, is sensitive to fruit, lives in northern clime and isn't a big fan of non-sweet potato veggies, we've been doing half doses of multivitamins.  Those seem to be putting her iron levels at a good place.  And, given all of the peeling paint and dubious plumbing in our house, we were much relieved to find out that her blood lead levels are not at all elevated.  Phew.

Hair is getting longer and is nice and thick.  It's pretty much straight, but sometimes with a mind of it's own.  We try to style it a bit with a side part and a clip.  Tolerance of the clip varies.

Hate to end on a down note, but it looks like she may have a shellfish allergy.  Evidence is not conclusive; she got hives and a rash on the day that she had both vaccines and her first significant serving of shrimp at a Chinese restaurant.  It's possible that she reacted to the shots.  It's possible that it was one of the doubtless many ingredients that she hadn't had before.  But really, it was probably the 5 jumbo prawns.  Good news:  the typical shellfish allergy rules out lobsters, shrimp, crabs, but not necessarily mollusks like oysters, clams and mussels.  Bad news:  this is an allergy she's unlikely to outgrow.

Nah nah. Who's there? Ka.

Wow.  It's been way too long since I've put in an update.  Not an indication that Kate isn't still changing quickly; just an indication that we've been busy and had a few computer outages. 

It still feels like language is the fastest moving front.  She has so many words, as well as some new signs.  A few weeks ago she started showing off that her name is Ka!

She's also at a very affectionate stage.  She loves to sit on laps and sometimes comes to us just for a cuddle.  She'll give you kiss and (since we often pat her on the back when comforting her) she's learned to pat-pat when she gives you a hug. 

She has some funny language idiosyncrasies.   One is that, since we often say a stern "no!" when she drops food or her sippy, she seems to think "no!" means "I just dropped that."  Whenever putting things down (or dropping, or throwing) she says "no!"

Another is that she knows how to knock on doors and windows and loves to do so.  She's learned that this is called "knock knock" and thus frequently points to doors and says "nah nah."

She's also very much a mimic.  She laughs when grown up laughs.  She loves to mimic cooking and, since she's always into the spice cupboard, you may find her shaking closed bottles of seasoning into her empty pot.  She also seems to play at taking care of her dolls a bit.  And of course, the cell phone.  She pretends that just about anything is a phone and has even invented her own sign for phone (putting her elbow to her cheek.) 

New photos

We have uploaded a new photo album with pictures from Thanksgiving. Jon and Nicole graciously hosted all of us (including Grandma Noto, who was visiting for the long weekend). Here are two from our trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo; the one on the right is Kate looking at the pygmy hippo:

     

Nnnnndoh!

Last week we had a close call with the oven.  In a second Kate got it half open and in a panic, I shouted "No!"  Well, she learned that that is a *very* powerful word.  Since then her favorite book has become "Home For A Bunny" in which the groundhog tells the bunny "No, you cannot come in my home."  When we get to that page, she says "Nnnndoh!"  And today she started to catch on that she could say "No" to protest food or vaccinations. 

That said, she's got a lot of words and signs these day which I will now brag about:

Signs:

Hat, coat, shoes, socks, banana, milk, car, train, monkey, horse, fish, bear, ball, bye bye, all done, more

Words*:

Water, ball, kitty, not dog but woof, not cow but mmmmm, not sheep but a-a-a-a-a, no, yes, mama, dada, baby

* all pronunciations approximate.

On other fronts, she has been working on going down the stairs holding onto the rail and stepping up (rather than climbing).  She's also learned how to use a spoon by herself.  A new favorite toy is a small saucepan and spoon.  

New photos

After a long delay, we have uploaded a new photo album. We moved out of our old apartment into our new house, celebrated Kate's first birthday, gave Kate her first haircut, and we celebrated Halloween (while Kate was still recovering from chickenpox). Kate's maternal grandparents also visited; it was a busy couple of months! For several weeks we lived out of moving boxes: