the twos

I've been reading a lot lately about what to do with a whiney kid. For some reason I had expected and planned for a two year old's tantrums, as Fay approaches the pivotal age. But I have been taken a back by the onset of frequent and persistent whining. Its as if sound is just draining out of her mouth with no real purpose or direction. Just a constant moaning. At first I thought something might be wrong that I could fix for her. I don't think that is the case. More words Fay! More words!

Unprompted new word from Fay!

Tonight, Fay and I were heading back to her room to read some books before bed when Fay turned into the bathroom instead.

She asked to get into the tub. So, I lifted her in. Then she motioned for mommy to get into the tub. So I did. We were sitting there together, fully dressed in a dry tub. And Fay blurted out "Bubbles!"

I was so tickled! Up until now, there has been a lot of prompting for Fay to talk. I point to something and say the word and she repeats. Or, we work on the same word, over and over again, until she says it by herself (up!) But this! To make a request about something that is not even an object in her sight. And to use a word that I have not drilled into her head! She can simply call up a word and make her wants known! What a big girl.

Needless to say, I immediately gave Fay her bubble bath.

word list -->

I added a list to the right hand side of the blog to show off Fay's latest words. I'll be updating it as the new words come in. I'm told they should increase rapidly now that she's got the jist of it.

Whats that sound?

I don't think I have ever written about one of Fay's cutest little quirks and I want to remember this, so I'm making a blog post about it.

For a number of weeks now, when Fay hears a sound she brings her hand up to cover one of her ears and looks at me with a questioning look. Sometimes she gives a little "eh?"

I don't know how, but I immediately knew that she wanted to know what the sound is. Usually its a loud sound like an ambulance or a car beeping as it goes in reverse. It didn't even really phase me until one day Fay's babysitter brought it to my attention.

Babysitter: I think Fay may have an ear infection or cold because she keeps reaching for her ear.
Me: Oh, no, I just think she is asking what the sound is that she hears.
Babysitter: Really, well, I don't know, she is always touching the same ear.
Me: Well, I'll keep an eye on it, but I really do think she is just asking about a noise.

After watching more closely, she does in fact use both ears for the question, but I think she favors her left ear. Its the cutest thing because I would have never guessed that at this age she correlates hearing a noise with the use of her ears. I'm guessing that at some point I started using that sign when I was talking about noises to her. As in....Fay [cupping ear]...do you hear that sound? That's an ambulance.

talker

Fay has made some significant progress on her verbal skills over the past couple of weeks. I noticed a big improvement in her communication attempts and number of "words" she was using while we were in Wisconsin. I wonder if having so many people and new things around stimulated her to want to talk more.

We've also been showing Fay a sign language (ASL) video almost every day for about two weeks now. I hadn't intended to bombard her with ASL, but she loves the video so much and requests it every day. I think there are two reasons she loves it so. One, there are little kids throughout the video doing signs. And, two, there are most of her favorite objects being used as examples for the ASL words taught. For example, we learn how to say: eat, more, ball, baby, car, dog, cat, mom, dad, shoes. These are all of her favorites. If only they had a sign for "yogurt" we'd be set.

She immediately took to the "eat" sign and has been using it whenever I say the word eat. Even better, she has these new words:

"Mo" -- More
"Ba" -- Ball
"Mama" -- Mama (says it a lot more now)
"Bye Bye" -- Bye Bye or good night
"ooo-dy" -- Brody (her grandma's dog)
"Meow" -- Cat sound
"Moo" --- Cow sound
"Baa" -- Sheep Sound

Her babysitter, Deb has also taught her to say "Nana" and "Lyla" for her grandma and friend. But she only does those while singing a little made up song.

Also I've been trying to get her to do the "F" sound, so she can say her name. But it comes out as a tongue blow.

She hums along with the Alphabet song. And she is *really* singing along with old MacDonald. She says the animal sounds right after I mention the animal and she does the "E-I-E-I-O" in the right spot. Its so much fun to sing with her!!

Wisconsin!!!

You should only detect a mild amount of sarcasm by the exclamation points in the title. I'm from MN, and live in NYC, so I have to make fun of the midwest a little, or I wouldn't get by with my day to day nyc encounters.

Ryan and I attended a wedding last weekend in Milkwaukee, and then stayed on in Neenah/Oshkosh Wisconsin for a week, renting a lake house with Ryan's family. My family also drove from Mpls to Neenah for the weekend so fay Got to see ALL of her grandparents during our midwest vacation along with her Uncle Andy.



We were a little unfortunate to have overcast and rainy weather during the first 1/2 of the week. That stumped us at first because we were thinking of spending much of the week swimming and boating on the lake.

BUT we were happily surprised to find tons of fun little activities for Fay to do around neighboring towns. Fay's favorite activity by far (besides playing with Brody, the Yorkie) was picking fresh raspberries! She couldn't manage to get more than one or two past her mouth into the collection basket. I think she thought she had died and gone to raspberry heaven, and she told us so with some whining/crying when we finally had to leave.



Grandma Sandy also found just about the best city park for toddlers I've ever seen. This park had a petting zoo, a merry go-round, a mini-train for toddlers and paddle boats (not to mention some really strange looking paddle-tricycle things). The zoo was free, and the rides were $1 or less per ride. So it was not only a find, but a bargain too!



[Insert joke here about feeding toddler to the cow]

Fay loved the train, but she wasn't entirely sold on the merry-go-round. She held tight to mommy and looked around skeptically the entire time. Of course when she returned to nyc at the end of the week and saw another merry-go-round at the park, she instantly wanted on it.

By the end of the week, we were swimming in the lake, canoeing in the lake, and had a relaxing 4 hour pontoon boat ride. Fay LOVED the boat because she was able to run around from end to end. She was also introduced to chex mix for the first time on the pontoon and that put her in a pretty good mood as well.



[Fay having "fun" on raft with daddy]

All in all, a pretty good vacation. It was fun to have everyone together and see Fay get so much attention. As we all know, Fay can be a little slow to warm up, and she was clingy towards her mommy for the first couple of days while all her grandparents were vying for her hugs and playtime. But it was amazing how quickly she fell into a comfortable family rhythm.

I'll leave you with this.....

Another Fire Island weekend

We spend another weekend in Fire Island last weekend, this time with our friends Dia, Josh and their toddler Maurice.

We were extremely lucky with the weather. Thunderstorms were predicted, but we only got showers while we slept on Saturday night. The daytime hours were sunny and beautiful.

Fay continues to like the beach more and more. She had fun walking with daddy down to the ocean edge and then handing him her bucket to fill with water. She also had fun scooping sand into the bucket, and throwing stones and seashells into the bucket.

Maurice and Fay had a blast. Each morning it was as if they'd received a gift of each other's presence. They were very very excited to have the other there to play with at 6 in the morning. The house is a 3 bedroom, so it was our hope that the kids could sleep in the same room together and each set of parents could have their own room. Fay and Maurice are 20 and 22 months respectively, so they sleep through the night, but they do have occasional shout outs and sometimes they wake up early. We were concerned that one kid might wake up the other kid, but we were willing to give it a try.

Well, I have to say, the antics of the kids trying to sleep together may have been the best part of the weekend. On Friday night, we put Fay in the kid room about 10 minutes before Maurice. When Maurice got in there and we closed the door we started hearing "Faaaaaay....Faaaaaay.....Faaaaay". Maurice could not see Fay because we had a sheet blocking his view of her crib, but he knew she was there and he was very excited to have a bunk mate. Fay answered with some "Da!"s and some little screams of recognition. Although we put them in there at 7:30, I don't think it was quiet until 9pm or so. The following night was a bit shorter, but they still chatted before falling off to sleep.

The other highlight of the weekend was some live band toddler dancing. Unfortunately Ryan was not there on Sunday night because Ryan returned to the city Sunday afternoon. I switched my work days this week so I could stay on through Monday. On Sunday Fay and I went to dinner with Maurice's family and the kids had the best time. After some yummy food (burger and sweet potato fries!) we went to the open air back yard of the restaurant where there was a band playing. Fay and Maurice ran in circles around their parents and danced like crazy. We were told by several tipsy onlookers that our kids were quite cute.