At last: "BUH!"

It appears Edith is going to be a reader after all. After nearly fourteen months of rejecting books out of hand, then manhandling them on her own but throwing them down and running away if anyone else tried to get involved, she has figured out that there are pictures on the pages. She also seems to have reversed her isolationist position and decided that it's actually interesting to invite Mom and Dad to participate now and then. For one thing, they say and do interesting things while they turn the pages.

For the last week or so, Edith has started bringing us books and waiting expectantly. The first few times I thought it might have been a fluke, but when she continued to do it several times a day and then added the syllable "Buh", I decided she may really be serious about this new hobby.

There are limits to her bibliophilia. She doesn't want to be held while reading. She wants to stand next to you, so she can make a quick getaway when things get boring. And they do tend to get boring before the end of a story. But who am I to judge? I don't finish my books in one sitting either.

She has definite favorites: (1) The first two pages of Goodnight, Moon. (2) The first page of a Scottish nursery rhyme book her Mor-mor and Mor-far gave her, because it features a rhyme in which you touch each part of the child's face and end by tickling her under the chin. When we finish this rhyme she usually grabs one of our fingers and puts it back on her eyebrow, indicating we should start over. Or she jumps to the end and tickles herself under the chin.

But the book she likes the most, the one she brings us most often and enjoys at least half of at a time, is Go, Dogs, Go. For those who don't know it, we call it the fake Dr. Seuss book. It looks like Dr. Seuss and looks like it should sound like Dr. Seuss, but it's not nearly so clever. It somewhat inexplicably features a bunch of dogs jumping out of bed and racing by every available means of transportation to...a dog party at the top of a tree(?). I think Edith likes it because we read it in an excited voice, almost shouting, to indicate urgency. These protagonists are on the move. Clearly, Edith can identify.

Tonight for the first time she said "Buh" as I carried her into her room for bed. I asked her which one she wanted to read, putting her down in front of the basket of books by the rocking chair so she could pick one. Before even laying eyes on it, however, Edith responded, "Go-dah-go!" I didn't know she remembered any of her books without a visual prompt.

When we'd finished reading it through twice, she turned to one of the pages featuring the same text as the title and repeated "Go-dah-go!" over and over. She really likes that turn in the plot.

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Since last Friday's post Edith has added not only book but also hat and a much more consistent more to her spoken vocabulary and shoe, bath, music, sleep, please, and thank-you to her signing vocabulary. And the wheels on the bus are going wow an wow an wow. It's like you can see the neural grooves forming. Exciting times.

Odds and ends

Black-eyed Susans...























...Black-eyed Edie.


The first are part of our organic farmshare. In addition to each week's vegetables, you can cut your own herbs and flowers. And so now we have fresh bouquets around the house all week. There is nothing like being kept in perpetual fresh flowers to make me feel pampered. The share is worth it for that benefit alone.

Edith's black eye is not the result of a daycare scuffle, thank goodness. Shades of her Uncle Peter, it's what the mosquitoes do to her tender skin when they bite her just under the eye. As you can see, Tom is letting her self-medicate to regulate the pain...






Blueberries for EMEL


More berry picking! This time, blueberries, for which New Jersey is famed. We went in the company of Edith's friends Harrison and Desi and their parents. Within a few minutes Harrison was getting the concept of picking only the blue berries and leaving the green. Edith was still munching away on the unripe ones. So I put her down on the ground where--shades of her literary predecessor Sal--she found a much quicker and easier source of berries. (No bears, though. It is New Jersey, and I guess they've all been hunted. You'll have to ask Uncle Peter about that.)






Never judge your mother until you've walked a mile in her shoes.


Edith is into putting on shoes and socks these days. Preferably, into putting hers on us and ours on herself. She holds out her toddler size 5s just in front of our feet and waits for us to slip our toes in. Last night she started buzzing her lips whenever I wiggled my toes. Don't laugh--she's very earnest about it.

At this point we think she's destined to be either a shoe salesperson, a naturalist, a stunt double, or the next sound effects guy on A Prairie Home Companion.

Language assessment

I'm making this list for my own sake, but I thought I'd put it here in case any of Edith's fans are interested.

In rough order of frequency, at thirteen months Edith

SAYS
milk
that ("dat")
uh oh
up
done ("nun")
ball
Dada
no
Bismarck ("Mah-Mar")
Mom
Piper (jealousy is a powerful motivator -ed.)
amen
bird
help
book
more
bye
eye
hot (only has one context for it, though--food on the stove)

SIGNS
milk
airplane/helicopter
tree
bird
all done
help me
pray
eat
dog
toothbrush
hot
The Itsy Bitsy spider went up the water spout DOWN came the rain and washed the spider out the itsy bitsy spider crawled up the spout again (there is no sun this spider's life, alas -ed.)

Edith also pontificates with conviction in Vietnamese and Xhosa.

I love me some cousins, just not no new babies

Some more photos of Edith with her cousins Santiago and Maggie last weekend. They got along from the get-go and seemed to have a great time together. Edith is so lucky to have cousins close-in-age with whom to grow up. I look forward to watching them play each Thanksgiving and Christmas as they get older: going to look for cats in the barn, playing tag in the yard, and of course, staking out the course for golf games with the miniature golf club set that is already a big hit. Who knows what they'll come up with on their own? There's still a Luke Duke cowboy hat in the hall closet...



On the other hand, Edith seems to be exhibiting some serious new baby jealousy. For five or six days in a row, she has bitten the much younger baby who recently joined her daycare class. Until P. came, Edith was the youngest child in the class and loved to be held and petted by all the teachers, especially the head teacher. Now I suspect she is jealous of the cuddling and attention the younger child is getting.

The teachers are very understanding, assuring me that biting is a normal behavior at this age, when young toddlers are still exploring the world orally, are too little to understand that biting hurts, and don't have words to express their emotions. All the same, they've decided that Edith and P. can't be allowed to play freely on the floor at the same time. Today when we dropped Edith off, P. was the only child already there. They had her in a chair at the table. Edith made a beeline for her, pointed, tried to reach her, and to my surprise, clearly said her name. The teachers deftly stepped in, encouraged Edith to say good morning to P., and then handed Edith a frozen teether. She seemed to like having something to bite and showed it to all of us in turn. I hope that helps. I don't envy the teachers negotiating this situation.

I feel really bad that I can't be there to help work on this behavior with her. I feel crummy for the baby and her parents, who must be dismayed by the daily Incident Reports they're getting. I also feel sad that at just thirteen months Edith is having to deal with jealousy of a "new baby," which wouldn't happen if she were at home. One of the breastfeeding guides I've read explains that a child who is inclined to wean is also emotionally ready for someone else to replace her at the breast (a convenient biological arangement, since weaning usually makes it possible for a woman to become pregnant again if it hasn't been possible before). Edith is nowhere close to weaning--she still wants to nurse hourly, if not more. It's hard, this growing up.

Taking advice from all experts out there...

Speaking of roller coasters

Edith went on her first amusement park rides this past weekend, the same boardwalk Funland rides her grandmother first rode a couple of generations ago. (The price has gone up from 10 cents to 30 cents since then.) She was in the good company of her cousins Maggie and Santiago, Funland veterans who showed her the ropes.

Living on the edge

*For some reason, this post completely disappeared from the blog last night. Here is a recreated version, with the hopes that Mor-mor will re-post her inimitable comment.

Last year Edith joined her Uncle Peter at his college reunion for the first time. She didn't have a great view, since at 22 days old she couldn't yet see over the top of the Baby Bjorn:


This year she attended reunions incognito. She was afraid an old friend from Forbes College might recognize her and comment on how much weight she's gained. Not many people triple in size from one reunion to the next, after all:


The fifth reunion theme for Uncle Peter's class, which was the last to participate in the Nude Olympics before the administration shut it down, was Running from the Law. Edith looks cool-enough customer to play the part, no?

In fact, she is becoming quite fond of testing the limits. On Wednesday when I picked her up from school, I found Ms. Chrissy holding her and singing a song about "Edith, who isn't afraid of anything." It turns out Edith is getting a reputation for being a daredevil on the playground.

There is a small hill there, and she loves to toddle down it as fast as she can. Even pitching over doesn't faze her, as multiple teachers have now told us, having watched her tumble with their hearts in their throats. She just gets up and keeps going.

On flat ground (I hope), she has been practicing walking with her eyes closed. She scrunches them up and sets out. I've seen her scrunch them that way when I push her high on the swing.

She apparently has been climbing the playground equipment and going down the slide like the big kids for several weeks now. Having seen how fast she comes down the slide on the neighborhood playground when I'm with her, I find this astonishing--and not a little scary.

But the stunt that had Ms. Chrissy singing the unafraid song took place on the jeep. On the school playground is a jeep frame made out of metal climbing bars. (They call it a car, but it looks more Hummer-like to me.) Edith had climbed into the driver's seat to pretend to drive. Then instead of going back out the doorway, she tried to do like the big kids were doing and exit up and over the top of the back crossbar. This occasioned a faceplant and a slightly bloodied lip. But before the panicked Ms. Chrissy could reach her for a hug and comfort, she had stopped crying and was toddling off. There were new obstacles to conquer.

I'm going to have to read up on thrill-seeking personalities. I want to be prepared when she finds out what roller coasters are. It's a cliche, but really, I don't know where she gets it from.