Every month on the 11th, with one exception so far, I take “birthday” photos of the girls. I am obviously less good at posting them, since it’s already been six months since the ten month photos. In fact, I see now that I haven’t yet posted photos from their actual birthday in October. I’ll have to get to that.
For February, we went to Ervan Chew Park on Dunlavy, where Sam and Cate can pursue their favorite activities. (Click for larger.)
Here’s Sam on the swing. She loves to swing, and she especially likes that from this vantage point, she can see — and “ruh!” at — dogs in the Ervan Chew dog park:
Sam loves to swing
And here’s Cate on the slide. She’s just come down The Big Slide at Ervan Chew, all by herself, for the first time. I’m saying “Yay!” and she’s clapping:
Cate loves to slide
The day was cold (~50°F) and overcast, and I underexposed almost all of the photos. Thanks again to my colleague, Katya Horner, with Slight Clutter Photography, for brightening these up.
Gram Nancy: for your photo printing project, you should download these full-resolution versions of Sam and Cate.
The girls are continuing to add skills faster than I can record them. Here are some recent highlights:
Sam asks for her “buo” (plush Rice owl that Gene and Adra brought), shakes her head for no, says “ga” for agua, “rawa” for water, “ba” for ball or bath, “ucky” for duck, “mah” for mac and cheese, and “baba” both for baby and for Baba Jean.
Cate says no, yes, ducky/pato, turkey/pabo, “ho[t] pa[d]s”, something that sounds like “up-pi-da” that it took me three weeks to figure out meant apple teether, “dobby” for dame (give me) and emulates a ton of other words along the way.
Both girls have mastered a wide range of animal sounds. For a while, they were saying cat, gato, doggy, and working on horse and others. But now they almost always identify animals by the sounds they make, e.g. “mau” for kitty, “woooh” for dog, “neigh” for horse, “maah” for goat, “baah” for sheep, “mooo” for cow, etc. They also open and close their mouths for fish, giddy-up for horse, open and close their hand for butterfly, and sputter while raising an arm for elephant.
Both girls are starting to sing. One day several weeks ago, I sang the “Sing” song from Sesame Street. As I began the second verse, I realized that both girls were pitch matching with me. And when I got to the “La la la la la”s, Cate and Sam sang some “La”s, too. That song often makes me weepy anyway, and having our daughters join in definitely queued up some tears.
They also chime in some “cah, cah”s during Woody Guthrie’s “Car Song”, and some “dahn, dahn”s during Ralph’s World’s “River Flow.”
When the girls finish eating and we turn them loose in the kitchen, Sam goes straight to the step stool (that I’ve just gotten up from), slides it the last few feet to the stove, climbs up to the second/top step, and begins to emulate Dad making breakfast. If there is a spatula, she stirs it in the skillet, as if making eggs.
Cate will also climb the step stool, but by the time she gets to the second/top step, she’s close enough to her grown-ups to want “up!”
When we get to a playground, Cate makes a bee-line to the little kid slides. She can clamber up the steps, walk across the platform, sit down at the top of the slide, scoot over the edge, slide to the bottom, roll on to her belly and dismount, walk back over to the steps, and do it all again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sam often goes straight to the swings, but she needs help to get up into the bucket.
While dancing to “Dance around” from the Ralph’s World album, we get to the verse that says “Jump so high, jump so high, jump so high” and Sam does. It clearly takes a lot of concentration, but she has figured out how to bundle her energy and get airborne.
A few weeks ago, Sam was searching for a page in Kiss, Kiss. When I asked her what she was looking for, she looked at me and raised her arm. When it occurred to me that she might mean Daddy Bill’s gesture for an elephant trunk, and I flipped to the page with the Mama Elephant kissing the Baby Elephant, she smiled broadly.
One day last week, as part of the wind-down to nap time, I sang, “Miss Mary Mack.” I got as far as “with silver buttons, buttons, buttons” and Cate began to sputter at me. She then raised her arm. When I got to the line about “to see the elephants, elephants, elephants,” I realized what she was saying and why, and laughed out loud.
In mid-January, Bill went to Oklahoma City for two days. On Tuesday morning, as Bill was preparing to leave, I explained to the girls that Dad was “going for a ride in an airplane.” On Wednesday and Thursday, when we saw airplanes flying overhead, Sam pointed up at them and declared, “Da!”
Cate has begun to answer direct questions:
Mama Bob: Do you have poo?
Cate: No!
Mama Bob: Are you sure?
Cate: Yeah!
Sam is experimenting with sticking her fingers in her ears, and apparently noticing how the sound changes.
While looking at photos on my iPhone, Cate has reached out with her pointer finger, and in a very controlled fashion, swiped it across the screen from left to right, scrolling to the next-earlier photo.
Both girls are learning to say their names. Catie can manage the hard consonant and vowel combination to say “Cay-tee”, but neither girl has Ss to say “Sam” yet. Sam knows her sister’s name, but says it as an adorable barely-audible breathy whisper, “keh-ti.”
This list is long and doesn’t begin to cover their new-found capacities. But it does convey the flavor of the newest skills being practiced around here. If you want to know more, you should really come visit!
