Levelelling up

The girl appears to have levelled up again. In the past week or so she's added a whole bunch of new skills to her repertoire.

• New consonant – The letter L. Today she just started saying la la la la la over and over for ages this morning.
• New service – Kisses on request. You ask her Can I have a kiss and point to your cheek, she'll smile, walk over and plant a kiss on your cheek. Sometimes twice.
• New dance move – Spinning. Sometimes when she likes a song, she'll start spinning. Only occasionally will she fall down afterwards.
• New skill – Get up on sofa. She can now get up on the taller sofa. It takes her a while. Well, she couldn't do it 2 days ago. Only managed it a few times yesterday, and will much effort. Today she can almost always manage to get up. And occasionally fall over on her back getting off. Done that 3 times today, which kind of dampens the excitement on the new skill.
• Enhanced grabbing range – she can now reach more than 50% of the stuff on top of my dresser. And open the drawers.
• Forthcoming skill – blowing her nose. For now, she just holds a tissue in front of her face and makes a raspberry noise. But she’s close.

It's weird how a whole slew of new skills all come at once.

Intent

Just a small note today. The lass has been quite awkward to get to sleep for the past several days. Last night we tried to get her to sleep in the cot several times before giving up. We ended up just holding her while watching a documentary.

Eventually she just started fussing again, but more so this time. So I asked her What do you want? I stood her on the floor and held her hands and let her lead me.

She walked straight out of the room, to the stairs and I carried her down those. On the landing, she led me straight to the next stairs (the ones she fell down the other day) and I carried her down those. On that floor, she walked straight past all the doors and right to the next set of stairs. I carried her down those. She walked past the loo and into her room. I turned on the light and she led me to a stool, which she grabbed hold of, finally letting go of my hands.

I've never seen her so directed. This was not explore mode, but Don't you get it, I'm tired and want bed mode. It's good to know she's gotten to the point she can express herself to us. In a vague sort of way.

8 month checkup

We had the 8 month checkup today. It went better than I expected. The health visitor running it may not have been completely on the ball, but she was quite personable, which goes a long way to making the whole experience better.

The thing is pretty simple, which is probably why we got no details in advance. People with an 8 month or so old child show up at 10am. Whoever comes that day is seen. First they weigh the kid, then everyone sits around a big playmat while the health visitor asks us questions about sleeping, eating, excreting, and so on.

Three babies showed up today. The other two families were a baby boy, an older sister and a mother. Not only was I the only father there, I was the only male over 9 months. The other two babies were barely just sitting up. My little one, held up by me, toddled over to the playmat, plopped down and started crawling. She stopped when she found a small rubber duck which she popped in her mouth and started chewing (I suggested she get some hoisin sauce to go with it).

One family was seen separately due to not speaking English. So really it was 2 babies and their parents being questioned. L did most of the talking for us. I'm not sure if I was just being quiet, or if the health visitor was subtly directing all questions at her. Or maybe she just likes talking about our child. L says it's like a woman in the sciences – if you don't speak up you'll be completely looked over.

After the group questions, the two families took turns doing 1:1 with the health visitor. Answering questions and getting answers to whatever was on our minds. Turns out all issues we wondered about the wee one are pretty common and will work out over time. It was mostly things like her standing funny and her bloodshot eyelid. She's also a bit small for her age, but that might just be due to all the colds she's had lately. They said to come back in 6 weeks and see if the little one's fallen down another percentile group. I didn't want to ask them anything too esoteric or prone to soapbox opinions, since I doubt we'd have gotten anything we didn't already know – read a book or follow my dubious advice.

Seeing the babe with other children her age is a huge contrast. She's soooooo inquisitive. Craning her neck here and there to see what was happening just out of sight. Picking up and playing and chewing on everything (I'm still worried we'll get another fever out of that exchange). With one child she would have taken the dummy right from his mouth if we'd not stopped her.

We're so going to have our hands full with this one. But it's worth it. She's all smiles and excitement and delight. Just an amazing little creature who just drinks in the world around her. She'll sometimes just sit and stare at some other child and a day or two later she's got an impressive new skill. Today she was all about showing off what she can do as much as she could. I'm really impressed by her. I know that by the time they hit 5, all these development differences disappear. But for now I half-facetiously think that it must be good genes or hybrid vigour and that maybe she is a wunderkind.

Standing and walking

She took rather quickly to walking. It plateaued for a bit, but seems to have improved in the past day.

The first day, I would hold her under the arms, dangle her feet on the floor, and twist her a little side to side, so first one foot would move forward, then the other.

The next day, I tried again, and she would move her a feet a little forward when I twisted her.

A coupled of days later, and all we needed to do was to hold her enough to keep her balanced. She'd kick one floppy leg forward, the foot would land on the floor, and she'd pull herself along. Repeat. She's walking. Not by herself, but, if we hold her hands, she can walk across a room. She really likes it. So far we've taken a number of videos of her crossing the room.

Today she's standing with only the tiniest of supports. Just pushing against my pinky finger is enough to keep her upright. Until she starts getting tired, of course. She's mastered cruising. Before she could move along bannisters or the baby cage. ow she can hand off from the sofa to a chair the the baby cage and back again. Arms reaching to their full extent to cross the space between furniture.

It seems that now that she's over her colds of the past few months, she's making up for lost time. Her EC has improved drastically to, with few misses in the past couple of days.

In other news, she's got her 8 month checkup with the health visitors tomorrow. They've been mixed quality so far. I'm hoping it's not a waste of time.

Now we area sitting

First off, happy new year! Looking back, I'm a bit startled to find I started this in 2010. Admittedly, it was the end of 2010, and now it's the start of 2012, but it's interesting to watch how this gestation thing has evolved from watching the wife and guessing at what was going on insider her, to watching the child and guessing at what is going on inside her mind.

I'm impressed how fast the wee one's picking up things. Literally, in places. She's gotten quite good at grabbing. She can pick up toys pretty well now. Or various other things like nappies, towels, clothes, anything remotely near where she's sat. Tonight I was feeding her and she surprised me by grabbing the bottle, and holding on to it with both hands. I eventually let go and she kept holding on, and drinking. Which is really novel since she's refused to drink out of a bottle for weeks, until yesterday. And now she's drinking and holding the thing. She needed a bit of hinting about tilting it to get more as it empties, but she was firmly and clearly feeding herself. I'm rather proud.

In other skills news, she can also sit. She can't get in a sitting position on her own, but she can stay sitting for a while til she gets tired. She finally mastered that on Sunday. It certainly made getting her in position with the Skype video call too the grandparents much easier.

Most interesting is she now responds to her name. I'm still shocked at that. I say her name and she turns and looks at me. I can say other things and she won't turn. Not in the same way. Well, sometimes she responds the same way, like when I say Doodlehead. But she does not respond at all when it's L's name, even if I use the same tone. Clearly I need to experiment more with this one.