Reading Successes

I started reading to Katy months ago.  At first, she showed zero interest.  I read while Katy crawled away, looked away, babbled over me, or did anything else she could to show her lack of interest.  Undeterred, I kept reading.  A few weeks before her first birthday, Katy started sitting with me as I read to her.  By her first birthday, we were reading books by the stacks, sometimes at Katy's insistence.  I was excited Katy had finally taken to reading, even if I suspected her interest was  really in turning the pages and having my undivided attention. 

      

Katy recently began pointing to pictures in her books while I read and up until yesterday, I thought the pointing was random.  Yesterday, however, Katy and I were reading an ABC book with a story about a dog who wants to eat some freshly baked apple pie.  There is a different picture for each letter depicting the dog's attempt to eat the pie, with some of the pictures side by side.   As were reading, Katy was studying a page showing two different pictures of the dog, one a close up of the dog's face and the other a zoomed out picture of the dog next to a piece of furniture.  As Katy studied the pictures, she began pointing between the dog's face in the close up and the dog in the zoomed out picture.  Testing whether this was coincidence, I turned to the beginning of the book and asked Katy, "where is the dog" or "donde esta el perro?"  On every page of the book, Katy pointed to the dog.  She recognized that although the dogs are slightly different in each picture, they are still the same thing. 

I don't plan to write about each one of Katy's seemingly small accomplishments, but I had to write about her purposeful pointing because (1) I'm so excited that Katy continues to take an interest in reading, (2) it exemplifies the explosion in cognitive developments that have taken place over the last couple of months, and (3) this is why having a baby is so amazing!  Before I had Katy, I wanted a tiny, soft baby of my own to hold and cuddle.  I didn't think past the baby phase, and I certainly had no idea how amazing it would be to watch a baby develop from a blob into an interactive, thinking, learning, and moving being.  The Apple Pie book we were reading yesterday is one of Katy's favorites.  She frequently brings this book to me to read and sometimes asks to read it several times in a row.  For weeks, we read this book over and over and over with seemingly no reaction from Katy.  But then one day, Katy showed me that she was making unseen connections, every so slowly, little by little, as we read this book.  Moments like this are so incredibly rewarding because they seem so sudden and yet they make me realize they were weeks in the making.  

  

Today, while reading a touch-and-feel book about animals wearing hats, Katy first pointed to the touch-and-feel portion of the hat-only images and then pointed to the same part of the hat on separate pictures of the animals wearing the hats.  Seriously, this girl is on a roll, and I don't think things are going to slow down anytime soon. 

Birds of the Valley

Last week, while walking at dusk, Chris and I were amazed by a large flock of turkey buzzards circling the neighborhood in search of a place to roost for the night.  The group of at least 200 birds silently glided lower and lower as the evening closed in.  I've never seen so many large birds flying so close to the ground.  It was so fascinating that Chris and I stopped and laid on a stranger's lawn so we could watch the spectacle. 

 

The Rio Grande Valley is a very fascinating place for bird watching.  

Camping: on the Border, with a Toddler

At the beginning of March, Chris and I took Katy on her first camping trip.  We camped at Bentsen State Park, a lovely birding park located on the Rio Grande River.  We were the only campers in the park, likely because the park is accessible only by foot and the campsites are 3/4 of a mile from the parking lot.

Camping in a natural reserve on an international border makes for an interesting  experience.  We enjoyed the lovely songs of several bird species as well as the recurring whir of law enforcement helicopters tracking smuggling operations from the air.  We saw javelinas on our walk to the bathroom, and we startled Border Patrol agents while hiking a secluded trail near the river.  At night, we heard animals dropping debris on the tent as they ate, and we heard muffled voices in the distant brush.

At a resaca

Looking across the Rio Grande into Mexico

Despite our proximity to the border, I was more worried about successfully camping with a walking one-year old than I was about encountering smuggling operations.  Camping is littered with hazards, not to mention sleeping challenges.  Thankfully, the fistfuls of dirt Katy dumped on her body never contained shards of glass or a scorpion, Katy never tripped near the fire pit, and I somehow managed to put Katy to sleep for naps and at night without a rocking chair or the ability to control temperature, light, and noise levels.  This trip definitely redefined my idea of a camping success.

Peeking through the bird blind to see a javalina 

Building a fire

Tents are fun!

Entertainment

Oodles of cheap entertainment

Cuteness Overload

Katy turned one two months ago.  Since then, her walking has improved, she's learning to run, and she has started to climb. More impressive, however, are the cognitive developments over the last two months: Tripled English/Spanish vocabulary, pointing to body parts, giving "besos," responding to questions and commands given in Spanish and English, pretend play, and mimicking like nobody's business.  It's ridiculously cute to watch.

Pointing to her ombligo (belly button)

Cochinitos (little piggies aka toes)

Nariz (nose)

Katy's also learning sounds that different animals make.  When I tell Katy, "El Lobo dice A-uuuuu," Katy responds with her own tiny howls, complete with a tilted head  This is also ridiculously cute.  She later realized that Doug howls and that she can howl with him, which usually happens as a siren is passing by our house.  Not yet understanding that people don't normally howl at sirens, she also howls when we hear a siren while running errands in town, far from Doug's howling cues.  As cute as it is to see Katy and Doug howling together, Katy's misplaced howls are even cuter.

Katy also recently learned how to beat her chest like a gorilla from an Eric Carle book that reads, "soy una gorila and me golpeo el pecho" (I am a gorilla and I beat my chest).  Whenever Katy hears the word mapeche (Spanish word for raccoon) in one of her other books, she beats her chest because peche ounds similar to pecho.  This is also - you guessed it - ridiculously cute.

A few months ago I told Chris I was afraid Katy's cuteness was peaking.  I was so wrong.  These most recent changes are ridiculously cute.

Only in Bed, Sleepyhead

A few weeks ago, I began limiting Katy's chupon (pacifier) to sleeping times only.  Initially, there were lots of tears when I took the chupon from Katy, placed it in the bed, and said, "only in bed, sleepyhead."  After a couple of weeks, however, Katy began placing the chupon on the mattress herself, sans tears, when I greeted her in the morning or after her nap.

During the day, I usually hide the chupon under Katy's pillow so that it will not be a visual temptation, but sometimes I forget and Katy will see the chupon through her crib rails.  The first few times this happened, Katy reached her tiny arm between the rails and popped the chupon in her mouth.  Lots of tears would follow when I returned the chupon to the crib.   With time, however, Katy learned to reluctantly return the chupon to the bed herself when I reminded her that the chupon is only for sleepy time.

Today, I forgot to hide the chupon and happened to be in Katy's room when she saw it laying on her mattress as she stood next to her crib.  She impulsively stretched out her hand but then stopped and began shaking her head no as she stared at the chupon with her hand mid-reach.  And then she walked away.  Lots of praise and positive reinforcement followed.

Dare I say, "Impulse: 0; self control: 1?"  Nope, not at all.  With a toddler, impulse wins 99 THOUSAND times a day, which is exactly why a seemingly small self-control victory caused my heart to grow three times its size today.