Friday, January 11, 2008

What We Did Over Winter Break

Wow. It’s been almost a month since my last post. Geez.

Here’s the brief synopsis of our winter holiday time, since I’m swamped with work:

The Fam traveled to Iowa to spend time with Kindra’s family from December 21 to December 29… We learned not to take a full, tightened, spill-proof straw cup onto a plane with the straw closed – turns out, the air pressure in the plane drops to less than the air pressure in the cup and causes water to shoot out the straw... We were reminded that Denver is one of the most boring “modern” airports to get stuck in during a layover – we were delayed going from Denver to Des Moines because of weather in Chicago, and there was nothing interesting to do… I also learned to check the weather in Denver, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Kansas City and Minneapolis before I travel to or from the Midwest.

Danica saw her second snow (the first was New Year’s Day 2007) when we arrived in Iowa… and saw her first semi-blizzard the day after (it snowed four inches)… She also wore her first snowsuit and boots, went sledding, had her first snowman made for her by Grandpa Larry and Mom, and decided that snow was 1) too wet for her, and 2) too weird to walk in by herself.

For Christmas, The Girl received 1) a Cookie Monster TMX (similar to the Tickle-Me-Elmo TMX), 2) a stuffed dog that needs to be petted to feel better, and 3) a stroller/high chair/swing/playpen set for her dolls… Danica also decided that it would be better for everybody else to push the stroller while she either walked in front (so you could chase her) or held on to the side (as she does when she’s at our daycare provider).

While she was in Iowa, Danica learned to climb up and down stairs by herself using the railings (scary), to ride on a push-car, and to generally get everything she wanted… She also started to become more vocal, learning to say “grandma,” “grandpa,” and “Krista” after a few days, along with a few other words. Oh crap! I almost forgot that she learned to say her name (though it comes out like “Dah-dah” now – it started off like “Dah-ca,” but we think she’s just lazy).

From Iowa, we flew into SFO to spend time with my family... Danica melted down at the beginning of the second flight, and we were turned into those people for the first thirty minutes on board while our girl screamed and cried and generally made a ruckuss… Things in the Bay Area were good, and Danica, again, pretty much ran the place. We returned home a couple of days after New Year’s (no, we did not do anything but watch the movie Juno and fall asleep before the ball dropped at midnight)… The drive down went very well.

Over the two weeks, Danica’s gotten remarkably more vocal, picking up and using words like crazy. She’s moved beyond the standard “baby” into trying to name more things, and she pretty much points to everything inside and out for us to name. It’s kind of scary. She now says a ton of things, including rock (as in a mineral, but also as in the action of moving a chair back-and-forth), leaf, “love you,” hi, bye, more, bottle (which sounds like a lot of other things), bubble (which sounds like “bottle”), berries, dog, fish, raisin, park, and pool… I’m sure there are a lot more, but I can’t remember them right now.

Even beyond her language skills increasing is her overall ability to communicate. She’s signing things more accurately now – the best example I have is the sign for “pig,” which is putting your hand under your chin palm down and wiggling your fingers. She used to just stick her hand out and wave it up-and-down, but all of a sudden, she started to do it properly. Not really sure why, except that we have a pig bubble-blower she rediscovered thanks to Aunt Steph.

Danica’s also still detoxing from having all the attention and has been very needy and clingy since my parents returned to the Bay last weekend. Actually, we’re still detoxing, too, and it’s been tough with The Girl wanting us to go with her everywhere in the house – she drags us around by the finger constantly. We’ve been making her say “please” when she wants us to do things, but she’s slow to do it without prompting.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Oh yeah, her latest obsession is leaves. She loves to walk around our apartment complex and pick up the ones that have fallen on the ground. I have no idea why. I’m sure it’ll get stranger.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The leaf thing.. that might be me too. when we got bac, she was looking at the ducks and there were leaves on the railing that were "in her way." so we picked them up and she threw them into the stream. The ducks went nuts and she went nuts, so she kept doing it.