Fun and games

Sasha has been so fun to be around lately. I can't keep up.
Her pretend play cracks me up. Yesterday, she renamed us all. She now insists we call her "Wow Wow Wubbzy", her favorite tv show character. My husband she calls "Fix-it", which is what she calls the "Widget" character from Wow Wow Wubbzy. Her Mom (that's me!) is now Walden, and Cassie is renamed "Daisy", also from the same show.

She is always in my closet, pretending that it is her house. It's a nice little hiding spot for her.
She's been more affectionate than usual with me. Lately, she gave most of her affection to my husband but she seems to be making up for that with extra hugs, kisses, and snuggles. It warms my heart to see her charge at me from across the house to hug me as she yells "I GOT YOU!".
Her vocabulary is really growing! Full sentences and she's constantly amazing me with new phrases.

At the mall yesterday, my husband went into the Apple store to drool over laptops and computer stuff, while the girls and I went to pick up our family portraits. Sasha noticed he was gone and started asking me, "Where's Dad go? Where's Dad go?". Her sentence syntax amused me. But it was neat that she was able to ask a question about someone not present.
We still have plenty of times where we wish she could communicate to us what she wanted. Temper tantrums and fits are still a constant struggle in our household and we're often mystified as to what she wants. Soon though, she'll be able to tell us what she's thinking.

So much fun!

Here's one of Sasha's phrases. I have no idea where she picked it up!
"SO MUCH FUN!"
She says it when she's having fun. It cracks me up. Like she'll be jumping on the bed yelling "SO MUCH FUN! SO MUCH FUN!".

When Sasha plays ball, she kicks the ball around the house and chases it yelling, "I DID IT! I DID IT!". Again, I don't know where she got that. Is she mimicking something she saw, or is she really encouraging herself?

Frog

Yesterday, I noticed Sasha was hopping around the house saying "Ribbit! Ribbit!". She's been doing that increasingly lately. I joked with her and asked her if she was a frog. She looked at me funny, thought a second, then said "uh-huh".
I didn't think much of it until a little later. I called to Sasha, by her name, as I always seem to be doing lately. She sternly responded by patting herself on the chest and saying, "NO! Frog!".
She kept this up all day. She gets upset with us if we call her Sasha. She is now Frog.
Cassie finds this very amusing.
There was a break for an hour yesterday evening, when Sasha was playing with her toy doctor set. She no longer responded to Frog nor Sasha. "No! I Doctor!" she corrected. But once she was done with her doctor set, she was back to Frog.

This is a first for Sasha. Pretend play? She's always played with her dolls in a pretend play sort of manner. She mothers them. But I think that's a bit different. That was more like mimicking than pretending. I suppose now that I think of it, Sasha first started giving her dolls voices a week or two ago.
Something interesting is happening in her little head.

THAT phase again.

Well, there won't be many pictures attached to blog entries for a while. Sasha is in a phase. The moment she wakes up, she runs into the living room and takes off all her clothes and diaper. If we put clothes on her, she takes them back off again. She does some cute things, but I'm not taking any pictures until she keeps her clothes back on, hehe.

She's a real talker lately. She's got some catchy phrases that she says.
- She'll kiss us and then look us right in the eye and say "Much better?". If she thinks we have an owie, she'll kiss it for us and ask us "much better?".
- When she rearranges something she says "perfect!" and nods approvingly to herself.
- She still knocks on the front door and then frantically yells, "Pizza! pizza!", as if that will bring the pizza man to us.
- She doesn't say "no". She says "no thank you". Terrible twos aren't nearly so bad when the toddler is so darned polite while being contrary.
- Starting today, if we say "Thank you", she'll respond, "you're welcome".
- Anytime we hand her something, she says "thank you".
- If she wants something that we have, she'll try to grab it from our hands and say "thank you?". Sometimes "thank you?" is a request for something, hehe.
- She always tells us "I love you!". She pronounces it "I la you".
- She loves to try to help us wash dishes. She pulls a chair up to the sink and stands on it while watching me wash, and she hands me dirty dishes and says "wash dishes?".

Meet Max

At our local big chain bookstore, I saw that Brain Quest came out with a set of their flash card books for ages 2-3. Or at least it's the first time I've ever seen one for this age group. I thought to myself, "Wow, Sasha is almost two. I guess she qualifies for this set now". I was looking for some educational materials for her, so I got it for her.

When I opened up Sasha's set, it was a little different than I was used to.
This set has a foam cut out of a monkey, named Max. Max is pointing his finger.

A set of parental instructions inside the box says that parents should use Max to point at the pictures on the flash cards, and parents should talk to Max about the pictures. This I can do! I have a great, high pitched voice I like to use when I make inanimate characters talk, and young kids seem to like it.

So we've been using Max and the flash cards, and Sasha LOVES it. She absolutely LOVES Max. One day at naptime, she even cried for Max, and fell asleep holding him in her arms:
Cuddling with "Max"
Max and the flashcards have helped her language development. She is already in a huge language explosion, and the cards have accelerated it even further.
Sometimes, we run around the house, making Max point at things, and I use my "max voice" to make him say "What's that?". Sasha likes to answer his questions. It's cute how she directly talks to him, not me.

One of these days, I'm going to have to write those Brain Quest people and let them know just how much my daughter loves their Max and his cards :)

Sentences

Cuddling with her daddy.
Sasha is speaking simple sentences.
This has been going on a while now, (like in the "light broken" story posted a few days ago) but it's official. I do believe it started while she was in Montana, but it's been accelerating. Her verbal skills in general are definitely accelerating lately.
She is able to string two or more words together, and lately especially a subject and a verb. For example "light broken".
She has already been saying possessive phrases for quite a while, for example "mama's ninning" (translation "Mom's knitting"), or "Cassie's juice". She has been fascinated with possession for a while.
The thing I love about how she speaks sentences right now, is that she takes a good pause between the two words. It's not a long pause, but it's much longer than an older child or adult would take between words.
She also is good at indicating turns. What I mean by this is say for example she is eating some crackers. She'll say "Mama!" and force feed me a cracker whether I want it or not. Then she'll say "Sasha!" and feed herself a cracker. She refers to herself and all her possessions as Sasha, which I find cute.

She has been trying to say more complex, multisyllabic words such as "accident".

Anything we say, she repeats, including and especially the bad words. There have been multiple occasions where she has said words that we should not have said in her presence.
There was one instance especially, where she used a naughty word in good context. She was walking when suddenly her pants, which were too loose around the waist, fell down to her ankles. She stopped, looked down at her fallen pants, and loudly exclaimed, "Sh*t!". And you know, I do believe I would have said the same thing if I was in her situation. She pulled her pants back up and carried on.

"Light Broken"

We have a rectangular glass lamp in our bedroom (from Ikea, like the one pictured left). It has an on/off switch on the cord that Sasha loves to play with.

Today, Sasha accidentally knocked the lamp onto the floor. The glass shattered and the lamp was broken.
My husband and I were in the room with her, so our immediate reaction was to get her away from the broken glass shards ASAP. I ran over to her, snatched her up, and carried her away, while my husband began to immediately pick up the glass pieces. As I picked her up and carried her away, I think I said something along the lines of "Oh no! You broke the light! The light is broken."

It happened so fast that it seemed to really leave an impression on her. She clearly knew something had happened. "Light broken!" she kept chanting over and over. She had a strange look on her face like she was trying to comprehend.
I had carried and deposited her into the living room, so she tried to run back into the bedroom, but I prevented her from going back. "Light broken!" she kept chanting and she continued to try to get into the bedroom at all costs. She sounded confused and concerned.

After my husband had gathered the glass pieces into a pile, I let him know that Sasha was headed his way. He protested because the glass was still on the floor, but I explained that she really seemed to need to see the broken light. I probably picked her up so fast that she didn't have time to see what actually happened to the light. She was just so concerned and agitated that I figured maybe I should let her just see what a broken light looked like. (HEAVILY supervised of course)
She looked at the pile of broken light remnants and kept saying "Light Broken!". She pointed and observed carefully. She then turned around to the light switch in the room.

"Light Broken?" she asked and demanded I turn on the light switch.

My husband had to explain to her that no, all the lights in the house were not broken, just that one. She seemed relieved.

Finally comprehending the situation, she gave a final, carefully enunciated "Light broken" and was done with it.

I Don't Know!

Sasha's first official sentence is "I don't know". She started saying this repeatedly at the mall yesterday. It sounds like "I no no! I no no!" and is the answer to most any question you ask her now.

If you ask her if something is funny, she will laugh her head off like you said something hilarious. She knows that funny means laugh.

Other new words this week are "Grandma" and "high chair". Grandma sounds like "da ma" and high chair is said very clearly.

When she wants me to count, she will say "two three". When she wants me to sing her the alphabet, she says "bc", and she makes random hand gestures pretending like she's signing the alphabet but she's pretty close to some real letters in her gestures.

Names

There is something that Sasha yells sternly once in a while, and I couldn't figure out what it was. It sounded sort of like "Daaaa" and I thought it was "dad" because she usually yelled it when she wanted him. Then one night as I was getting Sasha settled to bed, I needed my husband to come and turn off the lights as I could not get up and do it myself. So I yelled "Jon?" across the house. Sasha then copied me: "Daaa?". That's when I realized what she's yelling. It's Jon's first name.

She won't say her own name though. We've tried to teach her that her name is Sasha but she just won't say it no matter how we try. I think she knows it though.

Everyday she continues to learn new words and new signs. She picks them up almost instantly. I got her some foam alphabet bath toys and started showing her the letters and she can say almost every letter's name when I say it (copies my words). (W is too hard of a letter for her to say).
I remember when Cassie was little, she had alphabet refridgerator magnets and somehow she learned to identify each letter of the alphabet before she was even two so I know it's possible to learn even without trying hard. I'm not going to push it but I think it's good to at least expose Sasha to that sort of stuff.

As for the picture above, sure she's being silly with Dada's glasses with some crazy wild hair. But just look at those pretty eyes.

Bop'un!

While I was at work, Sasha went through a bit of crankiness with my husband. She was chanting "Bop'un!" at him repeatedly and pointing into the kitchen. He could tell that she was trying very hard to communicate with him, so he told her to go ahead and show him what she wanted.
She walked into the kitchen, grabbed a big blue bowl (actually a mop bucket) and handed it to him in the living room. She waited expectantly, like he should know what she wanted and said "Bop'un!". He didn't understand, so she took him back into the kitchen. We have a pile of bulk food from Costco. On top is the juice boxes. She took the juice boxes down. Under the juice boxes is some cans of soup. She carefully took each can of soup out and set them aside. Under that is a bulk box of microwave popcorn packets. She took out a packet of popcorn, handed it to my husband, and announced "BOP'UN!".
Popcorn!
Just the day before, we made her some microwave popcorn. We let her watch us do the whole popcorn making process. We taught her the word "popcorn" and I even showed her the word "popcorn" in sign language.
Guess she really did pick up some of that! She was trying to communicate with us but we just weren't getting it. She knew what she wanted though. And when daddy finally understood what it was she was asking for, she got exactly what she wanted. Some Bop'un!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Lately, Sasha has been a great imitator. We are learning about some of the things we do that we don't realize we are doing! Here are some fun examples.

My husband has a cold with a cough, runny nose, and sneezing. The whole works. Sasha darling, who is not sick, now likes to imitate her daddy. You'd think she's got a cold with all the fake coughing, sneezing, and sniffling noises she's making. She thinks it's hilarious. I tell her "bless you!" every time she fake sneezes, and that really keeps her going.

Then today as Sasha was brushing her teeth, I noticed she kept tilting her head down so her chin touched her chest once in a while. I couldn't figure out what she was doing. Brush-brush-brush-brush-tilt, repeat. Eventually, when she finally got a stream of spittle going and managed to make a 'pthooey' sound, I realized what she was doing...she was trying to spit. Just like mommy and daddy do when they brush their teeth. I didn't realize she was watching us so closely.

Cassie has been on the phone all the time lately, talking to her friends, as 13 year old teenager like to do. She seems like she's got that phone permanently attached to her ear. Sasha likes to walk around with random objects up to her ear while 'talking', just like sister talking on the phone. Then Sasha started saying "Dood" on her 'phone' all the time. Again, it took me a little while to realize what was going on. Cassie was talking excitedly to one of her friends, chanting "Dude! DUDE! DUDE!", and there was Sasha saying "Dood! Dood! Dood!". Hah! I guess she thinks when you're on the phone, you should say "dude" a lot.

I'm sure I'll have plenty more of these.

Baby Sign Language

Well, I'm overdue for a post on Sasha's sign language development. I've mentioned it in previous posts, especially when she learned a new sign, but I figured I'd put together a post and try to compile her current vocabulary. She just turned 14 months old. She signed her first sign (more) at 6 months, and I've been signing to her since she was two months old.
First, I'll try to list her signs. Wish me luck; I know I'll be coming back to edit this part as I remember more of them, as she's got a good sign language vocabulary.

• Sister/Cassie - her favorite or most often used sign


• Dad -the way she does this is cute. She points at her forehead, looks like think, or even worse, sometimes it looks like an 'L' on her forehead, like loser!


• more - she bumps her fists together


• all done


• all gone - she only does this with one hand


• eat


• drink


• milk


• water
• cereal - when she's eating her cheerios


• potty - she does this sign a lot! When anyone goes potty, when the toilet flushes, when she's currently going potty. Hope that means she'll potty train easy, haha!


• bath - one of her new favorite signs. Sometimes she literally makes motions across her whole body like she's washing up. arms, legs, and all.


• bird - she surprised me with this sign one day. I showed it to her when she was looking at some geese outside. Then later that day she pointed at the tv and signed bird. Yep, there was a bird on televison!


• dog - another favorite sign. She loves doggies. I wish she could see more of them as they make her so happy. She barks when she does this sign now


• tree - she only signs this when I sign it first.


• light - She loves lights! She points out every light in our hallway and can say 'light' also.


• telephone - as much as she loves telephones, she doesn't do this sign often but I've seen her do it.


• bye bye - bye bye, but I think most every baby can do this. She opens and closes her hands at head level. Funny thing is, she waits until the person leaves before she'll say bye bye to them. By that time, they're long gone.


• shoes - This girl LOVES her shoes. If she doesn't have her shoes on, she'll ask for them to be put on, usually by bringing us her shoes and sticking out her feet. But she has on rare occasion signed shoe


• socks- Her newest sign! She signed this one today. I didn't even know she knew this sign.


• hat - She hardly ever does this sign, only did it to copy me when she did do it


• baby signing time -she knows this as a phrase/song and as her sign language video, but not the individual words. One day I sang her the Intro song to the Baby Signing Time video (it's one of those annoying songs that sticks in your head) and she started signing "baby signing time"! I was impressed.


• sleep - instead of signing this across her whole face, she just signs this over her lips and does a funny little raspberry. But she really means she's tired when she does this!


• I know she knows more, I'll update this when I think of them

Some of her signs look similar, and I have a hard time distinguishing them. 'Milk', 'light', 'all done', 'bye-bye' sort of look the same the way she does them some times. I'm trying to get her to hold her hand up high over her head for the sign for 'light' so I can tell the difference but right now she opens and closes her hand at head level for 'light' and 'milk' and 'bye bye'. 'All done', she NORMALLY does with both hands but sometimes she gets lazy with it, then it looks like 'milk', light, etc.

Her signs are not precise by any means. By that, I mean her version of the sign does not look like the textbook version. But she has meaning behind them. When she signs 'all-done', she really means 'all-done', and she usually does it the same every time. In that respect, it is a true form of communication.

Suspiciously absent from her list is 'mom'! Nope, she won't sign Mom. She has signs for 'dad' and 'sister' but not 'mom'. Bummer!

Singing Baby

There have been plenty of times where I sing songs that have hand motions to Sasha, like Itsy Bitsy Spider, Herman the Worm, or Patty Cake. Sasha likes to try to gesture along. But today, she did something very cute: she sang!
We were at the dinner table, eating jambalaya. My husband was taking a nap so it was just the girls and I. At some point, she decided to stop eating. Eventually, she became bored of watching me eat my dinner and fussed. She didn't fuss long, maybe 30 seconds, when she resigned herself to try to entertain herself. She did a few hand motions with her hands that I did not recognize as sign language, but the movements were peculiar and deliberate. She babbled to herself a few times, and then it happened. She started singing. She has a beautiful little voice.
It wasn't a song that I recognize. She made some hand motions to go along with it, sort of similar to the "roll it" part of patty cake. The words to the song were all "dadadada dadada". But it was a cute sweet baby voice that varied in frequency. It took me a bit to realize what she was doing but I was pretty surprised when I figured it out.
I just wish I knew what song it was, if it was a song we've sang to her. My husband and I have a habit of making up our own songs and singing to her. Some of my husband's songs are not songs that I've ever heard, and vice versa. Half of my made up songs, I doubt I'd even remember them. I just sort of make them up on the spot, pertinent to that situation only, and they're non-sensical. For example, if Sasha is fussing while I'm busy cooking, I might start 'singing' the recipe or actions I am doing in an effort to calm her down.

Besides the singing, we have another molar coming in! Her first molar is through now and she's really chewing foods well. Now this second molar is at a stage where it looks pretty painful. Her gum is huge and swollen and I can feel the tooth beneath but it hasn't come through. So she has 9 teeth and a 10th on the way. She has intermittent bouts of fussiness, which I think is related to the new tooth. I'm sure it has to hurt. Poor girl.

New Words

IDK my BFF Jill?
Sasha's had a significant vocabulary increase lately, both verbally and with her sign language skills. Every day she adds a new word or two to her vocabulary. Let's see if I can remember it all.
At the park yesterday, Sasha was distracted by the geese and ducks at the wading pond. I showed her the sign for "bird" and it didn't even look like she was paying attention. But later in the evening, I saw her looking at the television and signing "bird". Sure enough, there was a bird on tv. Although, to be fair, when a Comcast commercial featuring talking turtles came on tv, she pointed at them and signed "dog" excitedly. The "bird" sign was a sign she learned on her Baby Signing Time videos, so she probably remembered it from there. She rediscovered the "more" sign. It used to be one of her favorite signs but she hadn't used it in months.

I noticed that when she sees my husband's glasses, she says the same thing every time. It sort of sounds like 'dassis'. Eventually I realized that she was trying to say 'glasses'. Sure enough, when I pointed at his glasses and asked her what they were, she said it clear as day. It's her version of the word 'glasses', and it sounds very cute.

Tea! Sasha is a little tea fiend like her dad. My husband has a nightly ritual where he makes at least a gallon or two of tea in one big batch and she supervises the whole process from start to finish. Then whenever he drinks tea, she says "tea!" and makes him give her some to drink. She LOVES tea. But it's so cute the way she says tea. There's like no vowel sound at all the way she says it. It's just the "t" sound only.

Sasha has been a comedian lately. She's always trying to make me laugh. She tickles my feet, puts her finger in my belly button, or blows raspberries on my skin. She puts stuff on her head or hangs stuff out of her mouth and looks at me to make sure I'm watching her while she shows off. She really puts on a show!

I should also add that Sasha's got a new tooth! But this time it's one of the molars. I'm sort of confused by this. I thought she would get her canine teeth before she started getting any molars? But she's drooling up a storm. Fortunately she isn't so crabby anymore. She was about two weeks ago but now she's mostly in good spirits.

Blah!

I found a small 'park' closer to my home. I never knew it was there. So on Saturday, I took the baby for a walk to the park. It was good to get the exercise. The park had some baby swings, and a slide/playground set.
I let Sasha swing on the swings but she seemed scared. She had only been on a swing once back in July so I don't think she remembered that. She only lasted a minute on the swing before I had to take her off. She didn't like playing with the playground set.
But it was nice to get her out of the house and let her see something 'new'. Something other than the walls of the apartment.

I took her again on Sunday. This time, having been exposed to the park concept the day before, she was a little more open minded. She loved the swing and slowly drifted off to sleep in it. It was beautiful. After she woke back up, she played around with some of the playground stuff. There were these blue steps that she liked to bang on. I let her run around and explore whatever caught her interest, and I just followed her around. It was neat to see the world through her eyes and see what sort of things interested her. She had fun climbing up and down a curb. She found a stick and some leaves and played with those.
She discovered a pile of bird poo on a curb she was climbing on and wanted to poke at it with her finger. I caught her finger before she could touch it and said "No no! That's dirty! Blah!". She looked at me and started laughing like I said the most hilarious thing in the world. She stuck her tongue out so that it was hanging down to her chin and said "Blah! Blah! Blah!". So we sat there a while, laughing til our bellies hurt, saying "Blah!" to each other. She thinks that is the most hilarious word.
Even today, when she's fussy and I want to cheer her up, all I have to do is stick my tongue out and say "Blah!" and she erupts in giggles and starts saying "blah!".

Signing and Language Explosion

I took two days of vacation, which gave me a four day weekend. I got to spend nearly every second of it with my little Sasha.
At first I noticed that she was very sleepy. She slept a lot more than usual. When this happens, it usually means one of two things. Either a growth spurt (which is usually accompanied by a huge baby appetite), or she is about to suddenly have some new major ability. She wasn't especially hungry so I figured she was going to learn something neat.
And she did! Suddenly one day, she was a signing baby. All those signs I've spent her whole life teaching her, she just suddenly started using. All in the same day! It was amazing. I spent the whole day nearly drop-jawed. My baby was talking to me. She's done a few of the signs before. But usually only for a day or so and not necessarily in the right context, and then she stopped. This seems different.
In her sleep, she would start to stir and whine, and signed "eat" without even opening her eyes. I'd feed her and she'd happily doze back off to sleep. She signed "more" when she wanted more of anything. She signed "eat" when she was hungry, and I didn't even know she was hungry yet because she hadn't even started fussing or whining yet. She signed "dog" when she saw a dog in the lobby of our building. She signed "light" when she was staring at our lights (LOVES lights, it's her obsession). She also said "ite" when she was pointing at the light and signing 'light'. She verbally says "muh muh muh" when she signs more, sort of like the word more without the r sound in it. She says "Duh" for dog. She squeals "DADA!!!" really loud when she wants my husband's attention. Her other obsession is our blue indiglo alarm clock...she smiles and gets excited whenever she sees it. Now she says "ock! ock! ock!" when she sees the clock and points at it. I wish I knew the sign for clock so I could teach it to her.

Cassie was at my parent's house for Labor Day and Sasha missed her. How I know? Well Sasha pointed at the computer chair where Cassie is normally sitting, yelled "EH!" (her name for her sister) and signed "sister" which is what we taught her to sign for Cassie. She kept pointing staring at Cassie's chair looking for her.
Sasha has a little dog stuffed animal, and when I play with her sometimes I pretend it's a real dog. I make it bark at her and lick her and jump around. Now she likes to grab the dog and bark and make it jump around too. It's very cute.

Basically, it just seems like something clicked in her mind and the language light switch just turned on. Watching a child grow from a helpless little infant into a real person is just incredible and it was weekends like this that amaze me.

Standing game captured on film

I finally got some pictures of Sasha doing that little standing game she's been doing lately. I went back to one of the older posts here about the standing game she likes to play and attached a pic to that too.
Notice the little tongue hanging sticking out of Sasha's mouth in the picture above? For some strange reason, Sasha has been doing that a lot lately. No idea why. She used to do that for a day or so whenever she got a new tooth and was getting used to it being in her mouth. But I double checked and no new teeth or anything. She just likes to stick her tongue out a lot I guess. It looks cute to me, like she's really thinking deeply.
She's got some heavy motivation in this pic...daddy's glasses. She loves to rip the glasses off his face and play with them.

I forgot to mention the other day that Sasha said a new word the other day: light. She has a thing for lights, led's, blinky things, or anything that illuminates. She was sitting in my lap pointing at the lights in the living room. I said "light" to her a few times and clear as a bell she pointed to the lights and said "light".
She's also been signing more and eat a lot more lately. Tonight, she saw my husband drinking a pepsi. She was staring at it and started signing "eat". She wanted a sip. I think it was pretty cool that she was able to actually request what she wanted by using sign language.

Tooth ponderings

Sasha's 7th tooth popped through on August 5th. This is her bottom right tooth. I feel bad as I didn't even notice it was coming in. I swear this baby has been constantly teething since her first tooth started coming in. She hasn't had a break. Once one finally finishes coming through another one begins. I think we all could use a teething break but I don't think that is going to happen. Common sense tells me that 8th tooth, her bottom left, is next and should be along soon since it isn't here yet. Have I checked to see if there is a bump on her gums yet? No, but I should do that.

I have been bad about keeping Sasha's baby book updated. Thank goodness for this blog. Now when I finally sit myself down to update her baby book, I will have to have this blog pulled up to reference all the correct dates and measurements and shots. Does it matter? Well it sort of does. Now that I have a baby again, I keep comparing Sasha to when Cassie was a baby. I just can't help it. It sort of gives me an idea of what I could expect. Now these two girls are obviously very very different so comparing them sort of seems rediculous. Cassie didn't get her first tooth until she was 13 months old, and Sasha has 7 teeth already at 10.5 months. Cassie first sat up at 7 months (same for Sasha), first walked at 13 months, first really started talking at 11 months. Sasha has been back to babbling and saying dada (in reference to Jon even, she doesn't say dada about anyone else) and a few words I swear are words but I don't really count her among the talking babies quite yet.
But anyways, back to the baby book thing, Jon's parents kept a meticulous baby book for him and gave it to him at our wedding along with a photo album of 23748923742389 pictures of him. I thought that was really neat. I wish that I had a baby book for me. Then it would be neat to be able to say "Oh Sasha is a late crawler like her mother" or "Sasha got her teeth at the same age as her dad" or whatever. I am a statistical geek sometimes, and I really get a kick out forcibly comparing apples to oranges via nonsense trivia like that. And who knows, maybe some day 30 years from now she'll have a baby and she'll say to me "Mom, when did I get my 7th tooth?" and I will be like "AHA! I KNOW THAT ANSWER CHILD".

Dada!

Dada
About a week ago, Sasha's regular babbling started to contain a lot more "dada's". The dada's increased, and so has her tone of voice when she says it. It's hard to describe, but her vocal tone is much different and a little bit sing-songy when she says it. Now, she uses Dada as a word. She mostly uses it when she wants something that she sees but Dad doesn't mind. He's flattered that she uses Dada when she wants something....Dada is certainly going to give her whatever she wants, especially when what she wants is her daddy. We give her lots of love and attention when she says it so her use of her first new word is increasing.

No messy diapers?
Poor baby has not had a poopy diaper in a while. It's been at least 4-5 days now. This from a baby who used to go at least 4-5 times a day. Every day I wake up and think "Oh boy, she's going to blow up a diaper today" but it isn't happening! I don't know what to do. We've withheld solids until she goes, in case that's what's stopped her up. She wouldn't eat more than a bite when we offered them to her anyways and several whole meals went to waste. If she doesn't go by the time the doctor's office opens this morning, I just might call and ask them for some advice.

Out to eat
I've been feeling lazy lately...too lazy to cook at least. So we've been going out to eat for a lot of our meals. Each time we go out to eat, we bring Sasha's Bumbo seat and set it upon the table for her to sit in. It really works well. Sasha gets a lot of attention from the restaurant patrons and from us, and feels like she's a part of the family meal. She is so well behaved, probably due to the fact that she is so included at the meals. I hand her one of her baby spoons and she wields it like a task-master, beating her bumbo seat with it for emphasis and occasionally attempting to put it in her mouth. I've been trying to work with her on the use of a straw to drink water. She's managed to get a few surprise mouthfuls but I don't think she's totally clear on the concept yet.

Object permanence
Yesterday, I was snuggling with the baby in bed, teaching her how to play peek-a-boo with the blankets. I wanted to test out her sense of object permanence so I let her see me put my hand under the blanket. Then I moved my hand so one finger would come into and out of view from under the blanket. Well, she would only watch the spot where the finger would come into and out of view. She didn't grab the blanket to uncover my hand. It really didn't seem like she had a sense of object permanence as far as the hand-under-the-blanket trick goes.

Rolling, rolling, rolling
Sasha has started a really annoying sleep habit: rolling around. A lot. It's like she's tossing and turning at high rpm. We could probably use her as power generator at the rate she's going. Fortunately she's not rolling in circles. If she's between her dad and me, she normally starts on her side facing me as she nurses herself to sleep. Then she'll roll over to face her Dad. She'll grab him, stay like that for about 10 seconds, then she'll roll back over to face me again. It almost seems like she's time-sharing her sleepy hugs between us. She does the same thing even if one of us is not there napping with her. It's not very conducive to getting a good night's sleep for her father and I. Eventually she ends up waking herself up by doing that too. And don't even get me started on the sleep situation. She is still on a day shift sleep schedule, which is hard on us.
Tonight, she's doing the rolling and beat up dad thing, and he has not been able to get any sleep at all. This is not good. As long as she insists on "sleeping" during the night and staying awake all day, we depend on him to get his sleep at night so he can watch her during the day. Then I can get some sleep during the day so I am not too tired at work at night.

Battered Mommy Syndrome
I'm starting to feel really beaten up. How embarassing to admit my 7 month old baby girl beats me. But boy does she beat me good. She's gotten a few good punch-kicks in on her father as well. Typically, I'm sitting on the couch with her standing in my lap facing me. She pulls my hair, hits my face, sticks her fingers up my nose and pulls, throws her fingers unexpectedly into my mouth and digs around, scratches my gums, tries to grab and pull my tongue out of my mouth, pokes my eyes. I am starting to get a bit frazzled by the hair pulling. So I put my hair up in a pony tail when I'm playing with her but does that help any? Nope. She still pulls on my bangs, pulls my hair anyways and ends up either ripping the hairs out of my scalp or pulls the hair out of the pony tail. I feel like I'm always wrestling her for my hair back. I'm starting to feel a little violated. Oh but she does it all with a smile and a cute giggle and she has such fun with it. I think it's just a phase but I think pretty soon I'm going to have to lay down the law on the little cutie. Not that I know how yet. I just know that I should probably start nipping this problem in the bud before it escalates.