The Circle Is Now Complete

The Wow Signal

As of this morning, we've got a new word. "Wow".

Currently, she's walking across the dining room pushing her doll stroller (with a banana in it), saying "Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!" Iz, that's how I feel all the time.

It's been two and a half months since the first word. Let's recap.

"No" She's getting a lot of mileage out of this one. Usually she says it all breathy; imagine Marilyn Monroe going "noooooo" with a head shake. But more adorable, and less sexy. Most excitingly, she's learned that saying "no" when you really mean "yes" is funny. As in "Can I put this away?" "Noo!"

"Ma" & "Da" She's settled on one syllable most of the time.

"Bye!" Usually accompanied by a hand wave. Adorably, she pronounces it like "Die!" She's learned to wave at airplanes as they fly overhead, waving and calling out "Die!"

"Hi!" Whenever someone comes into a room or she sees them again. Pronounced more like "Aye!" which gives our house this extra piratanical nautical vibe I'm liking.

"Eye" Proving that the bit of the brain that handles pronunciation is different from the one that resolved homonyms, she's can also identify the eyes.

"Wa Wa", and occasionally, something that sounds a lot like "A wa". Something tells me we're going to be calling water this for the next decade.

"Fooh" I can get behind this - why learn words for different kinds of food? It's all just food.

"Nomah" I have no idea what this means, but she says it ALL THE TIME. It's clearly not a negative, and it's not about her mom, so it's not a constructed word. It's a puzzle.

Yesterday, when she saw something that surprised and delighted her, she said something that sounded exactly like "Oh, Sit!" She felt like she had to sit down to absorb the surprise, maybe?


(Footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal)

Helping to vandalize our own property

Training Begins Early!

I'm calling it: We've got a first word.

"Up".

She likes climbing the stairs. A lot. (Which I don't seem to have a picture of, oddly.)

We've had a variety of meaning-laden syllables crop op over the past few months; "Da da da da" is clearly me, "Ma ma ma ma" is clearly Heidi. "Waa" can mean either she's thirsty or that she wants to go for a walk. (Baby talk has homonyms? Who knew?)

She says "Yeaaa!" a lot, but I suspect that's more a sound of excitement than an affirmative. And a sound that is best spelled as "nnnnoooooo" usually means she's not happy about something.

So - clearly the language centers of the brain are solidifying. She's certainly making sounds that mean things, but they're vague things, and vague sounds. They're just that - sounds - not words.

Until "Up".

This started a week or so ago. The pronunciation is clear - it has two distinct sounds. Both the vowel and the consonant are in there, and the closing "p" sound is firm. One of the recurring aspects of the other near-words Iz uses is that she'll make the first sound of the word with the first mouth shape, and then just trail off. With "Up", not only is she using both letters, but she's reshaping her mouth while she does it.

And it only means one thing: she wants to go upstairs. She's loved climbing the stairs on her own ever since she learned how to crawl, and now she's got a word for it.

"Up." That's the right direction to be moving, Isabel.

My daughter walked over to me when I got home today and gave me a hug.

That was new.

We're thirteen months in. A baker's year. Let's recap.




She started walking about a week ago. She's been taking the occasional cautious side-step for a few weeks, but she really started actually walking about last thursday. She's still a little unsteady on her feet; I'm not sure it's occurred to her that walking is a legitimate replacement for crawling yet. It's still a novel new thing, with no obvious use. She just toddles around the living room for the sake of it, grinning wildly. Toddles. My baby just became a toddler.

She does this thing when she gets crawling really fast where she starts swinging her butt back and forth like a Komodo dragon. I'm going to miss that. I haven't managed to get that on video yet - I think I only have a few days left to try.

She got really sick for the first time last week too. Monday night last week she had a fever, which had basically never happened before. She woke up in good spirits the next morning and it hasn't come back, which makes that the definitive "no news is good news" story. On the other hand, I think she emitted five times her body mass in snot over the weekend. And she barfed up snot five times last night. We're all well rested.

She's also become quite the climber. She climbs everything. All the time. For any reason. If we have to move things in this house much higher up, Heidi won't be able to reach them either.

The hugs are also new. She didn't used to be all that affectionate - now she'll toddle over, throw her hands around your chest and give you a big hug.

This totally happened

Happy New Year!

Happy Festivus!

My cat died today.

She was old - 19 or 20, I've lost count. Either way, that's about two-thirds of my life. She was a skinny slip of a black cat, more fur and skin than anything else, with almost laughably tiny ears.

We named her Retsil. There's a town off Puget Sound in Washington State called Retsil. The ferry to the town across the water was an adorably small all-black boat. After we got back from Washington twenty years ago, we got an adorably small all-black kitten. The name seemed to fit.

When I was in junior high, she used to climb onto my chest and lick my face until I made her stop. That was the clearest the pores in my nose have ever been.

When she was a kitten, she was practically invisible. She'd vanish for hours at a time. We finally discovered that she was sleeping in the far corner under my dresser, a tiny fuzzball back in the dark.

We had these big pink easy chairs she used to love sleeping on. She'd climb to the top of the back of the chair, and let her forepaws hang down the back of the chair, her chin resting between them.

She was a nervous cat, but a friendly one. She didn't like to hold still, she was always pacing back and forth, back and forth. Petting Retsil was always vaguely comical - she would walk over, you'd pet her head a few times, she'd run to the other side of the room, wait a second, and then trot back. She'd keep that up as long as you were willing.

She started as an indoor-outdoor cat, but at some point moved outside full time, refusing to come back in. We used to feed her on the back balcony. She would carefully climb up a tree to the balcony, eat, and then climb back down again, looking back over he shoulder the whole way. That tree is covered with vertical scratches along its whole trunk.

I always used to worry about her on Halloween - that some wierdo would find a black cat and do something to her. I'd always out on November first as soon as I could to see if she was okay. She always was.

She would never get out of the rain. It would be pouring, and she'd be crouched in the mud under a tree, with water dripping on her head. I always used to build her a house at the start of winter - somewhere dry and out of the wind with her food. She would always stare incredulously at me while I put it together. She'd move in a few nights later.

Finally, she was getting old enough we brought her back inside and didn't let her out again. She moved into what used to be my room. Her favorite spot was just next to the same dresser she used to sleep under. She couldn't fit under it anymore, but she would always sleep right next to the same corner she always used to.

Once, when we brought Isabel over, Retsil came wandering out of her room to see what the fuss was about. She was ancient by cat standards, and old cats and babies never mix well. Isabel was beyond excited - it was all her grandmother could do to keep her contained. Restil padded over to get a closer look at the baby. Isabel's hand shot out towards the cat, a huge grin splitting her face.

"Here it comes," I thought. "One of those two is about to get bitten."

Restil calmly turned her head and let the baby fondle it. Isabel got a fistful of fur, and Restil didn't even twitch. When Isabel was done, Restil quietly padded back to her room.


Thanks, Retsi.