* Just after Thanksgiving we accidentally discovered that Elena knows pretty much every word in all of the books we read to her regularly. Sigrid did not finish a sentence in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” because she got distracted and Elena finished it instead! Well, needless to say this was startling enough, as there was no indication she knew the words, and certainly she does not yet know how to read. But it didn’t take us long to start “testing” and, sure enough, when she is paying attention and engaged she can pick up mid-sentence and fill in the couple or few words missing in a sentence that has already been started. We very much wanted to get this on video – in fact I was waiting to post this until we did – but since we use the iPhone which she LOVES as a video device – it has proven impossible to capture her. It has been remarkable to watch the onion unpeel here: from the first moment in the Grinch, to her doing it on every page of the Grinch, to her (again surprisingly) revealing she could do it with another book.
The process of learning and discovery is remarkable. To see the child go from an unformed animal to gradually put together the pieces of a thinking, functioning person continues to be something.
* I try to do things for Elena to make her feel good, but ultimately much of it just ends up tickling her and she doesn’t really like it. So I was particularly happy to find something that she likes: my putting my mouth against her head and kiss-kiss-kiss-kissing it, moving my mouth around in the process. After 5 or 6 kisses she pulls away and says “Again! Again!” So, I do it again. This time when she pulls away she’s smiling: “Again! Again!” By the third or fourth time she’s laughing sort of a happy tickle sound of a laugh. Now we’ve done it enough that she’ll come up to me and sort of burr her head into my mouth to start the process. It is pretty cool!
* Elena’s counting continues to improve. She recognizes “7, 8, 9, 10″. She can get other smaller numbers sporadically, but for whatever reason she’s really focused on the “7, 8, 9, 10″.
* Elena is very manipulative with her mother. When something is happening that she doesn’t want – especially when being put to bed at night or for a nap – she screams and screams. When does she stop? When dad comes in, because she knows that dad is there to shut it down, she is immediately quiet. From a young age she learned that her mother would sacrifice herself to meet Elena’s needs and make her more comfortable. So she will push the screaming button until she realizes her mom won’t give in. And, often times, that requires dad to come in and deliver the bad news.
* So Elena’s first popular culture favourite is Dora the Explorer. She looooves Dora. The good news is, when Sigrid needs Elena taken care of so something important can get done, if Dora is put on Netflix Elena is transfixed for as long as it lasts. The bad news is, like other things in the past, watching Dora is like a drug. When it’s over, she’s a wreck. When she’s watching, she’s a zombie. It’s weird to see, but certainly reminiscent of how people generally are when plugged into their consoles.
* This year, Elena was more aware of Christmas but certainly not fully. On Christmas Eve we brought her before the tree with her handful of presents and, while she already knew the tree and presents relate to Christmas, she did not understand the notion of the presents being for her and she was to open them. This changed as we helped her open the first one, but she sort of opened half of the paper on a present then set it aside and moved onto the next one. Her main gift was a large wooden kitchen set – envisioned by her mom, picked by me, purchased by her grandmother – which is her favourite toy and is the first thing she plays with every morning.
* Elena is beginning to copy things she experiences in imaginary play, in ways we are able to clearly see and understand. Recently we’ve been reading her a book about a little birthday part where children are putting their stuffed animals and dolls in chairs around the table. Well, now Elena is putting her stuffed animals in chairs around her table, pretending to have a little tea party. It is super cute and, again, remarkable to see her now learning, internalizing and modeling what she sees in the real world.
* It appears that Elena will grow up never having had baby food. She went right from milk to the food we eat. My sons certainly ate baby food, I remember well feeding them every day. But Elena…she’s graduated right to favourites like salmon, cheese and scones. Of course, when I was a 20 year old father I wasn’t eating the kind of food Elena is eating now either, so certainly my increased sophistication is trickling down to the younger generation. It would not have crossed my mind to skip baby food though, that was all her mother. I have to think fresh, organic foods are better for her than processed baby food would have been.
* Her younger brother is now just under 4 months away from being a reality. He is already 2 pounds as of Friday’s ultrasound, massive for this age. Sigrid and I are both very tall which certainly is the driving factor. Sigrid is showing so much more with the new baby than she did with Elena. Despite the massive bump, Elena does not seem to comprehend that inside is a new person who will completely change her life. That said, Elena is very possessive of her mother and I’m expecting there will be some interesting psychological battles and moments as she comes to grips with taking a back seat to her younger sibling who will count on mom for survival far more immediately than the quickly growing Ms. Knemeyer.
Happy New Year, everyone!
