Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Tuesday Night grounds

Since I'm so behind on my Celeste updates, I'm falling back on MC's gerunds meme ...

Narrating ... Celeste loves reading be it flipping through books at high speed or sitting while one of us reads to her, but lately she's started narrating some of the books herself. At the end of Tom and Pippo Read a Story (when Tom starts reading to Pippo), Celeste points to the cat curled up on the couch behind Tom and signs CAT and makes her purr raspberry. On the next page, when Tom is in bed, Celeste puts her head on her shoulder, which is her SLEEP/NAP sign.

Talking ... Both with her hands and her mouth, Celeste is expanding her vocabulary. She is saying bébé (or something close to that) while signing BABY much of the time. Also, the cadence of sounds she is making while playing or trying to tell us something is getting more English. I also thought I heard a few new phonemes this afternoon.

Signing ... Similarly, new signs keep popping up. Monday, as I was gathering some snacks to take to work, Celeste put her wrist to her chin with her hand curved below her face. She made that gesture twice, pointing at my hand in between repetitions ... APPLE. She's also using BEAR, BUTTERFLY, PUMPKIN, and TELEPHONE. While feeding her lunch, Celeste started signing TRAIN, and I wasn't sure why, but then I heard a distant train whistle ... her ears are pretty good.

Walking ... Celeste is pushing limits. This afternoon, she just kept walking and walking and walking. She'd go all around the first floor of the house, sometimes looking like she was going to grab on to a chair or something to start cruising, but instead she would turn and walk in the other direction. She still has a bit of the "Frankenbaby" stutter step, but she is getting better and better.

Balancing ... Her balance is also getting a lot better. While at the park this afternoon, Celeste bent down to pick up double fistfuls of mulch and then righted herself again. Later, after Evelin got home, she did a similar trick, bending over to pick up two rolls of ribbon several times in a row.

Anticipating ... Also connected with the walking is a little game we've been playing. Celeste likes walking back and forth between Evelin to me, but sometimes, as she starts away from me, I will snatch her back. The first few times, this just yielded giggles, but soon, Celeste started pausing at arm's length, waiting to see if she would get grabbed back or not ...

Eating ... Celeste continues to be a good eater, occasionally picky, but generally game to try new foods and often enjoying them. She's also working at learning how to use a spoon and a fork. She's been good at getting the spoon to her mouth for a while, but getting food on to the spoon is more of a challenge, but she's doing much better now. She's getting quite good with sticky things like oatmeal and yoghurt, although sometimes she still seems to do less scooping than dipping the spoon into the bowl as if she were eating Lik-m-Aid (which has apparently been rebranded as "Fun Dip").

Teething ... It looks like the fourth molar is in, making 12 teeth in Celeste's mouth. There is time here for a pause in the teething, but she was really hesitant about letting me brush the upper left side of her jaw during her bath tonight, so maybe an eyetooth or something is coming in over there ...

Biting ... And thinking of the teeth, this afternoon, I was laying on the ground, pretending to be asleep. Celeste scooted over and leaned in to give me a kiss — or so I thought. Instead, she bit my nose ... and those little teeth are sharp.

Flickring ... Probably from seeing pictures of herself on screen (either on one of our backgrounds or when we're uploading pics to Snapfish or something) or of Evelin's friends' babies on the SheKnows message boards, Celeste knows that the computer has pictures of babies on it. Sometimes, if I try to sneak a look at my e-mail or something while Celeste is playing quietly or reading, she will notice that I'm at the computer and will come over and sign BABY. Evelin sometimes just shows her the desktop background, but we've also shown her Flickr slideshows of pics tagged Baby (or, if Celeste wants, Dog). Sometimes she gets bored, but other times she is really interested, signing SLEEP/NAP if the baby is sleeping, signing BABY over and over again, signing CAT or DOG if an animal is in the picture too, etc.

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