The Daughter Chronicles

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Notes on Norah

Norah can count to ten. We're not exactly sure how it happened, although she does watch some Sesame Street and Baby Einstein videos that count, so that's probably where she picked it up. Who says television can't teach our children! She started counting a few weeks ago at dinner - she just launched into it, and we both kind of stared at her. She has counted correctly 1 through 10, but she prefers the "Mia route" to ten - she skips 7 and 8. We're not sure why Mia does this, but now Norah has joined in too. It's still nice to hear her wandering around counting.

She's still not talking all that much, however. We're being patient. She knows plenty of words, but she doesn't put them together. We're trying to get her to ask for things instead of screaming, and she's slowly getting that concept. She asks for milk now (she calls it "huck") and tells us when there is poop in her pants. Interestingly enough, she doesn't tell us before she poops, but she does know when it's there. We figure this is the first step to potty training, as at least she knows what it is and knows it's unpleasant to have in her pants. She'll figure out soon enough that it's helpful to tell us before it happens so we can sit her on the toilet. One word she does know, however, is "sucky."

She knows this because we're slowly breaking her of her pacifier habit. It's not easy. She still sleeps with it, and very often she'll forget about it for a long time, but then she'll get it into her head that she needs it right now! So she finds us and starts whining "Sucky! Sucky!" over and over, which is kind of annoying, needless to say. When she doesn't get it she throws a bit of a tantrum. We've been trying to divert her attention from the sucky, and sometimes it works. She's a stubborn one, though. But we'll win this one, I think.

We've noticed that she's deathly afraid of crickets. We're not sure why. Krys and I aren't especially afraid of them, so we never freak out when we see one (I'm waiting for the children to develop a phobia of spiders, because Krys does not like them). Crickets periodically invade our house, so it's an issue. The only thing we can come up with is that she saw one jump once and it made her wary. Whenever she sees one, she starts yelling "Crick!" and flees. It's a bit weird, but I guess it's nothing terribly unusual.

I may have mentioned that we started getting Norah to clean up her mess. She's been doing it for quite a few months now. I figured that she could walk and understand me, so why not have her clean up? If you start her young, by the time she's old enough to object, it's such a part of her routine she won't mind doing it. She's very excited about cleaning up, actually. The minute she finishes her dinner she's on the floor saying "Keen up!" and wandering around. I supervise, and she puts everything away. Usually once we're finished I attack her and we roll around on the floor, me tickling her and she jumping up and down on my chest. I think I come off worse in that exchange. This summer Krys has begun taking her outside to water the trees in the backyard, and she gets even more excited about this than cleaning up. Occasionally we don't have time to water the trees, and she gets a bit grumpy about this. Yes, she gets grumpy because she can't do her chores. That won't last.

She's doing fine, according to her pediatrician. It's a bit odd having a perfectly normal child, but I'm certainly not complaining. These are just some of things she's been up to recently. According to Mia's OT, she's a bit ahead of the curve in some things, but she's still lagging in the communication department. Oh well. She'll figure it out.

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