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Random news on the baby front
Jan. 29th, 2014 10:24 pm- ARR doesn't have any distinguishable words yet--he babbles like crazy, but without much pattern we can discern. We've also been trying to teach him baby sign language, without much success. I think we've determined that he considers it a last resort. He won't sign for his bottle--he just reaches and whines. But we've now had multiple times in the middle of the night where we've been trying to convince him to go back to sleep when after screaming and writhing he's finally started frantically signing for "milk" and "more". So apparently he does know the signs, and can make the signs, but only chooses to do so when he's exasperated with us.
- He also understands what we're saying, and I'm really not sure how much. But last night, he was whining while we were trying to make dinner. He didn't really want anything specific, just our attention. I stopped for a minute and was leaning down to talk to him and, casting about for a conversational topic, asked, "Do you see your shoes? Can you bring me your shoes?" He immediately stopped whining, looked around, found his shoes on the floor (and they were a couple feet apart, surrounded by other objects, so he had to go get one and then the other without picking up a block or a book instead), and handed them to me. I hadn't gestured at them or anything. He, without a doubt, understood that I'd just asked for his shoes. We'd known he knew his name, that "no" means he shouldn't be doing something, and that "more" at least means something good was going to happen, but not that he understood any other specific words. Now I'm wondering how much he understands and chooses to ignore!
- He has suddenly decided he loves books. Loooooves books. He chases us around the apartment holding books until we stop and read them to him. He can sit in his crib by himself with a book for minutes at a time and be entertained. He's got a couple favorites that I think we've each read about fifty times a piece in the last week. He doesn't have much of an attention span, though. So we read three pages, and then he shoves a different book in our hands. Three pages of that, and it's on to the next one.
- The local moms meet up group organized a Q&A with a school district rep to talk about pre-school zoning. There were like 100 people there. If you could use anxiety as a power source, we could have powered the city. The entire thing is monumentally confusing and there are multiple lotteries and they bus kids every which way and that room was a shark tank. And that's the public schools. Oh god the pressure on getting into preschools is as bad as Manhattan. I had no idea. Apparently if we'd wanted him to go to the Montessori school down the street, I needed to have signed up as soon as the pregnancy test came back positive. That's not hyperbole. The waitlist for the two year old class is three years long.
- On the probably TMI front, I stopped pumping (we're coasting into his birthday on the milk in the freezer). I've abruptly lost three pounds this week. Bye bye extra cup size!
- He also understands what we're saying, and I'm really not sure how much. But last night, he was whining while we were trying to make dinner. He didn't really want anything specific, just our attention. I stopped for a minute and was leaning down to talk to him and, casting about for a conversational topic, asked, "Do you see your shoes? Can you bring me your shoes?" He immediately stopped whining, looked around, found his shoes on the floor (and they were a couple feet apart, surrounded by other objects, so he had to go get one and then the other without picking up a block or a book instead), and handed them to me. I hadn't gestured at them or anything. He, without a doubt, understood that I'd just asked for his shoes. We'd known he knew his name, that "no" means he shouldn't be doing something, and that "more" at least means something good was going to happen, but not that he understood any other specific words. Now I'm wondering how much he understands and chooses to ignore!
- He has suddenly decided he loves books. Loooooves books. He chases us around the apartment holding books until we stop and read them to him. He can sit in his crib by himself with a book for minutes at a time and be entertained. He's got a couple favorites that I think we've each read about fifty times a piece in the last week. He doesn't have much of an attention span, though. So we read three pages, and then he shoves a different book in our hands. Three pages of that, and it's on to the next one.
- The local moms meet up group organized a Q&A with a school district rep to talk about pre-school zoning. There were like 100 people there. If you could use anxiety as a power source, we could have powered the city. The entire thing is monumentally confusing and there are multiple lotteries and they bus kids every which way and that room was a shark tank. And that's the public schools. Oh god the pressure on getting into preschools is as bad as Manhattan. I had no idea. Apparently if we'd wanted him to go to the Montessori school down the street, I needed to have signed up as soon as the pregnancy test came back positive. That's not hyperbole. The waitlist for the two year old class is three years long.
- On the probably TMI front, I stopped pumping (we're coasting into his birthday on the milk in the freezer). I've abruptly lost three pounds this week. Bye bye extra cup size!
