SLOANE AT 11 MONTHS

I’m already starting to catch myself taking things for granted about how fast she is developing. Maybe I’ll look back at these posts I’m writing and think that it was quaint that I was floored when she first handed me something or put a blueberry in my mouth for me to eat, but a big part of why I record these exclamations is because I don’t ever want to lose that sense of wonder. I hope that when I do look back and read these posts that I’m reminded of what it felt like to be in awe and marvel at a baby’s first steps and the joy I felt introducing new foods and smells and sights to her.

The other day, I was marking up tags on her clothes with a laundry marker. She saw what I was doing, toddled over, took the marker from my hand, picked up a piece of clothing and started tapping the marker on the pants. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she was imitating what I was doing! My eyeballs almost popped out, I was so surprised. She had observed and processed enough to a point where she followed suit. There was evidence of her doing this much earlier on with simple things – when I clap, she claps, when I make a face, she makes a face– but this was several things that she had to link together in order to imitate and it was amazing to me. My first reaction was amazement, the second was joy and pride, the third was of being a little freaked out, as in, ‘she’s watching us!!’ And that’s what I told K. later when I was telling him about this. This little one is taking in everything we do.

She also does this thing where she puts her hand, remote, book, crepe paper – whatever she happens to have in her hand – up to her ear.  At first, I didn’t make the connection. Then one day, my phone made a beeping sound and she immediately looked at me, opened her eyes wide, put her hand up to her ear and said, ‘wa wa ya!’ as if she was answering the phone. In her mind, she has made the notation that this is a thing that we grownups do - put things to our ears and talk to them.

She scampers/crawls/climbs up the stairs now. She is fiercely determined as she does it, breathing hard, and undeterred.

How she loves to wander about! She clutches a book, or a card, or a paper flower, and walks about the room, back and forth, surveying the land, enjoying her freedom. 

She spot a crumb on the floor underneath the sink, gets in squatting position to reach it and gingerly 
hands it to me, with an earnest, ‘ba!”  'Ba' seems to be her favorite syllable right now, she just puts different intonations on it to express different things. In the mornings, when I get her to nurse, instead of crying to tell me that she's hungry, she clutches me and lets out the most earnest and pitiful and expressive 'Ba!' to let me know that she wants to nurse.

On another occasion, I was lying down on the couch, exhausted and doing my very best fainted lady impression. Sloane was wandering about the living room in front of me and then all of a sudden she went over to the bookshelf where all of her shoes were lined up and proceeded to bring me her shoes, one by one, and place them in my lap, until there were 4 pairs (8 shoes) filling my lap. She looked at me with great satisfaction, and then proceeded to take them all of my lap, put them on the floor, and then hand them to me all over again. She’s been doing things like this more often where she hands me pieces of paper that she picks up from the ground, proudly displays something that she has discovered, or wants to feed me while she is eating her food.

She is engaging with people around her and it makes me feel all of happy and excited and a little nervous as well to realize the endless bounds of possibilities that are in this tiny human. It has been making me realize how important it is and will be increasingly so to pray for smarts and wisdom when parenting this child.

Yesterday when I dropped her off at daycare, she lifted up both her hands and shouted ‘yabababa’ in joy when she saw the other daycare babies playing on the mat and my heart just about burst

When I came to pick her up, she spotted me from her place on the mat, went into this squatting position, opened her mouth and screeched with joy before toddling over and raising her arms up to me.  More heart bursts.