Ever more activity

What a difference a couple weeks makes. Just since Thanksgiving Aria has taken amazing strides in development.

• She's walking very fast now. Nearly running. I have this game I play with her where I get down on all fours and crawl after her, saying "Daddy's going to get you!" in a silly voice. It is now very difficult for me to keep up with her while I'm crawling.


• Tonight we saw her walk backwards.


• Her recognition vocabulary has jumped. She knows dozens of words now. She has started to say some of them repeatedly, such as "clock," "head," "eye," "hand," "nose," "ouch," "out," "light," and so on. And the other night, while we were reading Goodnight Moon, I pointed to the clock and named it. The next morning while we were in our room she pointed to the real clock, which is a digital clock that looks nothing like the analog one in the book, and said "clock."


• She learned how to ask to nurse by patting her chest and saying "num-nums." Now that she knows how to ask for it, she asks for it A LOT. It's as though she's feeling the power of asking for something and getting it.


• She's imitating our behavior more. For example, she saw me pat my lap to encourage Charlie to jump up on it, then she reached over and patted my lap while she was looking at Charlie. Then tonight while we were reading her "From Head To Toe" by Eric Carle, we got to the part about the gorilla thumping his chest, and she balled her hand into a fist and thumped her chest just like Hosanna did.


• She's starting to do some really funny things. Like walk around the house with the salad spinner on her head. Or offer you some food, then take it away and eat it herself. She gets a little twinkle in her eye and a mischievous grin.


• She's all but rejected baby food in favor of whatever we're eating. So we try to satisfy her as best as we can without giving her food that's too complex. So far what has worked is pretty much any bread/pasta carb you can think of (takes after Daddy, unfortunately), peas, rice cakes, banana, pears, strawberries, and occasionally proteins like tofu, fake hot dogs or little bits of garden burger. There are some foods she likes to just suck on and then spit out, like oranges.

Hosanna and I have had a super roller coastery month getting used to all these changes. As I said, it gets LOADS more fun when you can really interact with your kid. At least for me, I mean I always enjoyed holding her as an infant but there's a certain point where you look around and say "what the fuck do I do with her?" Now it's easy to answer: chase her around the house! Bang on tupperware! Play with the Muppet dolls! Whatever! Seeing the way she reacts and smiles and laughs and giggles and all that is just so awesome. So, those are the highs.

The down side is of course we're more worn out since she needs more physical energy. And Hosanna and I are also growing inside in our own ways and looking for how to compromise so we each get our own time. The push and pull of when we allow each other to take a break - or work up the nerve to ask for one for ourselves - is a seemingly never-ending stress.