Here’s a video Jennie shot back in mid-December that I’ve never figured out what to do with. Witness the incipient lip rounding! Rejoice at the triumphant glottal stop! Survive the attack of the 3D baby*!!
[flv:http://km21.web.rice.edu/nora/vowels.flv poster 480 270]
* Endure the annoying father. :)
Nora is feeling much better today. Here’s a shot of her indulging in one of her stranger habits: taking food from the table, carrying it to the bottom of the staircase, and eating it there. You wouldn’t believe how clean we have to keep this step now. :)
She’s exceedingly proud of herself.
and an action shot!
Nora is definitely starting to feel better. She’s eating, playing, and almost smiling again. Here we find her having claimed as her own the bow from the bathroom curtains. I guess she figures if it’s pretty and she can reach it it’s hers. :)
Happy fourteen-month-a-versary, Nora!
For once the lack of blog posting is not due to graduate school being hard. Nora’s been fairly ill since Wednesday night when she produced irrefutable evidence of her first, shall we say, malady of the tummy. This we nursed delicately through Thursday and, thinking her recovered, wrapped up in a snowsuit and trundled off to baby school on Friday.
Her malady reasserted itself during lunch at baby school and several times thereafter back at the purple house. Jen and I then paid Nora the tremendous disservice of raining on her glorious “first malady of the tummy” parade by demonstrating that we too could, even at our relatively advanced ages, still pick up a new trick or two from the toddler set.
Saturday morning found us all (once again) at the ignoble Saturday morning clinic where we had the enormous good fortune of seeing our very own pediatrician. Apparently this is a particularly nasty bug this year, it tends to linger, keep up the fluids, etc., etc..
Apart from Nora coming down with a nasty, nasty head cold, Sunday passed rather uneventfully. Far too uneventfully, actually, as our normally boisterous bean has become lethargic and clingy. Her eyes are dim, her shoulders are sloped, her expression is hang-dog. She wouldn’t knock over her buckets, wouldn’t move her wagon, had no interest in my cell phone, left a water glass unspilled on the living room floor, and cried in the bath*.
Jen graciously let me sleep Saturday night (while she got up hourly with our distressed toddler) and my health is consequently more fully returned. This leaves Jen and Nora home sick together and me homesick at work.
Did I mention that Nora has just erupted two new molars and appears to be working on a lateral incisor?
We’re renaming her Job.
* this was entirely my fault. I thought she’d find it hilarious if I put on my bathing suit and climbed in the bath with her. She was quite reasonably horrified by this, however, and, in retrospect, who wouldn’t be?
Nora loves baths. She loves them so much, in fact, that we’ve signed her up for “sing and splash” swimming lessons. As you can see, she’s already got the splash part down:
No word yet on whether she’ll be able to bring her duckies in the big pool.
[flv:http://km21.web.rice.edu/nora/tigger.flv poster 480 270]
I’m using what should be a somewhat more universal video format. If your computer can’t play this please comment and let me know.
Nora enjoys her cereal which, for her, is a fairly immersive experience.
It takes 6 minutes to drive from campus to our house (if traffic is bad). Thursday Nora used this time to totally pass out in the car. She slept through being lifted out of the car seat, carried through the bitter cold, unceremoniously dropped on the couch so I could take off my infernal boots (photo below), and moved into the pack ‘n play. She didn’t wake up for 3 hours and then was awake only long enough to get a clean diaper, have her teeth brushed, grab a quick snack, and go back to bed.
I admit it. I’m jealous.
Those of you not interested in linguistics may want to turn away for a moment.
Those of you interested in linguistics probably want to as well.
As of this morning I recognize several interesting tendencies in Nora’s grammar. I’m not stating anything formally (at least at this point) — just making some observations based on the (probably wrong) assumption that her productions and attempts at mimicry reveal as much about the underlying grammar as they do about her articulatory maturity.
It sure doesn’t seem like she’s doing the holistic word acquisition thing I’ve been led to expect.
Examples:
ducky > [dʌdə]
yeah yeah yeah > [jaja]
yeah > [jaja]
dude > [dudu]
daddy > [dada]
mommy > [mama]
“Where is [dʌdə]?” and “where is [dʌki]” evoke the same response (getting or pointing at the duck). “where is [dada]” and “where is [dadi]” cause her to look. In both cases she generally exclaims [dʌdə] or [dada] and then hugs the grateful object of interest.
okay, maybe not the actual coldest day in recorded human history, but with the temp at -3° F this morning* (-19° C!) it was almost certainly the coldest day on which Nono has ever left the house. As such, we brought out the big guns and allowed Nora to enact one of my favorite scenes from “A Christmas Story“.
* Tomorrow’s forecast is for -8° F (122° C)!! I think I’ll be calling in frozen.