More on Lexi's language skills and her comprehension of words...
On tv the other night, we saw two people kissing. Someone must have also said 'kiss' because the next day, Lexi pulled Stephen and I together as we all sat on the couch and said 'kiss'. She then did it a couple of times after we had obeyed. And another time when we were standing waiting around for something, she pulls on our legs - pushing us towards each other and saying 'kiss.' Besides commanding us to 'kiss' and 'come', we are also commanded to 'sit' (usually with the word in Swahili), 'lie down' and 'get it' when something has dropped out of her reach.
This afternoon we spent about an hour in the Air and Space Museum. 'Airplane' is a word that Lexi likes and she was very excited to see so many of them. There was lots of arm waving and shouting. In the space section, she saw several devices that had shiny paper - looked like tin foil. This prompted her to say 'chocolate'; it took me a bit to figure out that she thought the shiny paper covered chocolate like the chocolate bar she had seen at home.
May 31, 2009
May 29, 2009
Medical update and language challenges
The whole family has had to go the doctor to get medical checkups as LWF requires a medical clearance report at the end of our time abroad. I had a heck of a time getting appointments for all of us in May but I managed. Here are Lexi's stats (I won't give you mine, but Stephen is underweight for his height and his cholesterol is 114. The doctor asked him, "Are you a vegetarian, or do you just eat very well?"):
Weight - 23 lbs, 8 oz
Height - 33.5 inches
She is developing well it seems like. Her latest language challenge is that to get down (to be lifted down), she says 'up-down'. We keep repeating just 'down' but she doesn't seem to get it. Her 'yeses' are quite clear and more frequent now and she will even occasionally say please when prompted.
Weight - 23 lbs, 8 oz
Height - 33.5 inches
She is developing well it seems like. Her latest language challenge is that to get down (to be lifted down), she says 'up-down'. We keep repeating just 'down' but she doesn't seem to get it. Her 'yeses' are quite clear and more frequent now and she will even occasionally say please when prompted.
May 26, 2009
One of today's better moments
Here is a video of Lexi at one of today's better moments (see Sarah's previous post of the extremes we visited today). I love her term for a rocking chair - "rocky." She can entertain herself on occasion, but only for about 20 or 30 seconds.
Full of energy - and tantrums
Lexi was FULL of energy today - running around, making lots of noise, getting into things. And she was also full of tantrums - lots of screaming and crying for reasons we couldn't understand. She didn't want to eat part of her dinner and complained for about 10 minutes Stephen thought. When she finally tried it, she even said it was 'yummy'. And ate everything on her plate - and asked for seconds twice.
The grandmothers will be happy to know that we did go out and buy Lexi a potty. (It was in the plan, we just hadn't gotten to it yet.) She is not interested in even sitting on it with her clothes on. So we shall see how long this takes!
The grandmothers will be happy to know that we did go out and buy Lexi a potty. (It was in the plan, we just hadn't gotten to it yet.) She is not interested in even sitting on it with her clothes on. So we shall see how long this takes!
May 25, 2009
First Official Haircut
While Stephen and I - and even Aunt Lora (who has been trained in this) - have cut Lexi's hair, last Thursday we actually went to a hair salon to have her hair cut. She was NOT happy about it. She got to sit on a booster seat and wear a gown with fun pictures on it but none of that helped. She practically cried the whole time. I was afraid that she might jerk around and get cut, so I helped keep her still.
The hair cut turned out pretty good and Lexi was happy when it was over.
Sleeping habits and other habits
Lexi has been really Mommy-clingy since we returned to the U.S. Sleeping has been slightly problematic, especially if Mom tries to put her to sleep. But for both her nap and at night, if Stephen puts her to bed, she manages to fall asleep and he can work at the computer in the room where she sleeps or go in and out and it isn't too big of a deal.
Lexi is getting to a stage where she wants to take off her diaper or at least unhook it. This morning, she heard me say 'shower' and the next thing we knew, her diaper was off and she was running around naked (she also knows how to say naked). I was going to take her in the shower with me but I was still working towards that stage so she ran around a bit in the buff. Stephen was working on the computer and not paying attention to Lexi really while I was in the bathroom. She told him that something needed to be cleaned and pointed - but Stephen didn't see anything. I get Lexi in the shower with me and discovered that she had gone poopy in the recent past. I shouted out to Stephen that he had better look around. Yup, there is was over near her bed and he got to clean it up. Oh, the joys of parenthood!
Lexi is getting to a stage where she wants to take off her diaper or at least unhook it. This morning, she heard me say 'shower' and the next thing we knew, her diaper was off and she was running around naked (she also knows how to say naked). I was going to take her in the shower with me but I was still working towards that stage so she ran around a bit in the buff. Stephen was working on the computer and not paying attention to Lexi really while I was in the bathroom. She told him that something needed to be cleaned and pointed - but Stephen didn't see anything. I get Lexi in the shower with me and discovered that she had gone poopy in the recent past. I shouted out to Stephen that he had better look around. Yup, there is was over near her bed and he got to clean it up. Oh, the joys of parenthood!
May 22, 2009
Who wound her up?
We don't know who wound Lexi up tonight for dinner, but she was sure full of energy!
Lexi with one of her cousins - before and after
When we were in Minnesota with Sarah's family a couple of weeks ago, Lexi got to be with all of her first cousins (all cousins in this generation so far are girls). Look at these two pictures of Lexi with one of her cousins, the daughter of Sarah's brother Brian and his wife Jen. You can click on the picture to see it bigger.
May 20, 2009
Lexi with all of her first cousins
When Sarah and Lexi returned to the U.S. on May 7, they entered the country at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport because that's the largest major airport for Sarah's mother, who had been with them for their last two weeks in Nairobi so Sarah could have some help with Lexi when flying home. Because they were entering the U.S. there, they and the rest of Sarah's family used the occasion for a family reunion from that day through Saturday. Sarah's father drove up from Iowa, I flew in from Washington, D.C., her sister and her family flew in from Salt Lake City, and we all stayed with Sarah's brother and his family in the Minneapolis area.
There were eight adults and four kids (ranging in age from 10 months to 2 years) in the same house (luckily it's big and has a few bathrooms) for a few days and nights.
This was the first time we met our youngest niece, Nora, and we loved having all of the first cousins together. Here they are:
From the left:
There were eight adults and four kids (ranging in age from 10 months to 2 years) in the same house (luckily it's big and has a few bathrooms) for a few days and nights.
This was the first time we met our youngest niece, Nora, and we loved having all of the first cousins together. Here they are:
From the left:
- Lexi
- Sofia, daughter of Sarah's younger brother Brian and his wife Jen
- Olivia, eldest daughter of Sarah's younger sister Miriam and her husband Andy
- Nora, youngest daughter of Miriam and Andy
May 16, 2009
How Lexi changed in the nine weeks we were separated
During the time I was away from Sarah and Lexi, Lexi obviously changed. This is not surprising, given that, at this age, a child grows very rapidly. I left them in Nairobi on March 1 and did not see them for nine weeks and a few days.
At one point when I was alone, it had been several days between the times I had looked at a picture of Lexi. Toward the end of our separation, I had grown accustomed to not seeing Lexi every day. So this time when I looked at a picture of her, I saw her a bit in a new way, and I really saw a lot of myself in her face.
On May 7, when I met Sarah and Lexi at the Minneapolis airport, Lexi wasn’t afraid of me, but she wasn’t sure exactly who I was. She allowed me to pick her up, and she was neither scared nor delighted to see me. She was quite neutral. On the car ride away from the airport, she was playful with me, but not really in a familiar, father-child sort of way. It was within an hour after we arrived at Brian and Jen’s (Sarah’s brother) house that I came down the stairs into the basement where Lexi was sitting on an inflatable bed set up there. She saw me come down the stairs and yelled out "Daddy" with a big smile. I was delighted that she had remembered me, and it was okay that it took her a little while.
In the time we were separated, it seems that Lexi went from being a big baby – which is what she was when I left her – to being a little girl. She looked taller and more slender.
The biggest change in Lexi, however, is in her speech. Her vocabulary has grown so much. She is at the point where she is forming two- or three-word sentences – saying things that have a complete thought or an instruction. And she is repeating words and trying to remember them. This is taking little effort on her part, and she often thinks it's fun. She understands many more words and commands, even if some of them are in Kiswahili. She says and understands (and usually obeys) when others say “ka” (sit) or “kuja” (come).
The parts of her speech that have grown the most are her use of nouns. She must identify every thing she knows the word for, even if she sees it multiple times each day. Or she often repeats a word a few times when she spots an object she knows the word for. With one object in particular – water – she’s either very good at identifying its many forms or simply just doesn’t know the subtleties in differences and is very general. She’ll say “water” for wet ground, ice, rain, a puddle, a pond, a river, etc. A bed is still “la la” (Kiswahili for “sleep”).
I’m surprised at how many objects she knows the words for – moon, door, house, book, socks, shoes, jacket, airport, pocket, pillow, airplane, swing. She has learned and retained so many new words. Every trip outside the house – or even just staying in on an ordinary day – is a time for Lexi to exercise her mind and her vocabulary and practice the words she has learned, and she seems never to tire of pointing to and naming what an object is.
Before and after I left Nairobi, Sarah worked with Lexi on getting her to understand that I was leaving. Sarah told Lexi, “We took Daddy to the airport” a lot. This stuck with her. Certainly she calls me “Daddy” to my face, but every once in a while, Lexi will blurt out randomly, “Daddy airport,” even though she’s not at the airport, nor am I. Sarah thinks that when they took me to the airport that night in Nairobi that I left, Lexi believed I stayed there until they found me at another airport in Minneapolis nine weeks later.
Lexi’s next biggest growth in words she has learned are verbs. Even before I left Nairobi, Lexi had been saying "ka" for several weeks while sitting down on a stair or chair and asking you to come sit beside her. One of the funniest commands that Sarah told me she had started saying was, “Heat it,” but pronounced more as, “Eat it.” She said this when we handed her her sippy cup with milk. Jane had really waited on Lexi hand and foot and always heated Lexi’s milk, or perhaps it was just a holdover from the days when we prepared baby bottles of milk (it’s typical for an African person who is house help to follow instructions exactly until told otherwise – if we tell her to heat the milk, she will always do it, even when the child no longer needs it heated). So Lexi was handing back the sippy cup with milk and commanding, “(H)Eat it!” I did this a few times until I proposed to Sarah that we just stick it in the microwave for a few seconds but not turn the microwave on. This seems to have worked, and now we no longer have to heat the milk (she still asks this on occasion). Another well-worn phrase is “Cut it.” Lexi is good at identifying cutting, whether she sees me cutting something out of the newspaper with scissors or asking Sarah to cut up food that’s on her plate. Most of the time this command is used in the latter situation because Lexi is convinced that cutting up food into smaller bits will make it cooler. Lexi is good at understanding and obeying the command to "lie down" when we need to change her diaper on the floor of the bathroom (and she often says it back to us when we say it to her).
Another command that we're hearing from Lexi often is "sing." She knows that we now hold hands when we say grace before a meal, and now she is starting to request that we "sing" the grace all the time. But at other times, she asks us to sing. Upon her arrival back in the U.S., she was asking me to sing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" a lot (when she said, "Sing," I would ask her what, and she would say, "Bring back."). Sarah's mother must have sung this to her a lot in the two weeks that she was in Nairobi before she accompanied Sarah and Lexi back to the U.S. One song that Lexi heard a lot from Granny as well must have been "Are You Sleeping" because she can sing the opening notes to it herself now.
Lexi also regularly climbs up in a chair next to us while we're sitting at the table working on something or at the computer and asks, "Write...name." She likes to take the pen and scribble on the paper herself, and she even knows how to hold the pen properly (and holds it in her right hand).
Another favorite word is “more,” and Lexi is getting better at using this word – making it useful to her. She can ask for more milk or more crackers or more of whatever is on her plate at the moment just by saying “more.” But she also uses it as “a lot,” we guess, like when we’re at the airport and she says, “More airplane.”
She is also learning adjectives and can identify if something (like her hands or someone else's) are "clean" or "dirty."
However, Lexi is still learning about accruracy with words. One word she knows well is "poopy" and will say it sometimes, prompting us to ask if she has poopy in her diaper. Most of the time she doesn't, and we figure she's just practicing the word.
So, now that she has reached this new level with her speech, there is an additional area that an already active child is active in.
At one point when I was alone, it had been several days between the times I had looked at a picture of Lexi. Toward the end of our separation, I had grown accustomed to not seeing Lexi every day. So this time when I looked at a picture of her, I saw her a bit in a new way, and I really saw a lot of myself in her face.
On May 7, when I met Sarah and Lexi at the Minneapolis airport, Lexi wasn’t afraid of me, but she wasn’t sure exactly who I was. She allowed me to pick her up, and she was neither scared nor delighted to see me. She was quite neutral. On the car ride away from the airport, she was playful with me, but not really in a familiar, father-child sort of way. It was within an hour after we arrived at Brian and Jen’s (Sarah’s brother) house that I came down the stairs into the basement where Lexi was sitting on an inflatable bed set up there. She saw me come down the stairs and yelled out "Daddy" with a big smile. I was delighted that she had remembered me, and it was okay that it took her a little while.
In the time we were separated, it seems that Lexi went from being a big baby – which is what she was when I left her – to being a little girl. She looked taller and more slender.
The biggest change in Lexi, however, is in her speech. Her vocabulary has grown so much. She is at the point where she is forming two- or three-word sentences – saying things that have a complete thought or an instruction. And she is repeating words and trying to remember them. This is taking little effort on her part, and she often thinks it's fun. She understands many more words and commands, even if some of them are in Kiswahili. She says and understands (and usually obeys) when others say “ka” (sit) or “kuja” (come).
The parts of her speech that have grown the most are her use of nouns. She must identify every thing she knows the word for, even if she sees it multiple times each day. Or she often repeats a word a few times when she spots an object she knows the word for. With one object in particular – water – she’s either very good at identifying its many forms or simply just doesn’t know the subtleties in differences and is very general. She’ll say “water” for wet ground, ice, rain, a puddle, a pond, a river, etc. A bed is still “la la” (Kiswahili for “sleep”).
I’m surprised at how many objects she knows the words for – moon, door, house, book, socks, shoes, jacket, airport, pocket, pillow, airplane, swing. She has learned and retained so many new words. Every trip outside the house – or even just staying in on an ordinary day – is a time for Lexi to exercise her mind and her vocabulary and practice the words she has learned, and she seems never to tire of pointing to and naming what an object is.
Before and after I left Nairobi, Sarah worked with Lexi on getting her to understand that I was leaving. Sarah told Lexi, “We took Daddy to the airport” a lot. This stuck with her. Certainly she calls me “Daddy” to my face, but every once in a while, Lexi will blurt out randomly, “Daddy airport,” even though she’s not at the airport, nor am I. Sarah thinks that when they took me to the airport that night in Nairobi that I left, Lexi believed I stayed there until they found me at another airport in Minneapolis nine weeks later.
Lexi’s next biggest growth in words she has learned are verbs. Even before I left Nairobi, Lexi had been saying "ka" for several weeks while sitting down on a stair or chair and asking you to come sit beside her. One of the funniest commands that Sarah told me she had started saying was, “Heat it,” but pronounced more as, “Eat it.” She said this when we handed her her sippy cup with milk. Jane had really waited on Lexi hand and foot and always heated Lexi’s milk, or perhaps it was just a holdover from the days when we prepared baby bottles of milk (it’s typical for an African person who is house help to follow instructions exactly until told otherwise – if we tell her to heat the milk, she will always do it, even when the child no longer needs it heated). So Lexi was handing back the sippy cup with milk and commanding, “(H)Eat it!” I did this a few times until I proposed to Sarah that we just stick it in the microwave for a few seconds but not turn the microwave on. This seems to have worked, and now we no longer have to heat the milk (she still asks this on occasion). Another well-worn phrase is “Cut it.” Lexi is good at identifying cutting, whether she sees me cutting something out of the newspaper with scissors or asking Sarah to cut up food that’s on her plate. Most of the time this command is used in the latter situation because Lexi is convinced that cutting up food into smaller bits will make it cooler. Lexi is good at understanding and obeying the command to "lie down" when we need to change her diaper on the floor of the bathroom (and she often says it back to us when we say it to her).
Another command that we're hearing from Lexi often is "sing." She knows that we now hold hands when we say grace before a meal, and now she is starting to request that we "sing" the grace all the time. But at other times, she asks us to sing. Upon her arrival back in the U.S., she was asking me to sing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" a lot (when she said, "Sing," I would ask her what, and she would say, "Bring back."). Sarah's mother must have sung this to her a lot in the two weeks that she was in Nairobi before she accompanied Sarah and Lexi back to the U.S. One song that Lexi heard a lot from Granny as well must have been "Are You Sleeping" because she can sing the opening notes to it herself now.
Lexi also regularly climbs up in a chair next to us while we're sitting at the table working on something or at the computer and asks, "Write...name." She likes to take the pen and scribble on the paper herself, and she even knows how to hold the pen properly (and holds it in her right hand).
Another favorite word is “more,” and Lexi is getting better at using this word – making it useful to her. She can ask for more milk or more crackers or more of whatever is on her plate at the moment just by saying “more.” But she also uses it as “a lot,” we guess, like when we’re at the airport and she says, “More airplane.”
She is also learning adjectives and can identify if something (like her hands or someone else's) are "clean" or "dirty."
However, Lexi is still learning about accruracy with words. One word she knows well is "poopy" and will say it sometimes, prompting us to ask if she has poopy in her diaper. Most of the time she doesn't, and we figure she's just practicing the word.
So, now that she has reached this new level with her speech, there is an additional area that an already active child is active in.
May 14, 2009
Back in the USA
Lexi has been in the US for a full week now and I think has adjusted to the timezone finally. She slept through the night without a peep for the first time since we got here and seems to understand when she needs to take a nap. We had a great time playing with her cousins in Minnesota and she has been to play group and library time in DC. She is even happily wearing her jacket which was a problem in Nairobi. For now, both Mom and Dad are at home with her which she doesn't seem to mind. She rode the metro train with some trepidation the first time but after that, thought it was ok. And the bus didn't seem to phase her either (though we have to fold up the stroller on the bus, unlike in Geneva).
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