Little Engineer
Oh boy. Sadie has become obsessed with taking apart the baseboard heaters. She’s removed three pieces of the covering from it in the living room. When she gets onto something like that, she’ll work and work and work at it, puzzling it out and trying until she figures out what it takes.
Fits right in with her determination to figure out how things work, or how to operate things.
We’ve decided she has a future as an engineer. One with a contrastingly girly streak, at the same time she’s into traditionally male pursuits. And an obsession with books.
We’re hoping her intelligence, desire for order and routine, and sometimes surprising degree of directability will make up for the probability that things like cabinet latches won’t stop her for very long. Learning to communicate better would help, too. She makes new sounds, but remains on pretty much the same language learning trajectory as ever. My dream the other night in which she abruptly started using understandable sentences and a wide range of recognizable words is closer to wishful thinking than reality. what’s uncanny is how much she understands, however little she can say. When referring to pineapple, we now say “apple from the tropics” so she won’t go nuts demanding to have some, for example.
Since I’ve expanded beyond the planned scope of this post, I’ll see how much I can remember to include in a full Sadie update. She can’t get enough showers and baths, frequently having two in a day by getting in the shower with one of us. She no longer minds getting her head wet, which is helpful. Of course, part of the reason for her interest is fascination with the faucet and how it all works.
Sadie is also into clothes. She loves trying on new things, and wearing different things, though mostly there are items she becomes obsessed with wearing. She latched onto a pair of red pants with polka dots on them. Deb might never have put them on her, as they don’t really go with anything else. Hand me downs, you know.
The most excited she’s ever been about eating chicken was last week when I made chicken salsa fiesta. That’s a Bisquick box recipe we love so much we make it regularly when running the oven isn’t too hot. It’s not strongly spicy, per se, but it’s a funny thing for her to like that much. Then again, tomatoes and tomato-based foods are a favorite with her. If it were spicy, her love of jalepeno Pringles, which are quite strong, seems to indicate that would be fine by her.
And yet we have discovered a couple of food sensitivities. Apple & Eve Mango Passion juice is delicious. She loves it. It makes her too… loose. Chocolate seems to make her spit up, in all but the smallest amounts. She was a little young for that anyway. It’s odd; she didn’t seem to have a problem with it at first.
There have been a couple of foods that have made her skin turn red where they were in contact. We buy the BJ’s house brand of cream cheese, which is perfectly good and saves money. And leaves a rash around her mouth where it smooshes on her skin. Philadelphia brand doesn’t seem to do that. Weird.
She likes to play chase. You can change her diaper, but you have to catch her first! Usually. Sometimes you’ll say “diaper” and she hauls but into the room to meet you.
It’s frustrating that she can’t talk. Her way of communicating when she wants something is to misbehave. If she wants to be changed, or is hungry or thirsty, she’ll start taking books or videos off the shelves, or do similar things she knows will get our (negative) attention. When she needs to sleep, too, though not as much. We can generally tell by her degree of clumsiness, or her turning mellow or, conversely, bouncing off the walls.
Sometimes she gets it spot on. For instance, trying to climb into the high chair, or setting her drink up on the tray and giving us the “welll...?” look.
Ah, she loves brushing her teeth. Like she was born with some deep appreciation of oral hygiene. If one of us is brushing, she has to brush too. She watches me and tries to emulate it. Speaking of telling us what she wants, yesterday she mimed brushing her teeth!
Anyway, Sadie’s hunger calls. I can always post again if I forgot something in the update…
Get her some sort of construction system at her scale. Probably the mega-lego type; clones are dirt cheap at family dollar tree whatever. Then show her some of the room sized geek Lego projects on line.
Posted by triticale on 10/18 at 10:27 PMShe sounds remarkably intelligent, Jay. Seriously. She’s not so “verbal” but you just KNOW there’s whole paragraphs in her little head.
I’m so not suprised - I mean look at what lovely parental units she has!
Posted by Margi on 10/18 at 11:49 PMShe loves her 50 piece set of Mega Blocks, which go in a wagon that can have blocks attached to the sides. The wagon is good for her love of pushing and pulling wheeled objects, and of putting things into (or dumping them out of) large containers. She’s going through the typical toddler phase of liking to carry things almost as large as she is around the apartment. No small trash barrel or similar item is safe if it’s in reach. We also have to watch that she doesn’t put toys or other non-trash items in the kitchen rubbish barrel. On the other hand, she now seems to be getting the idea about throwing trash in there, which is cool.
Posted by Jay on 10/19 at 12:38 AM*scribbling furiously*
Hey. It’s been a LONG TIME since I had a toddler.
Posted by Margi on 10/19 at 02:57 AMJay, don’t worry about the talking. She gets it, and she’ll start talking when she’s ready, not before.
I was a smart kid (no idea what happened in the interim—public schooling, I guess
), and I didn’t start talking till I was nearly two. Once I started, though, I didn’t stop.
Sadie sounds like a budding genius.
(Captcha: book. Yeah, I wanted to read from a damn early age, too.)
Posted by Ian Hamet on 10/19 at 03:47 AMI think you’re right. One day she’ll come out with a whole paragraph and while you’re picking your jaw up off the floor, she’ll do something else that amazes you.
And then she won’t shut up.
Maybe when she starts fussing you should work with her and try to get her to use words to express herself.... although I guess now that I think about it that you’re probably doing that already, huh?
Posted by caltechgirl on 10/19 at 03:00 PMYup, pretty much. I keep telling her to tell us what she wants, and give her examples like “say ‘could I eat now please?’” or whatever. Well, that’s apart from the emphasis on simpler ways of saying what she wants, like food, bath, diaper, all of which she pretty much knows and responds to if she wants them, but doesn’t say.
I amused Deb by saying something like “we also need to get some second home on the lake cheese.” Because Sadie knows cottage cheese and reacts vehemently when she hears it. Even more so when she sees the container.
Speaking of which, it’s odd to see her getting fussier about food.
Posted by Jay on 10/19 at 03:09 PMJust a thought regarding the talking thing...actaully a couple of thoughts…
One thing that EI mentioned to me regarding Julia and the whole walking thing was that children have a tendency to focus on one skill at a time...for Julia it’s the verbal skills, hence the no walking. It seems like Sadie is very in to the gross motor thing, so maybe she just isn’t as “focussed” on the talking? Also, and some people feel differently about this, but we have been signing with Julia and it has been a great thing. Simple baby signs of course, but it has reduced her frustration level greatly. I would be happy to share our signing materials with you if you are interested. It’s amazing how easy it is and how quickly Julia seemed to catch on!Posted by Sharon on 10/20 at 09:36 AM
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