clarification

I don't think Skipper's stupid. She's alert and observant and grasps concepts quickly. She just has a different approach than Dutch, to almost everything, and it's definitely slower in a lot of ways.

Dutch and I both love squeezing Skipper's cheeks, kind of hard, in a way that reminds me of Chunk in The Goonies* (did one of the bad guys do that to him, maybe?) - Skipper thinks this is very funny, and she laughs this hilarious squished chuckle.

Holy cow, it's hot here. It's close to 100 degrees in our bedroom. I'm a little reluctant to go to bed.

*One of the challenges of parenting for me is waiting for my kids to get old enough to enjoy movies/books/activities that I loved as a kid. Come ON, Dutch! Age!

Siblings

On our epic car trip this weekend, I heard Skipper making her "I want something and pretty soon I'm going to start shrieking" noise, and I assumed that she wanted her water bottle back - she'd been playing with it obsessively and had dropped it on the floor. I asked Dutch if she could retrieve the bottle - she was already digging around in the bag on the floor - and she said "No, she doesn't want that. She says she wants crackers. I've got it." And she got out some crackers and gave them to Skipper, who received them with every indication of having gotten exactly what she wanted.

This wasn't exactly an earth-shaking moment, but it was, I think, the first time that I had witnessed the two of them relating and effectively communicating with each other completely outside the parental influence. It was pretty sweet. Dutch has learned all the signs Skipper knows, and likes to use them, which gives them a way to communicate independently.

Also, nobody was crying for about five minutes, and that was excellent.

Every child is unique, like a precious snowflake.

So ... Skipper is a little slow. Not officially - she's totally fine, and falls comfortably into the range of normal. Were not concerned about her development. But she has been, right from the start, slower to hit every developmental milestone than her sister was. I felt, when Skipper was new, that she was taking her time in arriving, while I remember Dutch as being very much HERE from her first breath. Dutch wasn't any sort of super-genius baby or anything, but she ticked off her milestones early or right on time.

Skipper doesn't really talk yet. She has a few semi-recognizable word-esque noises (for hat, dog, and uh-oh, mostly). She says "Hi!" very clearly. Signing for Dutch was a temporary bridge during the short period when she wanted to communicate but couldn't yet talk. Dutch, at this age, was saying quite a few words, and had pretty much left signing totally behind. Because of

this, we've been pretty casual about signing with Skipper - she knows the basics. She uses conventional or invented signs for more, all done, drink, eat, sleep, nurse, cracker, music, tickle, and help. Now I'm thinking it would be useful to learn and to teach her a few more, since the words aren't coming, and she clearly wants to communicate.

Another parent at the daycare today said to me "So, is Skipper walking on her own yet?" and I looked at her in puzzlement. Skipper is nearly 15 months old. She's been walking for 2 months. But I can see why the parent was confused - Skipper is the youngest kid in her daycare classroom by a month, and she's always so far behind the others that it's easy to start thinking of her as being WAY behind.

I look forward to looking back on this* and seeing how her early personality developed into her adult personality. I'd like to think that her unhurried approach to life will translate into a willingness to try new things and make mistakes, which would also differentiate her from her sister. Anyway, Thomas Edison's teacher apparently described him as "addled."

*I do this a lot.

Happy Fourth of July! I didn't get any good pictures, but here are a few not-so-good ones.

Draw a giraffe.

Guys. You need to draw a picture of a giraffe and send it to this guy.

Rrreeeeeeeadddddddinnnnngggg

Dutch is signed up for the Multnomah County Library's awesome Summer Reading Program, so she has a little booklet with a path of steps to prizes. I told her that she could earn a step each day for her regular dose of being read to, and she could earn a step for each book she read herself (with support). This proved to be serious motivation, and she's been struggling through a book a day for three days.

Dude. Reading is HARD. You've probably forgotten this; I certainly had.

This is a video I made tonight of Dutch reading Bark, George.* It captures a lot of my experience of Dutch-learning-to-read. It's a slog. The film includes lots of guessing, several painful freak-outs, much looking at me to try to get me to solve her problems, some complete failures to understand the whole sentence, excruciatingly (for me) extended episodes of wrestling with a word she just read on the preceding page, and a few moments of delighted recognition. My favorite thing about watching her do this very hard job of work is that it's intensely physical. She braces herself, repositions the book, puts her feet on it, sprawls on the floor in front of it, leans on it, writhes around in agony, and so on.

Anyway, it's kind of funny and painful and intimate watching any one of these clips briefly. I have posted them all for the sake of anybody who's interested in getting about half of the book experience, which I think went on for about nine hours (notice that it gets darker and darker outside in the clips as we trudge onward). You are very brave. Almost as brave as my daughter, who is tackling a language that gives us such delights as the evil "gh", with which we struggled yesterday:

• laugh
• slaughter
• daughter
• dough
• slough

See? Aren't you glad you already know how to read?

*A really excellent book.

More updates (mind the gap)

1) I'm still unemployed (I had an interview a week ago, but didn't get the job), and trying not to freak out.

2) Dutch lost another tooth yesterday.

Unfortunately, The Tooth Fairy didn't come last night. Many tears were shed this morning, but Dutch has her fingers crossed that the TF will come tonight.

3) Skipper has entered into the full flowering of her toddlerhood. This entails serious tantrums. She is even less patient than her sister, we believe, and her sister has been throwing whizbang tantrums for nearly five years now. Today she threw a conniption fit because I wouldn't let her fling her water glass on the floor, and she tried to kill me and threw stuff and so on. Cook and I stood there watching her writhe and shriek on the kitchen floor, and he looked at me mournfully and said "How are we going to get through the next few years?" We shall see.
4) Skipper had a nasty skin reaction to a bandaid a few weeks ago. What's up with that? Is it the adhesive or the latex?

5) That's all.

Updates

1) It's summer! The weather got all sunshiny and hot while we were gone, and the daycare summer session began, so the kids are going on field trips and playing in the sprinkler and coming home covered in grime, sweat, and sunscreen.

2) We've been plucking teeny tiny cactus spines out of Skipper every night after she falls asleep. It's a slow process, involving just three or four stickers per session.

3) Today I suggested to Dutch that we spend some time in the garden this weekend weeding and harvesting peas, and she said "Yes, that's on my schedule." "You have a schedule?" I asked, and she said "Well, my MENTAL schedule." Look out, Google Calendar!

Glochidae

While we were in Los Angeles, Skipper picked up a fruit from the ground. Unfortunately, it was a cactus fruit and she got herself stuck full of teeny tiny little spines. She refused to allow us to pull out very many of these spines,* and she didn't seem too bothered by them, so I decided to be calm about it and just let her body push them out like splinters. It was very hot in our upstairs living quarters when we got home yesterday, so we stripped Skipper down to her skin, and were slightly horrified to discover that her torso was speckled with little red spots, many with the tiny spines still sticking out of them, so holding her was a slightly prickly experience.

I just looked it up and discovered that no, they are not easily expelled like splinters, but can remain stuck in your skin for a really long time. They have barbs, you see, unlike splinters. Also, they get infected. Also, I discovered last night as I folded the washed and dried clothes that she was wearing when she picked up the cactus that the spines do not get destroyed or washed out in the laundering process, but remain in the clothing.

Parenting is so educational. I'm not sure what my next step should be in addressing the problem, but I'm pretty sure that Skipper will not enjoy it.


*Though Cook and I managed to get a bunch of them into our own hands, clothes, and torsos while we were trying to get them out of her.

We're back!

We went to Los Angeles for a few days.

It turns out that the photos we took have a few themes.
Theme One: Me, being maternal. (Also, wearing funny hats.)


























Sort of. This is me laughing at Skipper as she tried to walk in sand.*






































Theme Two: Dutch and Skipper throwing sleep-deprivation-related fits.

































































There is some photographic evidence of waking happiness, too.


























The problem is that those moments tend to be very fast-moving, and are difficult to photograph.













One of these days I'll catch up with myself, and start writing a little more. But not today.

*No, it's very sweet of you to think I'm laughing WITH her, but I really was laughing AT her. It was pretty funny.

Food Skipper likes this week

White bread*
Pepperoni pizza
Cheeseburger**
Strawberries***

She also accepted two soybeans at lunch, and then asked to have her teeth brushed about 45 minutes later, and opened her mouth to reveal the two soybeans, slightly macerated but mostly intact.

What was Dutch eating around this age? Oh, you know. Beets. Kale. Tahini. Millet. That sort of thing.

*Actually anything with processed white flour in it. You'd think whole grains were poisonous.
**From Burgerville, not virtuously homemade from happy cows.
*** Strawberries are only acceptable if eaten while I'm holding her, standing by the sink. Otherwise, they're disgusting. You actually eat those things?