Category Archives for life

Write to Ruby

Now that Ruby is old enough to understand communication methods like snail mail and the telephone, I thought I’d try explaining email next. I’ve set up an email address for her that goes into a separate folder (in my email program). If you’re interested, I invite you to send Ruby an email whenever you have something to say, and I will read it to her. As soon as she’s able to understand replying, I’ll try to transcribe and send her response. I’ll also save all the messages so she can re-read them when she’s older.

I don’t want to post the address here publicly (to avoid spam). Send me an email or comment on this entry if you’d like the address and I’ll give it to you.

Brief Accomplishments Post II

Ruby’s favorite thing to do with blocks is no longer dumping out the whole box! Now she is intent on building towers and tunnels (and enjoying their inevitable collapses, and laughing at the word “collapse”).

State of the Toddler

  • Ruby is almost 23 months old.
  • It’s been a while since Ruby’s last doctor visit, so we really have no idea how tall she is, how much she weighs, or how that compares to other kids.
  • Her appetite was noticeably reduced for the past few months, although it has now picked up again. I’d estimate she’s eating at least 50% more each day than she was a month ago. Growth spurt on its way!
  • Ruby is wearing 18-month shirts and 24-month pants.
  • Her vocabulary is huge and continuing to expand (it’s no longer possible to keep count). We’re always delighted to hear her spring new words on us, or correctly use a new sentence structure or tense.
    • Steve says: “Her pronunciation is continuing to improve, but I imagine it’s still hard for strangers to understand her. Recently Ruby wanted to tell me about a brown truck (the UPS truck) and repeated “BOWN CHUCK” 3 times without me understanding what she was saying. So she did what anyone would do: she got up in my face and said “BOWN CHUCK” even louder, and with just the right stress on “CHUCK” to give it a hint of exasperation.”
    • Kate says: “I think her pronunciation is above average for her age, however. From my observation, most people tend to understand what she’s saying.”
  • Ruby always says the word “tiny” in a high-pitched voice.
  • She said an unprompted “I love you” to Steve for the first time about two weeks ago.
  • Ruby got a doll for Christmas and loves playing with it. She’ll buckle it in her highchair, put on a bib, and feed it imaginary food. She’ll give it baths. Her friend doesn’t have a name yet; just “friend”. We’re waiting for Ruby to think of a name.
  • She is also currently attached to a stuffed black and white kitten we recently got, often meowing to it in a high-pitched voice.
  • Ruby’s bedtime is around 7:30-8:00. It usually takes her about half an hour to go to sleep. She’ll rattle her crib, talk to her crib toys (stuffed animals and books), and roll around. She’ll sleep until around 7:30am.
  • We play classical music while she’s falling asleep (the same CD since she was born) and leave the hall light on. If we turn off the light she’ll say “no – dark!”
  • Ruby has one nap every day around 1:30, and she stays upstairs for around 2.5 hours. She doesn’t sleep the whole time, but that’s how long she’s up there (see above regarding crib rattling and playing).
  • Ruby can jump clear off the ground.
  • If you ask Ruby what some food item smells like, she’ll almost always say “jam”.
  • Whenever Ruby is naked or she sees us naked, she says (for example), “Naked Papa woo woo!” She also likes to run around the main floor of the house when she’s naked.
  • Ruby’s favorite food, based on asking her what she’d like to eat, is pizza. But I think she only likes it because she gets to help make it. Mostly she’ll just pick the pineapple off the top, and ignore the actual pizza part. Other favored foods are:
    • edamame, cheese, yams, pineapple, ketchup, sushi, applesauce
  • Other foods Ruby eats often:
    • bananas, oatmeal & cheerios, peanut butter, bread, teriyaki-flavored tofu, goldfish crackers (for a special treat), peas & carrots & corn & soybeans (from the freezer)
  • Ruby likes to use a fork and spoon while she’s eating, but much of the food still arrives at her mouth via her hands. Because of this, she usually insists on having a napkin, which she politely keeps on her lap.
  • Once in a while, we’ll sit down with Ruby and watch a few YouTube videos on a subject of interest (such as cats or juggling). She loves this and asks to do it much more often than we actually do.
  • She is very into dumping things out. I have put away her blocks and other such toys because all she’d do with them was dump them all over the floor and then ignore them. After which, I’d have to painstakingly cajole/discipline her into picking them up.
  • Ruby is getting pretty good with “please”, “thank you”, and “excuse me”. Sometimes I feel like I have to prompt her for them constantly, but when she’s talking to other people, I’m often pleasantly surprised to hear her using them.
  • She’s a good climber. I don’t worry about it much because she’s quite careful and not reckless.
  • Ruby is currently very attuned to sounds, and will state “noise!” whenever she hears something.
  • Categorized in life

The art of misdirection

The other night, we were having meatballs and rice for dinner. Ruby was really into the rice, so in between servings of rice, we encouraged her to eat some more of her meatballs. One of those times, she put a big bite of meatball in her mouth. Then, she deftly took it back out with the same hand (as she was lowering the hand from her mouth), palmed the meatball, then pointed across the room with her free hand and said “plant!” (indicating the daffodils we had talked to her about a few minutes before).

It was so smooth that it actually tricked me for a moment. I was very impressed with her combination of sleight of hand and misdirection. Maybe she’s got a future as a magician.

(Finger) Painting

Today, we were planning to fingerpaint in the morning. Ruby was very excited, but when I put her in the bathtub with paints and paper, she was surprisingly tentative. She put only a little paint on her finger and made faint marks. After a while, I realized that she didn’t want to get herself messy, so I got her a paintbrush. After that, she went nuts and painted several pieces of paper as well as the walls.

Among the things she said she painted: a boat, a wreath, circles, a kite. Not everything was described as being an object, though. Sometimes she was just painting for the fun of it.

Ruby’s Sense of Order

Some things can really upset Ruby’s sense of order. For example, she hates sledding — and not just when she does it, but when anybody does it. Check out this video from last month:


Sledding with Aunt Nicole from Kate on Vimeo.

She had the same reaction a few weeks later when we were watching complete strangers doing some sledding.

Last night, we had our first family video night and the three of us watched first half of Ratatouille together. There’s a scene where Remy (the rat protagonist) takes a harrowing water ride atop a cookbook, down a waterfall and into the sewers. This particular scene upset Ruby, and we had to pause the movie for a few minutes until she sorted herself out.

My parents told us a similar story from last year, when they took Ruby to see a dog show. They were up in the stands, far away from the action. One dog was supposed to jump a hurdle, but knocked over the bar instead. The dog then grabbed the bar and starting running around the ring with the bar in his mouth. This freaked Ruby out, she wouldn’t stop crying, and they had to leave the show.

I wonder what it is about these scenes that upsets Ruby? For what it’s worth, she has no problem with playground slides.

The week ahead

Ruby has started to ask about the timing of things we do regularly, such as going to the play center or her grandparents’ house. I tell her “we’ll go to the library in three days,” but I’m not sure how well she understands this. She’s obviously interested in the concept, though, so I came up with a way to communicate it more clearly.

week-board.jpg

I took a big whiteboard and drew seven columns on it. I put the name of each day at the top of each column, and added a marker for TODAY. Then, I printed out a ton of pictures and labels for things we do regularly, laminated them, and taped them onto the days in chronological order (breakfast first, bedtime last, etc.). Ruby can easily see which days Steve is at work, how many days until we go to Ultimate Frisbee, or who is coming over today after naptime.

She has been fascinated by the board so far, probably because all the pictures are of familiar things. I’m working on another set of pictures for things/people we don’t see every week but who I can add in when a visit is planned. Tomorrow, we’re going to see salmon at Carkeek Park, so I cut out a salmon picture and taped it on. I can even just draw something in with a dry erase marker if it’s a one-time event.

It’s a work in progress, and I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up. But for now, I feel like Ruby is learning a lot about the concept of time.

Mama hug

Ruby is going through another “Mama” phase. Her preference for each parent varies on a weekly basis — peaking towards me on Sunday nights and then back to Kate again by Friday. Over the past few weeks, though, the arrow has generally pointed more strongly towards Kate. And Ruby’s been sick this week, making her clingy and fragile and wanting more attention.

This mostly manifests itself in hugs. Mama gets lots of hugs. I get very, very few. As you can probably understand, this is kind of hard for me.

Yes, I know it’s just a phase. I know she loves us both. I know there’ll be times when I’ll be the Preferred Parent and Kate will feel left out. But hugs are pretty much the only currency in this economy right now, and so (for the moment) I’m feeling like quite a pauper.

State of the Toddler

  • Ruby really likes the new M.I.A. album, Kala. We listen to it in the car, and she asks for several of the songs by a word or sound in the song. In fact, she usually insists we play that CD instead of anything else.
  • She also has a CD player in the playroom on a shelf she can reach. She has four CDs that she is able to take in and out, and can press play. (She hasn’t yet figured out how to skip tracks.) While she has a copy of Kala there, she often chooses something else.
  • She now knows hundreds and hundreds of words, and often puts them together in two- or three-word combinations. It’s still pretty rudimentary grammar, but she can get her point across. I can have conversations with her in past, present, and future tenses.
  • As she moves more and more into the verbal realm, she’s dropping her sign language. I haven’t really seen her sign in a while. Occasionally she’ll sign “please” (for extra emphasis) or “pooping” (because she finds the sign amusing).
  • I have to repeat back almost every word she says (so she knows I heard correctly). If I don’t do this, she’ll repeat the word over and over until I acknowledge it.
  • She is learning discipline. Prohibitions that have been in place a long time (such as not touching computers) are very solid, and she usually says “No touch” when near one to remind herself, and remind us that she remembers. Newer prohibitions take some reinforcement. These days we are trying to reinforce the idea that she must listen and obey when we tell her to do something (like put away her shoes, or come here). Once in a while she decides to rebel, gets a funny defiant downcast look on her face, and ignores the instruction. Then, she gets a time out. She’s surprisingly good at taking a time out – it doesn’t upset her, and she sits quietly waiting for the timer to beep.
  • Current favorite foods include: edamame, ketchup, bread, crackers, bananas, nori, cheese.
  • Current favorite toys: her play kitchen (and related utensils), books, CDs.
  • Her memory sometimes astounds me. For example, one Friday we went to a local community center’s play gym and I mentioned in passing that it is the same place where I play racquetball. Then, four days later when I was leaving for racquetball, she said “play gym!”.
  • On the other hand, she has trouble keeping her colors straight, even with much repetition. I’ll ask her what color something is, and there’s maybe a 25% chance she’ll get it right. She’ll always guess a color name (rather than another word), but is still working on which is which.
  • She has one nap a day, which goes from about 2-4pm (give or take). Not all that time is sleeping, but I leave her up there for the full two hours as a quiet time. When she wakes up, she hangs out in her crib, reading a book and talking to herself.
  • She is a slow eater! More accurately, she starts out eating at a good pace, but slows down as she gets more full. She insists that she is not done for a while, and nibbles slowly.
  • She has not yet had a temper tantrum (knock on wood).
  • When we go out, I usually don’t bring a carrier or stroller. She walks around well now, and will go where we direct her while holding someone’s hand. If we are going somewhere like the zoo that requires a lot of walking, I’ll bring either the beco carrier or the umbrella stroller (depending on my mood and the health of my back).
  • When we go to a playground, she enjoys playing in the gravel or sand the best. Extra points if the sandbox has a bucket and shovel. She also likes swings (she requests lots of underdogs) and hanging from bars. She’ll climb up on the equipment but rarely goes down slides anymore. Those riding/rocking toys that are mounted on a giant spring are among her favorites.
  • We still haven’t figured out what is causing the rash on her cheeks. By eliminating it for a week, we ruled out dairy as the cause. Other ideas are fruit or wheat, but we haven’t taken the time to try eliminating those.
  • She really likes animals, especially cats and kittens. When we go to the zoo, she requests some animals by name: gorillas, elephants, lizard, monkeys, penguins.
  • Categorized in life