- 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.
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.
Boys and Girls
Today, while Ruby was in the bath, I was reading a magazine (Wondertime). She happened to look at a page with a big advertisement and said, “brown! boy!” It was a picture of a boy with brown hair. I wasn’t surprised that she got the color right, but found it interesting that she was able to identify that it was a picture of a boy. I didn’t realize she had already picked up on that distinction.
So, I paged through the magazine and, for every picture of a child (baby through about 7), I asked her if it was a boy or a girl. She was correct more often than not. I noticed that for more androgynous kids (usually babies), she was likely to say they were a girl. Most of the more obvious (to me) ones she got wrong were long-haired girls. Later, I looked through the pictures a few times and tried to discern a pattern, but I couldn’t.
We’ve raised her, so far, without obvious gender cues like wearing pink. I tend to refer to other children as a “kid” rather than a “boy” or a “girl.” And yet she’s still managed to crack the code of who is a boy and who is a girl, without much help from her parents. It’s pretty amazing.
More fall photos
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.
Secretly Japanese
It seems like Ruby must have some Japanese blood in her somewhere. Many of her favorite flavors are Japanese, such as nori (seaweed), sushi rice, and edamame (soy beans); and she loves going out for sushi. So for Christmas, I bought her a pair of chopsticks. They’re kind of like a giant clothespin – attached at one end, with a spring to keep them open.
Tonight, I thought we’d introduce them to Ruby and let her have a try at using them. Our expectations were pretty low, but to my surprise, she mastered it right away! As soon as we figured out that she needed to hold the chopsticks in the middle (instead of at the end), she was able to pick things up, even slippery soy beans and tiny grains of rice.
She proudly shows off her new skill in this video (sorry it’s so dark):
Photos from November and December
We’d gotten behind on posting pictures, but are now caught back up (thanks to Steve). Here are pictures from November and December, as well as from Christmas with my family and Steve’s family.
Sentencing
Today I noticed that Ruby is speaking more and more in full sentences. It seems like she made a leap recently from simple verbs and verb/object pairs to completing her sentences with pronouns and articles.
“Couching” and other verbs
Ruby’s language development has really been zipping along this month. Her grammar seems to be better day by day. She understands and uses pronouns and possessives and is starting to experiment with verb tenses.
At first, of course, it was just the infinitive: (to) sit, (to) play, (to) eat. Occasionally she would repeat (and seem to understand) a past tense word we said. Now, though, she’s starting to grasp the present participle (sitting, playing, eating) and is applying it to words on her own. She’s still not clear that there’s a difference between nouns and verbs, so she will often take a noun and add the -ing to describe what she’s doing. She calls putting her feet on something “feeting.” When we were sitting on the couch last night, she said we were “couching”.
I’d say she’s just about at the point where her English is surpassing my (left over from high school) French. Like her, I understand way more French than I can speak. I too have a decently large vocabulary of French words and understand pronouns, but get tripped up constantly when it comes to conjugating. So I sympathize with her.