Baby Einsteins

I haven't been posting much recently - mostly because I discovered that the last season of Desparate Housewives is available on Netflix streaming, so have been spending every evening watching that. I'm on episode 18 out of 25 or so, so I'm quickly running out of episodes to watch. I've also been watching "Dancing With The Stars" on Hulu.com two nights a week. This is also coming to an end, so I really have to discover a new show or two to get hooked on. Any suggestions?

Onto baby talk...

I know that every mother is sure her kid is a genius, and I'm certainly no exception I spend a good part of every day marvelling at how quickly Kate and Maya are learning about the world, language, the envirnonment - and even what makes me crazy. i'm realizing that I know very little about child development, and so it's amazing and a little startling to watch Kate and Maya make those brain connections on a minute by minute basis. (Actually, I really think all kids are geniuses. It's incredible how much children and babies have to learn in such a relatively short period of time - and do so effortlessly.)

Maya is impressively vocal already. If you count animal sounds - and who doesn't - she speaks probably 10 words already and understands many many more than that. In addition to various animal sounds, she can say ball, bath, dada, apple, up, dog, fish, mama (though Mama is way too infrequent for my taste). She also is picking up sign language quickly, too. I spent months and months trying to get her to learn the sign for "all done" and she just didn't seem to get it. Now, I can show her a sign a few times and she'll remember it and use it appropriately. She recently learned the sign for "eat" and today she was looking at a page in a book where puppies were eating and made the "eat" sign.

It surprises me that children this age can look at lots of different representations of one thing and know that all the representations mean that same thing. This seems like something that must require a lot of brain power to do. For example, Maya will look at various representations of an elephant (a stuffed elephant, a photograph of an elephant, a cartoon drawing of an elephant or even a cartoon drawing of Snuffalufagus) and show that she knows what this is by making her elephant sound. And, it's not that I've just trained her to make the sound for each of the representations. I brought home a new book of Sesame Street characters the other day and heard her making her elephant sound as she was paging through it. I looked over to see what she was looking at and it was Snuffalufagus - something she'd never seen before! Is she a genius or what?

It's also funny how certain characteristics are coming out in each of the girls. Kate, for example, loves to share and give stuff to people. She loves to give me her blankie, various toys, and even her food. She's so thoughtful that she'll even sometimes pre-chew the food for me. Yes, she'll be chewing some food and think that I might like it, so will remove it from her mouth and hand it to me. Maybe she thinks I look tired and don't have the energy to chew my own food. In any case, it makes me wonder if there is some gene or combination of genes that makes certain people, like Kate, predisposed to being generous. Both babies are being raised in the same environment by the same mom and dad at the same time, and Kate is super-generous while Maya is, well, not so much yet.

In addition to learning how to talk, making animal sounds and all that other intellectual stuff, they are also learning how much fun it is to squeeze themselves into a small space. Here's a picture of them both sitting in their old bouncy chair.


And here's one of Kate just chilling in her chair...