Not a whole lot has changed _physically_ with Ella, but I’m still inclined to say that the past month is the one in which she’s changed the most since she was born. Her intelligence — or at least, her ability to communicate it to us — feels like it’s taken a tremendous jump. Partly it’s the “signs”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2005/01/more.html, but they’re not much the cause as simply an outward indication of how much more in tune with her environment she is, and how inclined she is to share that with us. I find myself saying stuff to her on a lark, just to see if she’ll understand and respond appropriately — and more often than not, she surprises me by getting it exactly. “Could you close the door, please?” worked, as did “You have to eat these Cheerios before you can have more raisins.” Those obviously have context working alongside the words, but that’s not the case with “Where’s the gorilla?” or “What sound does a cat make?” — and she responds to those, too.
(The cat, incidentally, makes the same sound as every other animal — a cute little “aaaaah!” that she’ll utter shyly, almost as if she knows it’s not quite right yet.)
Her words are still mostly babble. The “ewwa” trend from last month doesn’t seem to have caught on. She’ll stay say “apouw” but not particularly often. “Da” and “Ma” are clearer, though. The big difference here is not that she says words, but that when she talks, she clearly thinks she’s saying _something_ and not just imitating our sounds. She’ll walk up to me and babble something and then look at me expectantly, to see if I get it.
“Trifecta”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2004/12/the_trifecta.html Update:
The “Ferber Method”:http://www.pregnancyweekly.com/topics/ferber_method.htm worked like a charm for Ella’s overnight sleep. Within just a few days, she had adjusted to a new 8:30 bedtime, and was contentedly drifting off by herself with little or no fuss. We went out on a limb and took away her pacifier at the same time we instituted the new sleep regime, and that, too, she managed easily (I’m actually shocked at how easy _that_ was). In the past couple of weeks there’s been some relapse, with her crying around five in the morning, but she’ll quiet down again if we just wait her out, and get up for good between six and seven — a little earlier than we’d like, but so it goes. Best of all, we did all this with her still in the room with us, and the neighbors said they couldn’t hear a thing.
Naps have been another story. Long after we stopped needing to keep track of the Ferber progression overnight, I was still using it to deal with Ella during the day, when she’d routinely cry through most of her nap. Even now she’ll still whimper a bit when going down, but for the most part it’s worked out — it just took a lot longer. Her naps aren’t any longer though; still a couple of half-hour ones at 10:00 and 3:00, and rarely much more. So all in all her total sleep is well below average for her age, but it does seem to be enough for her. I don’t know if it’s her or if it’s just that _I’m_ sleeping better these days, but it definitely seems like she’s had more energy and been in better spirits, post-Ferber.
Food is another story. Ella is even pickier than she was last month. A week ago I would have said “Well, at least she eats all kinds of fruit.” But she’s even been turning down oranges and bananas lately. As per our pediatrician’s recommendation, we still give her canned baby food since that’s the only way she’ll eat vegetables — and even then, we’re only talking about sweet potatoes and squash. We dutifully try to offer her all these things she doesn’t like at mealtime, before relenting and giving her old standards like grapes, raisins, and crackers. And eventually she’ll come around. But in the meantime the process is pretty exhausting.
She won’t eat more than a couple bites of spoonfed food (be it yogurt or baby food) before she demands to wield the spoon herself. She _is_ capable of delivering a little more than half of the food into her mouth, as opposed to on her tray or bib. But in the process she inevitably manages to get food _everywhere_, including on her clothes, no matter how big the bib is and how judiciously I roll up her sleeves. It doesn’t matter what nice outfit Suanna picks out for her in the morning — in the afternoon, after lunch, I’m always leaving the apartment with a food-stained wreck. I’ll find that little deposit of sweet potato that somehow got to the very top of her head only when we’re in public somewhere, of course.
But the _real_ aggravation, food-wise, is what she does with stuff she doesn’t like. The “instruction manual”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553379623/qid=1103306312/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl14/103-7641161-2785450?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 chipperly suggests presenting a _variety_ of food to your child all at once, and letting them pick what they want while ignoring the rest until the day they’re ready for it. That doesn’t fly with Ella. Calmly and methodically, she will take all food on her tray that she doesn’t want to eat and drop it over the side. This process even takes precedence over food she really likes — only after the peas have been ejected will she turn her attention to her beloved grapes. And, it goes without saying, if she so much as _spies_ a crouton while eating her sweet potatoes, she wants nothing whatsoever to do with the veggies and what’s her own croutons immediately. Any advice on how to curtail the food-dropping habit is more than welcome (though it shouldn’t involve hollering in frustration — I’ve tried that).
As for drink — Ella still has bottles of warm milk in the morning when she goes up and at night before she goes to bed. She still absolutely refuses to drink milk from a sippy cup, though she’ll happily drink water from one, which is what she does throughout the day quite capably. We’ve just started shrinking the amount of milk she gets from the bottle each morning, and when it’s down to 2 or 3 ounces we’ll try switching over to sippy cup there, and then gradually giving her more and warming it less, yada yada. Slow and steady. Someday we’ll tackle that evening bottle too, but that’s going to be tough — she _loves_ her before-bedtime bottle, looks forward to it eagerly, and certainly won’t replace it with a sippy cup without a fight.
But enough of the hard stuff. She likes “jumping” in the purple circles that decorate the carpet in the hallway, though since she can’t jump yet she just strides into them purposefully while making a grunting sound. Today for the first time she led me out the door, down the hall, and down the elevator to the lobby, just to see what could be seen. As it happened the mailman was there loading up everyone’s boxes, so she walked right up to the boxes, squatted, and just stared at what he was doing for a good five minutes.
I tried reading _Fox in Socks_ to her a while back, but it was too long. Today I’ve had to read it to her three times so far. I’m actually wishing I had left it on the shelf, because it _does_ make your tongue a little numb to read it back to back like that. She’ll still read her board books but has equal interest in ones with pages now; she does pretty good with not ripping them. Besides _Fox_ she’s also a big fan of _Ten Apples Up On Top_.
For the first time in these monthly updates, not only am I sure I’m missing something, but I’m sure I’m missing all sorts of stuff. Like the kissing! It’ll have to wait for later. Keeping tabs on Ella is a blur these days, but it’s more and more rewarding every day.
