Summiting
They really should make size 0 crampons.
Over the last month or so, SFBaby taught herself a new trick with the high chair. You saw it here first. (And so what if we had to resort to a little bribery to capture the act on video?)
Tags: Ama Dablam, baby, climbing, high chair, sit down
Call of the Wild
Showing off her “mad iPhone skillz”
I remember it well. It was a few weeks ago, on September 23rd, that SFBaby first called me. On “her” iPhone.
We have, unfortunately, gotten into the habit of handing the iPhone to SFBaby when we need a free hand or two. Although the iPhone is somewhat of a mindless babysitter replacement, at least giving her the iPhone is better than having her watch television (or so we tell ourselves) because the iPhone is interactive and it engages her brain. Or something like that. In any event, the iPhone is definitely crack for toddlers and SFBaby loves it.
So, I was walking back from a dental appointment, and I heard my phone ring. It was SFMom calling! I opened my phone (note that SFDad is not lucky enough to own an iPhone), but the only words I heard were: “Uh oh.” That was the point when I realized that my daughter was calling me.
Later that day, while we were playing on the floor of her room, SFBaby let out an unsolicited “Hihowareyou?” to demonstrate that she really was paying attention to phone manners. SFDad’s jaw dropped. She probably thinks it’s just two words, but still.
Since then, SFBaby has become even better at using the iPhone. She is able to navigate to most of the apps on the phone, page by page, and get to the app she wants. She also understands that she needs to give the phone to us when she accidentally calls someone.
After a few weeks of her accidentally calling SFMom’s various friends at 6 am (sorry!), we decided that we needed to lock things down. An out-of-the-box iPhone does not have any way to do this, but after jailbreaking SFMom’s phone, we were able to install the “LockDown” application when prevents SFBaby from accessing critical parts of the phone (such as the phone and address book parts of the device).
This worked well for quite a while…but unbeknownst to us, SFBaby found another sneaky way to access the “favorites” list of people to call on the phone, so she was back to her usual trick of making unwanted calls to friends in the wee hours of the morning.
SFDad decided to up the ante in the arms race by replacing the entire first page of SFMom’s favorites list with SFMom’s “access my voicemail” number. This is working for now, but we are afraid that it is only a matter of time before SFBaby learns how to scroll down…
Tags: cell phone, iphone, lockdown, toddler
Some Like It Hot
Waiter, send this back to the kitchen!
A few weeks ago, when SFBaby was eating, she exclaimed, “Hot!” We thought that she was complaining about the room temperature, so we dutifully removed her long-sleeve shirt. She said “hot!” again while holding out a piece of food, and it eventually dawned on us that it was her food that she wanted heated. And so her preferences begin.
Lest you think that SFDad is a mean curmudgeon who feeds his daughter bowls of frozen gruel, let’s just say that her meals frequently start out hot, but when you consider the amount of time it takes SFBaby to look at, ponder, poke, move, flip, gently lick, and (if we are lucky) consume said food, there is ample time for even the hottest dish to get cold.
Things came to a head late last week when SFBaby was working on her dessert, which was a tasty chopped apple. She held out a piece and said, “Hot!” Now how do we explain that to her?
Acting Her Height
What the fork?!
SFDad had fought enough battles with the baby earlier in the day, so her request was granted. She seemed to enjoy the following exercise of eating yoghurt with her fork, although SFDad still wonders about the whole “efficiency” angle. Anyway, now that SFBaby is 18 months old, we wonder if she is trying to act older than she actually is.
We’ve always known that SFBaby was tall, and we knew that her “percentile height” was astronomical. Just for fun, we looked her up on the CDC growth chart. At 35″ tall, it was no surprise that she was off the charts again and above the 95th percentile.
This time, we read the chart another way and looked across: a baby of average (or, more correctly, median) height would be 35″ tall at 28 months. Maybe this whole “fork” incident is part of the hypothetical, height-based terrible twos?
Chatty Cathy
Unless, of course, you count 'no no no no' as a four-syllable word.
Her first (and thus far, only) four-syllable word was “cockamamie”. We have SFGrandpa to thank for that one!
A few weeks ago, we got a helium balloon at Trader Joe’s. We went to the park after that, but SFDad was careless when getting out of the car…so the balloon flew off into the sky. Both SFBaby and SFDad watched the balloon drift away, and this apparently stuck in SFBaby’s memory: every few days, she will launch into a monologue of, “Balloon. Sky. All gone.” (On a related note, since we usually get a balloon when we go to Trader Joe’s, SFBaby now starts demanding one as soon as we pull into the parking lot!)
Our downstairs neighbors have a baby named K, and we sometimes meet them in the hallway. Often, when we pass their door when we are on our own, SFBaby will point at their door and say, “K. Sleeping.” We’ve tried explaining the nuances of how “quiet” does not always equal “sleeping”, but those explanations are apparently falling on deaf ears.
When SFBaby is in bed with us and SFDad is trying to pretend to be asleep, he sometimes gets kicked in the back and greeted with, “Daddy. Wake up.” (Note that it’s difficult to pretend to be asleep while one is laughing!)
We’ve also been working on politeness. We can usually coax a “please” out of her with some prompting. We do get the occasional “welcome” from her even though we haven’t actually thanked her for something. She has even been known to use “please” without solicitation when she wants something badly enough (in addition to a repeated string of “want it”s)!
We thought that we had many years to go before we would have to deal with this, but sadly, SFBaby is not even 16 years old and she is already saying, “Car keys. Want it!” Now what do we do?!
Tags: baby, balloon, from-the-Look-How-Brilliant-My-Baby-Is-department, trader joe's, vocabulary
Underwater Sleeper
With all of the real-estate mumbo jumbo going on in the background, we are continuing to seek excuses to stay out of the house during the daytime. If you combine that with the really hot weather we had at the end of last week, the perfect solution was to head to the beach!
San Francisco is not normally known for having warm weather in the summer (let alone beaches that anyone visits), but last week was so hot that everyone and their dog (literally) was out and about.
We ventured up to the tide pools at Crissy Field, where we seem to have encountered every other toddler in the city. We had a blast, and SFBaby enjoyed playing with her “borrowed” truck in the water.
Sometimes, when SFBaby wakes up in the morning, we end up giving the iPhone to her in order to provide a distraction. As of late, she’s been pointing to the iPhone and saying “want it!” on a regular basis. This usually leads the SFParents to tell her that the “iPhone is sleeping” in an attempt to get her to do something else. Unluckily for us, she seems to have caught on…
First Words Redux
Alas, her own phone isn't quite as good as the iPhone.
On those mornings when SFDad is not going to the gym, SFMom tries to go into work early (and tries to get up even earlier) to get things done. Thus, SFDad is generally trying to find ways to lay in bed while distracting SFBaby.
When SFBaby first wakes up, the first thing she typically asks for is mama. And after that, she asks for mama’s milk. Neither of these work particularly well when SFMom is in the shower, so in an act of desperation, SFDad caved and starting gaving the iPhone to the baby to play with.
This seems to have backfired, since SFBaby now walks up to us and provides the following first words to start off the day: “Mama……milk………iPhone”. SFDad notes that SFBaby has inadvertently omited “dada” from her list of demands, but he is chalking it up as an accidental oversight.
In any event, SFBaby has also gotten quite good at identifying iPhones when we are out and about in the world. It’s hard to ride BART or Muni without daddy’s little helper announcing every iPhone she sees.
PS: Does anyone know of any good (and ideally free) iPhone apps for babies?
Tags: baby, cell phone, iphone, morning, popularity contest
Stuck
That couldn't possibly be comfortable…
Last week, SFDad was busy chopping up dinner in the kitchen while SFBaby was playing in the living room. After a while, he heard a little voice cry from the other room: “Help…help…HELP…STUCK!”
SFDad walked into the living room, and much to his amazement, he saw that SFBaby had somehow managed to climb in the Exersaucer all on her own…and she even managed to stick two feet through one leg hole opening.
Climbing into the Exersaucer continued to be a favorite of hers (at least until we took it away!).
Tags: baby, boundaries, exersaucer, time out
The World’s Tiniest Road Warrior
In preparation for a really big trip that is coming up later this year, we’ve decided that SFBaby should become familiar with the ins and outs of airplane travel.
There’s actually a lot to learn: carry-on luggage, security lines, getting to the gate, checking your bags at the carousel, texting your friends when you land, and all of that.
Since we have some spare time now, we decided to get her started early!
Tags: airport, baby, cell phone, luggage, suitcase
Science of Academies, Part II
This past week, we managed to go to another free day at the Academy of Sciences. Unlike last time, SFBaby was actually mobile and able to direct our exploration by running over to the things that interested her the most.
We spent most of our time in the aquarium, and I admit that she is now old enough to enjoy the experience much more than before. Even though the museum is no longer brand-spanking new, the free Wednesdays are still wildly popular, so we spent 1½ hours in line. (We spent about as much time inside the museum as we did waiting outside, although we saved $25 by doing so!)
Tags: academy of sciences, baby, fish, jaws, philistine