Head, shoulders, knees, toes, eyes, ears (ouch), mouth, nose, arf, no!

Now that she has got this walking thing down (down being the operative word, judging by the number of falls she has), Miss Daisy has been moving on to fine-tuning other new skills.

Body Parts
Daisy now knows her head, ears, mouth, tongue, and feet.

My mother spent an ungodly amount of money on a learn to read system that I was originally resistant to but, I have to hold my hands up and say that Daisy not only loves it but it has definitely helped her learn a number of words, objects, and actions. The books in the system have peekaboo windows with pictures and words so, not only do babies get to see the letters and the object, but there is a fun 'reveal' that they can get excited about.

Ask Daisy to touch her ears or head, or stick out her tongue and she will (mostly) comply. She gets so excited when she gets it right that she claps herself. It's super cute to see.

Animal Sounds
"Arf arf!" is a dog
"Mmmmmmmm" is a cat
"Muuu muuu" is a cow
"Brrrrrrrrrr" is a sheep
"OhhhOhhh" is a monkey (as in "ooooo oooo aahhh ahhh")
... you get the picture.

Again, cute.

Yes. No.
Thanks to my Dad, who dramatically shakes his head when he's telling Daisy "noooooooo!" for something or other, when you now say "no" to her, she will respond with frenetic head shaking. (And a cheeky smile, of course.) Not only does she understand that "No" equals head-shake but she has also begun to apply the head shake to things she wants to say no to. So, for instance, when she doesn't want to take her antibiotics for her current ear infection.

It has started a debate in our house about why "no" came before "yes". So, I started trying to say "yes" more, placing an emphasis on the head nodding, and found that... well, we don't really say "yes" much. There's lots of "good jobbing" and "clever girling" but the word "yes" doesn't often appear in our daily vocabulary. Is this a problem? Are we negative people? We're trying to decide...

Bang!
We've moved on from just picking up and walking objects around the house to picking them up and throwing them ceremoniously. In watching her I've figured out that she is trying to understand why the objects make different sounds landing and move/scatter differently when landing on differently textured surfaces. A baby's developing brain is fascinating!

Daisy also now loves kicking her ball-pit balls around the living room. Her new favorite activity is for us to place all of them in the middle of the room in a big sea of red, orange, green, and blue, and for her to then walk through the middle of them, kicking and scattering them all over the place. She loves to carve a path through the middle of the balls and then see how far and in how many (hard to reach) places she can kick them!



We went to the zoo, zoo, zoo




The rain cleared this past Sunday and so we grabbed our stroller, threw Daisy in the car, and then picked-up Nan and Grandad for our first ever trip to the Sacramento Zoo. None of us has ever been to that particular zoo before, so it was an adventure for all of us.

Not only was it great to show Daisy the live and in-person version of her favorite animals but it was also an opportunity to test her walking skills outside of the house. Up until now, we have kept her in the stroller or in her arms when we're out and about - walking has been reserved for the predictable surfaces of our home. But this weekend we decided to experiment a bit and have Daisy walk around with us. It was fun to have her hold my hand (despite resistence) and walk beside me but she is just so small and unstable that it's hard work bending down, leading her around, and holding her up. Plus, there's this thing that she's used to going where she wants to go (in circles) rather than where we want her to go. Put both of those elements together and it's quite comical to watch.



Until next time...