Baby’s growth, month 11

This month, the house became DD’s adventure park. She crawled from one room to the other, enamored with stairs and practiced climbing up and down, learned to cruise while holding onto furniture, and fell in love with the novelty of standing — particularly in the bathtub. Her personality began to emerge. She was persistent on things she set her mind on and would keep practicing until she mastered it. She was also developing a mind of her own. Rather than passively accepting any food I shoveled into her mouth, she began to selectively accept those she enjoyed and reject those falling out of her favor.

Week 44: DD started to reject food that she didn’t like. She found out she could use her tongue to push the food out. Since she discovered this trick, it was difficult to make her eat what I thought she needed to eat. Therefore it was my turn to think about other ways to trick her to eat. I tried putting the food she liked on top of the food she disliked (but was good for her). It worked! But it only lasted for a little while. She quickly shook head “no” to the mixture but still gladly accepted the food she liked on its own. At 11 month she could easily pick up tiny objects with thumb and forefinger.

DD tried to climb upstairs. She slid and fell. But she didn’t give up. One afternoon she climbed 6 stairs completely by herself within 15 seconds. Once she reached the top, she giggled and laughed. Then she kept practicing, faster and faster each time. Eventually she mastered this skill by climbing 6 steps within 5 seconds.

Also this week DD could clap with both her hands and fingers stretched out. She liked to wave goodbye elegantly to her reflection in the mirror, probably imaging herself as the beauty queen.

Week 45: Occasionally, words and word-like sounds spilled out of DD’s mouth, such as “ma-ma” or “ba-ba”, meaning Daddy in Chinese. It looked like my Chinese language training did leave some imprint in her mind.

She was able to follow simple one-step directions. When I said “give mama the ball”, she would crawl to get the ball, crawl back with the ball in hand, and hand me the ball. (I was so touched!) Then I rolled the ball back to her, and said “mama is giving the ball to you.”

After we played like this several times, she learned that I did not want the ball seriously. The next time when I said “go to get the ball for mommy”, she still crawled to get the ball, crawled back to me with the ball in hand and handed me the ball. But she didn’t give the ball to me anymore. Instead she held the ball, let the ball touch my hand, and withdrew her hand with the ball. In her mind, she must be saying “I am not a doggy. You don’t really want the ball; So, I will not give it to you”.

Once a while, DD enjoyed looking at books and leafing through the pages, though she didn’t always turn them one by one. She still liked to chew books, especially those thick card-board covers, plastic-coated pages, or hard, chewy corners.

When I spotted her flipping the pages of a book, I would grasp this opportunity to read books to her, even just one or two pages. I also tried to help her make connections between objects and their names, by labeling things around her.

Week 46: Grandma showed DD how to climb down the stairs. She was fascinated by this idea. I showed her how to do it. But I didn’t present a good example. The way I showed to her was to turn sideways on the stair, put down one leg and then the other. M said this way was too dangerous for her since she couldn’t maintain her balance when she turned sideways on the stairs. In addition, there was nothing for her to hold on.

He decided to show her the right way to climb down the stairs. His way was to remain the face-up position when climbing downstairs, lower one leg, making sure it touched the next step and stepped onto it, then lower the other leg. He also taught DD to hold the higher step firmly with both her hands and not let go until her two feet were both secure on the lower step.

DD tried several times and began to like this method. She was excited about the mobility she was getting and kept practicing up and down along the stairs. It was amusing to see her personality emerging at this early age.

One afternoon, DD held onto the cabinets and walked around half kitchen completely by herself. It looked so easy and so natural for her to reach another milestone. But I know she had been excising her muscle and practicing walking ever since she could pull herself up. From now on she can be officially called a cruiser.

She loved the novelty of standing — particularly in the bathtub which M does not allow her to do. Momentarily she could let go and stand without support. Sometimes she attempted to pick up a toy from a standing position. She also learned to carefully sit down. She must have hurt her little bottom when she dropped down. I have been learning to know her better as she is trying to learn about world.

Week 47: DD’s constipation problem seemed to be back. Her stool was so dry and hard that she cried each time when she tried to push it out. One time the stool even got stuck in the middle way and I had the urge to remove it with my fingers (it finally came out without my help).

Grandma said when she was cutting teeth, she would develop either constipation or diarrhea. Being a child is already hard enough without having constipation, cutting teeth and a myriad of things to learn (I don’t know how I survived my childhood).

Two upper teeth spouted. She was fussy, easily irritated and wanted to be held all the time. She kept crying this weekend when Grandma and Grandpa came over for Mother’s Day dinner. Grandma suggested serving her prune juice. She told me to put 3-4 prunes into a small cooking pan, add some water, boil them for 20 minutes and let her drink the juice.

At the same time, I filled her with yogurt, yellow vegetables/fruits such as sweet potato, red pepper, mango and pineapple. Her situation was improved a great deal. I was quite relieved to find out she could poop without twisting her face up (funny what kinds of details filled my days).