As the old saying goes, walk by one and talk by two. At month 14, DD was already a confident walker and professional stairs-climber. As before, she began to figure ways to improve her speed or just wanted to try something different. We watched her explorations with great interests and threw in our two cents when needed.
1. Can I WALK downstairs? AT month 12, DD mastered the skill of climbing stairs. Furthermore, she developed her own trick to come down in shorter time. She held the stairs with her arms, secured the lower step with her feet, pressed her tummy against the stairs and then let the gravity do the work. In this way, instead of climbing down one step at a time, she could actually slide down with her body as a whole. It worked beautifully for her. She could finish 6 steps within no more than 2 seconds.
But our little master began to look for new challenge. She noticed M and I didn’t go downstairs like her. We walked downstairs, while she had to turn her body 180 degrees on the top of the stairs, bend down, and slide downstairs. What a trouble! She must be thinking in her mind, I can do better.
She stood on the top of the stairs, wondering what she should do to walk downstairs. She tried to walk down, facing forward just as we do. She failed (luckily I caught her several times before she fell over).
Then she tried to scoop down. Yes, she was coming down facing forward, but it was too slow. Not efficient, she decided.
How about facing sideways? She wondered (I could feel the wheels turning rapidly in her mind). She turned her body 90 degrees, facing the side wall. Then she pressed her hands against the wall and let the wall support part of her weight.
Next, she inched one foot down the top step. After she made sure this foot landed the lower step securely, she withdrew the other foot and inched it down. Meanwhile she pressed her hands, arms and part of her upper body closely against the side wall and let the friction slow down the gravity.
She made one step down vertically! The rest was just to repeat those procedures.
After practicing several rounds, she picked up her speed. Yes, it was still not as fast as the “sliding way”, but at least she could walk downstairs like a real human being!
Later M showed her to hold instead of the sidewall.
2. Swimming time! It seemed the summer was never really there this year. It kept raining and raining and the temperature was so low that it felt like early fall. Finally one Sunday afternoon the temperature reached 90 degrees.
M and I decided to take DD to go swimming in our neighbor’s pool. We thought she would love playing with the water.
It turned out she was more scared than comfortable. She didn’t feel a solid base, like she always did in the bath tub at home. She cried and wanted to get out.
M held her gently and walked in the swimming pool, therefore she could get used to the sense of water flowing around. Then he held her under the armpits and let her feel comfortable with the sense of floating.
Grandma and I swam around her, talked to her, and played with her. Soon DD relaxed and began to play with the water. She let her body float in the water when M held her under the armpits and gently dragged her around the pool. Occasionally she even kicked the water with her feet.
M tried to hold her chin high enough that she wouldn’t swallow the water. But she began to find it fun and nodded down to drink the water.
So silly and so fun!
3．Easy and fun sign language: One day when M went to the library to return books, one of the librarian, also a mother of three and grandmother of one, asked him “did you teach your baby sign language? It helps your baby communicate with you and also helps her language skills. ”
Really? Since we were frustrated with DD’s random pointings and gibberish, we want to find a way to better understand her needs. And of course, I would love to try any method that can help improve her language skills. After we did research on baby sign language and learned its benefits (e.g., promoting the development of language skills, reinforcing language skills already developed, as well as increasing the speed of both early literacy skills and spatial reasoning development), we decided to teach DD sign language.
We borrowed Everything Baby Sign Language Book: Get an early start communicating with your baby!
We demonstrated these signs to DD, labeling them with the corresponding spoken words, in English from M and in Chinese from me.
Related posts:
Baby training, month 13
Baby training, month 12
Baby training, month 11
Baby training, month 10
Baby training, month 9
Baby training, month 8
Baby training, month 7
Baby training, month 6
Baby training, month 5
Baby training, month 4
Baby training, month 3
Baby training, month 1-2
Baby Training, From Lina, Second Year | Lina | 
September 11, 2009 12:56 pm | 
Comments (1)
Nicely compiled data. Appreciation for this kind of important write-up! Well i am wonder how do I know when my child is physically and emotionally ready to begin toilet training? Potty Training