Coral has 2 comfort objects that she uses for sleeping and cooldowns – her binky and her lovey. She calls her lovey “ayaya”, and to ask for her binky, she makes an eating/sucking sound with her mouth. Super cute.
She has also recently learned how to give us kisses on our cheeks, not just in the air. It takes a lot of concentration, so there is always this long pause where she has her closed mouth against us, and she is very still, thinking really hard about how to do the kiss. Except that she is so pleased with herself that she is chuckling and laughing away while trying to keep her mouth closed in preparation for the kiss. Then finally comes the kissy sound, and everybody gets super happy and excited, and she is thrilled with herself.
Waffle – “wahff” at first, now she howls like a wolf
Chicken – “bok bok bok” (to mean a live chicken, the sound a chicken makes, a chicken on her plate, a chick pea, a chicken pox vaccine, or anything else with the word “chick” in it)
Dog – “ooff ooff”
Cat – “Oooowww”
Frog – “Ldldldldldl”
Fence – “ahnss”
Flower – “ahff”
Boots – “boo”
Diaper – “ahpah”
On – “ahhhnnnnnnn”
Light – “aht”
Hat – “hat”
Hot – “aht”
Bye bye – “buh buh”
Cracker – “AKah”
Rice – “ice”
Apple – “AHpah”
Berries – “ice”
Puffs – “utss”
Wash – “ahsh”
Eyes – “ice”
Mouth – “owth”
Teeth – “eess”
Brush – “brush”
Signs
Water – points to mouth while saying the “aaaaahhhaaahhh”
All done – waves both hands
Play – waves both hands with huge open eyes and a giant smile
Tired – closes and brings down a hand over her nose and mouth; has transitioned to her sticking a finger into her eye and trying to gouge it out
Milk – flicks thumb and forefinger
Bath – rubs hands over her body
More – claps
Really, I need more – points to palm
Eat – points to mouth while saying “eess”
Bird – taps thumb and forefinger together
Duck – taps thumb and fingers together
Diaper change – wipes palms together repeatedly, alternating direction
Wash hands (a favorite activity) – rubs hands over her body with a giant smile
Please – rubs hands on chest while giggling
And of course she understands tons more! We are really loving learning to communicate with our little Coral, and she is clearly totally thrilled about it as well.
Taking gymnastics and soccer
Wants to be a ballerina when he grows up
Says he’s a scientist
Loves magic
Loves books and stories about fairy tales, superheroes, princesses
Giving up his afternoon nap
Loves his whole family
Loves his new house and room
Still doesn’t eat much
Going to co-op preschool
Friends: Lilly, Alder, Rowan, Lucius, Hazel, Gus E, Isaac
Likes drawing, cutting, stapling
Likes dressing up and pretend play
Likes putting on ballets, plays, puppet shows
Likes watching movies, esp Baryshnakov Nutcracker, Pinocchio
Learning to use video game controls via Wii game Disney Princess Enchanted Journey
Coral is a joy! She has been making so many leaps and bounds lately, it’s hard to keep track of everything she can do!
We post about the kids so much on Facebook these days that it has really slowly taken over the blog, but I wanted to make one last post for Coral’s first birthday.
Coral has been full-on walking for about 2 weeks. She actually started taking steps a couple of months ago, and she spent a long time where she would take steps almost every day, but still was definitely a crawler. Then one day, she suddenly decided that walking as the way, and now she barely ever crawls, unless she’s really tired.
She understands a lot of the words we say and sign, too many to list.
She does a bunch of signs herself, including:
milk
more
airplane
all done
kitty
diaper change
eat
tired
book
She’s even starting to say some words. She’s been saying “mama” and “dada” for a while now. One favorite way of saying daddy is to say “hi da!” She just barely started saying Calix. She says “tay tay”. Her other words are pretty ambiguous. She does seem to be saying book – “buhk” and kitty – “kah tah” a little. Both words are mostly aspirated rather than voiced.
Airplanes are just about her favorite thing. Our current house is right in the flight path for Boeing, so every few minutes or so she gets very excited, in a very serious way, sits in rapt attention, stares out the window, and signs airplane.
She LOVES her brother, and the feeling is quite mutual. Calix loves playing with Coral these days. One of their favorite games is to go into Coral’s bedroom, shut the door, turn out the lights, and be goofy, rolling around and climbing in and out of the closet. They also love to play peek-a-boo through Coral’s glass door. Below: Snow White and the Dwarf
Coral loves reading books, and will entertain herself for long periods of time, looking at books all by herself. It is especially cute, when she carries a book around, looking for someone to read it to her. She concentrates hard on her other play as well.
Over the last month or so, she has become a lot more picky about what she eats. She’ll eat one food a lot, like buttery crackers, for several days, then suddenly decide that she doesn’t want it, and won’t eat it again for several more days. She still eats a diverse range of fruits, crackers, vegetables, chicken and more. Her favorite food is probably frozen blueberries.
She likes to mimic people in actions and especially in sounds. She’ll sometimes work for days to get a particular sound/action right, such as rubbing her fingers over her lips while humming, to make a berper-berper-berper sound.
Coral goes down to sleep very easily, which is super nice. She loves sleeping. If you sign “Tired? Bed?” to her when she is tired, she’ll drop whatever she’s doing, and crawl or walk to her bedroom. Or, if you haven’t noticed that she’s tired, she may go into her bedroom, and return with a lovey in her hand, rubbing it on her face, to let you know that she’s ready to go lie down and sleep.
We all love Coral so much. She brings so much love and joy to our family, and we’re incredibly glad to have her!
Coral is 9 months old! She is so lovable and and so much fun. Here are some things about her:
Crawls prolifically
Pulls to a stand expertly
Cruises
Is working very hard on standing independently. She does this by pulling up on things (the ever-present living room laundry baskets are a favorite), then shoving herself back a little and balancing upright for a few seconds before she falls forward or backwards. Each time, she gives a little squeal of delight. Calix mostly stood when he was so absorbed in a toy that he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, but Coral does several rounds of “standing practice” every day.
Still has blue eyes
Walks along holding onto things that she can move across the floor: Calix’s car in the carpeted living room, Calix’s lightweight chairs in the kitchen.
Is very good-natured and happy. Definitely has a preference for parents, but also easily warms to others and graces them with her infectious smiles.
Says “nana”, which we pretend means “mama” and “Hi Da!”, which we pretend means “Hi Daddy”
Signs milk
Loves raspberries, tongue clicking, and squeals
Loves being tickled
Loves almost all food, especially finger food she can feed to herself.
Finally sleeps without even a one-arm swaddle. Usually sleeps through the night and takes 2 (or sometimes 1) naps.
Has 4 teeth
Adores anything her big brother does, especially sudden loud things like popping air bubble packaging and jumping off of furniture onto the floor. Especially loves when he plays peak-a-boo-like games with her.
Oh my, what an experience it is to have a second kid. Everything is just flying by, oh so quickly. Coral learns how to do new things just all of the time.
Over the last two weeks, she’s started pulling herself up on furniture. It started with her crawling over to the box in the living room, where we store a bunch of her toys. She’d try to reach up to the toys, and ended up pulling herself up, for a better vantage to the toys. That quickly turned into crawling over to whatever furniture or grown up’s leg is nearby, and pulling herself up to an unsteady stand. Then, rather quickly, she started letting go with one hand, to be able to reach all of the things that are available at her new greater height. And just over the last two days, she’s started transferring from one object to another, without falling down to her crawling position.
This evening, while drinking her last bottle on daddy’s lap, she was very entertained by watching Calix and Mama dance. She was pretty tired, and was still drinking her bottle quite hungrily, which surprised me a little, because lately we have had to take her to a different room, to avoid all distractions during bottle time. Then, rather suddenly, she wanted a break from drinking her bottle, and with her strong will and full physical force, she let me know that she had to get down, out of the chair. When she was down to the floor, she didn’t really crawl anywhere, so I pulled her up to her feet. As soon as she was up, she started dancing like crazy! She bounced up and down enthusiastically, and swayed from side to side. She was really grooving to the music. Seeing her Mama and her big brother dance around just seemed like too much fun, and she had to get in on that action right away! Little Coral danced and danced, for several minutes, before tiring, and wanting to finish her bottle. A little later, we tried to make a video, but by then she was really tired, and only moved around a little, compared to her earlier grooving.
Here are Calix’s current imaginary friends, in order of their entrance into his life. (They are all gender-ambiguous, but I tend to think of them as male, since Calix uses male pronouns for everybody.):
Note – Origin was a note in Jazz Baby that climbed off of the page one day. “His whole name is Note Music, because he came from music.”
Ant – He was an ant before he became Calix’s friend. “His whole name is Purple Honey Ant.”
Pretend Lilly – “because I want to play with Lilly ALL the time”
Zabelia – “He came from the town filled with Zabelias. He looks a little bit like Note, but he’s just a line. Kind of like a circle line, or an oval.”
#4 Mang – “He comes over at the end of naptime. He’s Zabelia’s friend.”
Some notes about the picture:
“Note is round, with curly hair. He’s closing one eye.”
As Coral grows, I’ve been reading along in this blog about Calix when he was the same ages. I encountered this post about our plan to fill in the bottom section of our back yard with trees and shrubs. We’ve now been actively working on this project for 3 years, and it was pretty gratifying to have these “before” pictures, and they inspired me to take some updated shots.
The Morula Logs 