We had a nice hike this weekend up Escondido ("Hidden") Canyon. There's a waterfall at the top; it was beautiful even now, but must be really something early in the spring when there is more water flowing.
Check out a few photos (click to see more):
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Family
Enjoy a brief moment brought to you by the Johns of TMBG:
This evening Dana, Jessica and I were playing in my office. Our cat Willow snuck into the back hallway and into Jessica's room, right next to the office.
Seeing this (and with a little prompting), Jessica went off into her room, got behind Willow, and chased Willow into the living room, pointing and sternly repeating "Out! Out!"
Teaching babies some basic sign language is becoming more and more popular (or, at least, I am more and more aware of it, which might be because I'm a new parent). It seems to be a relative unproven technique; all evidence I've heard is anecdotal, not quantitative. I've recently had a new thought, though, that not only does baby signing promote communication: I think it may actually promote verbalization, specifically.
Quick background: the main idea, as I understand it, behind doing any baby signing is that babies become capable of communication before they are physically capable of speech (verbalization). By teaching a baby some basic signs for 'important' concepts (e.g., "food", "water", "more", "all finished", etc.), parents can help give babies (after 6-9 months) a way to communicate their needs. Without signing, many babies rely on their parents to guess what they need, or often resort to grunting, crying, or screaming. It can be frustrating for the little ones to not be able to tell you what they want: signing can help alleviate some of that frustration.
Based on our experience, and that of a few friends we know who've tried it, signing has been wonderful. The idea is not to raise a child fully fluent in American Sign Language; a few signs are enough. It was wonderful to watch Jessica as she first made the connection between concepts like "milk" and the hand gestures that go with them.
The suggestion has been made from time to time that baby signing might delay verbalization. The concern is that if the baby doesn't "need" to speak because they can already communicate by signing, then the development of speech might be delayed. My instinct has been that this probably doesn't happen, but as far as I know there's no proof that it doesn't. I can never prove that Jessica might not have started speaking earlier without the signing. This suggestion has remained one that I doubt but can never dismiss.
My recent thought is that signing might actually have the opposite effect: it might promote the development of speech, by allowing for more (and more immediate) positive feedback. Here's what I'm thinking: when babies first start saying a new word, it is often a rough approximation at best. I fully admit that there are times when I understand Jessica perfectly well based mostly on context, where other people would probably find her utterances to be gibberish. And there are plenty of occasions when even Dana and I can't be sure what it is she's trying to say.
If she makes a sign, though, while she attempts to say a word, it allows us to quickly repeat her word back to her and give her positive feedback for successful communication. Even though her verbalization was rough, we can encourage her to keep it up. She gets to hear us repeat the word she had in her head, even if her spoken utterance was unintelligible.
I suppose you could argue that this only encourages her to make unintelligible utterances. I don't think it will work that way, but I guess that's another argument I won't ever be able to prove conclusively.
Jessica invented a game recently where, on the count of three, she steps down onto the grass from the step next to the house. Here she is playing the game once, then running over to see herself on camera.
A new gallery of photos from a play session with the new bubble machine is online at SmugMug.
It's also been pointed out to me that I've never fully recovered from the weeks behind I got on uploading pictures to SmuMug. In Colorado over the holidays Jessica had her first sledding experience, and she had a great time. Some pics are online.
Also via Spare the Rock:
Barenaked Ladies' Kids CD Coming in May...
...May 6, to be precise, and it's called Snacktime.
Should be fun.
In an interview on Gothamist, John Linnell talks about the plans for the next in the series that started with "Here Come the ABCs", and will soon be joined by "Here Come the 123s".
What are you talking about? We’ve sort of cooked up a rough idea for the Disney DVD that will follow this one and at this point we’re thinking it will just generally be about science for kids. Besides that, we’re in the middle of being home and writing regular They Might Be Giants rock songs but there isn’t a particular schedule for another grown-up record yet.
(Found Via Spare the Rock)
Lately I've had some photos building up in need of uploading. Today I put 5 new galleries up on Smugmug. Here are a couple of samples:
Jessica has been taking her first tentative steps lately. A night or two ago she enjoyed a rousing game of "walk across the room between Mommy and Daddy" (with an appropriate number of spills along the way).
As we encouraged her game, the thought occurred to me how lucky I am to get to play this game with her, and how quickly she will move on from here. Right now the game is fun because taking steps is such a novelty for her. Soon she'll be walking with confidence, and this specific game will cease to amuse. In total, I'm guessing the phase where taking steps itself is both challenging and delightful to her will have lasted only a few weeks before it passes.
I'm a proud papa. My baby got her first MP3 player for her 1st birthday. Thank you Grace!
Jessica turned 1 year old this week. On one hand I really can't believe it's already been a whole year since we brought her home. On the other hand I think about those first few weeks and can't believe how much she has changed and how much Dana and I have learned as parents in only a year.
We had a fun birthday party at our house. Jessica got her own cake to enjoy and destroy (Thanks Cherie!). This was her first real taste of something sweet. She seemed to enjoy it, that's for sure.
A couple of pictures below. The rest are online at SmugMug.
We took a very brief summer vacation trip to San Diego earlier this week. We stayed two nights in a nice little hotel called The Dana (appropriate, huh?).
We had a great time at Sea World. We went for 1 1/2 days. Jessica never got too fussy during the shows, when she had to sit still the longest, and even when she didn't really understand that the swimming animals were what everyone was looking at, she still enjoyed flirting with anyone whose eye she could catch and joining in the cheering and applause.
The first night was a little rough with her. It's been a while since we had her in a hotel room (6 months), and a lot has changed. Also, this time there was no closet or anyplace to put her crib that was out of sight of the bed in the hotel room. So it was all very new to her: we put her down in a strange place, in a pack-and-play that is not her usual crib, and then we didn't even leave the room. She wasn't pleased with this arrangement. Dana and I ended up sitting in the dark on the floor on the other side of the bed. After she settled down, we got out our computers, and ate room service by the light of our LCD displays.
The second night was many many times better.
All in all, a great trip. Lots of Sea World, a little swimming, and a painless car trip both ways. Could have used another day of vacationing, but better to leave wanting more than to get to that "I can't wait to go home" state.
I'm tearing up a bit.
She started the blog to document her travels in India this summer. Have fun, sis!
UPDATE: I added a feed to the left-hand column of this page. Under "Photos", you should see "Zinn in India", with links to the most recent entries there.
Jessica likes to climb over people, and when she gets to the other side, she goes head first. Loves it.
Many of the 2006 pics are now online in our Smugmug galleries.
There are a number of pics from Jessica's first month that are still to be uploaded.
Jessica completed her first 6-week swim class today. We took some photos.
That says it all.
Dana was carrying Jessica out of the room today. I waved bye-bye, as I often have, and Jessica moved a hand up and down in response. It was a crude wave, but a wave nonetheless. She repeated the gesture a couple of times during the day.
Pretty cool stuff. Who knew the little things would be so fun?
I've moved on up to a more robust photo hosting service for all of Jessica's pictures. You can now check out photos of Jessica anytime here:
Pictures from 2007 are already there, and at some point I'll add pics from 2006, just so they are all in one place.
There is a new gallery with pictures from our Colorado trip in late March:
Smugmug really has a lot of great features. You can view these pics in many different sizes, download the originals, order regular prints, order other photo-gifts (T-shirts, mugs, etc.), subscribe to an RSS feed for updates on new photos or new galleries. It's pretty cool. If you're so inclined, check it out, and feel free to let me know if you'd like to take advantage of any of these features but aren't sure how. I'm no Smugmug guru yet, but I've found their feature set very impressive and their documentation quite helpful.
(A "thank you" goes to Art, who first turned me on to Smugmug.)