It’s been a long time since I wrote anything down, which has everything to do with how busy I’ve been keeping up with little EC and keeping up with work. In mid-June, Empirical Grandma came to visit for a couple weeks and we were all delighted by how quickly EC warmed up to her…hardly had we walked in the door from the airport when she yelled, “Grandma, play!” A few days of me being gone didn’t dampen her mood either. Maybe I’m not entirely replaceable…but mostly.
Two new skills have popped up in the last month that either I have to note or I’ll forget all together. About two months ago a neighbor loaned us her daughter’s “balance bike”, which is a toddler-sized bicycle without pedals. The idea is they sit and push themselves along, having fun transporting themselves and learning to balance at the same time, no training wheels needed. It’s a lady-style bike, meaning the crossbar descends from the handlebars to the seat, making it easy to step across it. It took EC a few days of messing around with it to figure out how to stand and hold on so that the whole thing didn’t come falling down; then a little while longer until she could straddle the bike and walk along. At that point, she declared herself to be “riding”. I gave her pretty constant encouragement to sit on the seat while walking, but for a couple weeks that was too much and she wouldn’t do it.
When she was fast enough, I started taking her outside and, having pulled my bike out of the storage closet where it sat for the last two years, I rode with her on our street. She’d amble along, and I’d ride circles around her. We did a couple of long walks—one block or so—that took an excruciating amount of time, and usually ended up with her getting tired and just wanting to be carried home. But after awhile, either because she just figured it out or because she watched me riding, she started sitting and pushing…and by the time Grandma was here, she was just beginning to get the rudiments of balance. Now, about two weeks later, she’s even further along with the balance, though she’s not cruising yet. But she’s fast, very fast. If she puts her mind to going somewhere, I have to give chase.
Her second recent skill is an adoption of pronouns. I have read that it’s good practice to avoid using pronouns with babies at first, because it can be confusing. I’m an avid ignorer of good practice, so I’ve been talking to EC in plain English since day one. As a consequence, she’s recently picked up on the fact that I call her, interchangeably, “baby”, her actual name, and “you”. She’s used “baby” for awhile, she started using her own name a month or two ago, and in the last couple weeks, she’s started calling herself “you”.
Once I realized what she was doing, interpreting her speech was straightforward. “You go downstairs”, “you read the book”, or “you eat it” are clear. If I’m not paying too much attention, though, I may at first think that she’s giving me commands. Only today did I start trying to correct her, which I’ll start doing more actively now. She just figured out how to put her front bike wheel up on the curb, step herself up, and pull the rest of the bike with her while straddling it, and she’s very proud. She did it again and again, shouting “you did it!” each time. Eventually, I got her to say “I did it!”. I’m pretty sure, though, that she knows now that she can play a game with me by using “you” when she knows she should use “I”.
“You riding the bicycle!” She turned 21 months three days ago.