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Experiences and apprehension from the life of a new father.
I've been quiet for over a year now. Giovanna is past 21 months.
I managed to document her first 6 months, but then I was overwhelmed with work and other activities. I didn't blog any of the things that happened after 6 months. They don't have the same impact from memory as they do when they happen and are fresh. The immediacy of blogging allows emotion, misinterpretation and the unfolding reality to be told in a way that differs from other writing styles.
For documentary purposes I will report a few things. Giovanna took her first steps at the end of 9 months and I got them on video. I think her mother was more surprised than she was. By 1 year she was actively running and talking a lot. She quickly outgrew baby things like sippy cups and graduated to emulating everything we do. She never used a binky and tried to pull one from another child's mouth when she wanted to talk to her. A few months ago she she used to pray with us at dinner, but now she is in a rebellious phase where she doesn't join in. Every night she asks to brush her teeth. About a half hour before she falls asleep around 9:30-10:30 each night, she opens an organizer box full of all her toys and dumps them on the living room carpet. That's when we know she is getting tired. She helps put them away before she actually falls asleep. At 20 months she still didn't weigh 20 pounds, now she is probably just breeching that milestone. She's not been sick yet, she spit up once when she got car sick in the mountains, besides a fever from one of her inoculations. As parents, we've not been challenged and have had little hardship -- which is fortunate because neither of us has shown we've acquired the patience for a normal child.
My hope for 2008 is that I will be able to continue this blog. Originally, I wondered what I would write about, but the process has delivered interesting stories on a daily basis for nearly 2 years now, so I'm sure I can eke out an entry or two each week without working too hard. Let's hope that I can live up to my best intentions.
Tags: news
For the past few months Giovanna's favorite pastime is to color. She grabs someone by the hand and repeats, "color, color" until you follow her to a coloring book and box of crayons.
We had to get a card table and little chairs so that she could have a dedicated coloring place. She refuses to color until you sit down on the little chair next to her and place crayon to paper. She won't even let you watch her. It is essential that you start coloring first, before she will stop asking and start coloring.
She hasn't gotten the hang of the outlines yet and just scribbles anywhere on the page. There is a method to it, as she keeps changing crayons and searches for a specific location before starting, but then it is just a single interconnected series of back and forth lines compressed tightly together. She often wants to use the color that you have in your hand and forces you to get another one.
Just in the past week I can say, "I'll make the fish green" or "You should color her hair orange", and she will place her scribbles on top of the image I mentioned, but without any accuracy. She seems quite intent and happy when coloring.
Fannie and I just need to be careful we don't break her chairs when we sit in them.
Tags: manners
We enjoy playing board games like Scrabble and Settler's of Cataan. We think it is important for children to learn game play because it teaches social interaction techniques without being preachy.
Giovanna has watched us play from about 8 months or so. My brother comes over, or some guests occasionally, and we can play a game. My wife and I don't often play two person games unless it is something active and competitive like tennis. Giovanna tends to move from lap to lap during a game, although sometimes the game is too intense and we have to strap her in to a height chair so that each of us can focus on winning.
She learned to roll dice and take turns. She also learned to laugh with the group, even if she doesn't know why. She can organize the pieces into groups while we are playing, so she is becoming familiar with the methods involved in a game. Mostly, she imitates us.
Over Christmas we played a game of Dictionary. One person chooses an obscure word from the dictionary and paraphrases the definition on a piece of paper. All the others make up a definition. The definitions are put in a jar, mixed up, then read out. You try to guess which definition is correct for the word.
Giovanna decided she wanted to play, so she jumped on her cousin's lap and grabbed a pencil and a little strip of paper. She had previously learned to scribble by copying me during our mortgage loan signing in December in which she used the back end of her lollipop to sign (with a flourish) every sheet that I signed over the course of an hour. She dutifully scribbled out a definition and handed me the sheet to read. When I came to her definition, I read "color, color" and everyone burst out laughing with Giovanna joining in as if she had told the joke.
Tags: development