I promised an update on Miss Lola a while back, and this is a long overdue post. She is now 16 months, and an absolute joy and delight. She is so precocious and smart and funny.
Her vocabulary is expanding at an astounding rate and we are constantly surprised at what words she knows. Michael and I talk to her like any regular person and she really comprehends almost everything we say.
The funny and unexpectedly difficult thing is that sometimes we don't know if she's speaking in Mandarin or English. A good example of this is how she has recently been saying "qian" a lot to Michael, Jovie and me. Michael and Jovie thought she was saying "stand" in English, but actually she was saying the Chinese word perfectly, which means literally "to lead" but is used to mean holding hands. When Michael finally realized that that's what Lola meant, it all made sense because she would only say it when she wanted to lead him somewhere or to hold his hand.
I knew her meaning because at night when she can't fall asleep and I'm the one putting her to bed, she will stick her hand out between the slats of her crib and say "Mama qian," waiting for me to hold her hand. Then when she wraps her hand around a few of my fingers, she pulls them in toward herself and holds me so tight. It's very sweet.
I have lost track of how many words Lola knows to speak now - it's a lot, and in two languages (plus a few words in Tagalog thrown in). I'm not sure we ever really knew or have known her full level of comprehension, though it is very high. Sometimes it is a bit of a challenge for us to decipher her words, for example, she says "grapes" and "raisins" and "oranges" in English in a really garbled way. But then sometimes her words are incredibly crisp and clear, like when she says "bye bye," "nose," "teeth." We have noticed generally that her spoken Mandarin seems clearer, despite the fact that it's a language that has four different tones. And yet she has no trouble distinguishing when something is a question in English, which is arguably a change in tone or inflection. My favorite language moment (among so many) may have been when we were in Japan. Lola had just sat down on the plush carpet with her bowl of grapes and crisply commanded, "an mo!" which means, "massage" in Chinese. It was pretty hilarious. Our friends were all in awe that she had just demanded a massage while eating her fruit like such a boss.
There are also certain specific moments where I can just see her putting things together, and it is amazing and so cool to observe. For example, a couple of months back, Lola was flipping through her "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book, and came upon the picture of the teacher. She stared intently at the page, and then proceeded to touch the teacher's eyes, then touch her own eyes, touch the the teacher's nose, then touch her own nose, etc., clearly making the connection that what was on the page existed in the real world also.
Yesterday, I was flipping through her Spot picture book with her and we came upon one of her favorite pages, with the monkey and the hippo, which are animals she already knows. I pointed to the crocodile, and explained what it was. She paused and studied the picture intently, then suddenly emphatically pumped her little right arm in a rowing motion and said, "Row!" Just like that, she had put it together - that this was a crocodile, the same crocodile that we always referred to in one of her recent favorite songs, "Row, row, row your boat."
I mentioned in an earlier post that we decided to go cold turkey on the pacifier (or, to Lola, the "nei nei" or "ju ju"). That happened in mid February right after our return from Cebu. Lola's teeth had all pretty much come in (she's missing, like, two more bottom molars and that's it) and we were getting worried about the use of the pacifier on the development of her teeth and jaws. While I think some of the panic over the pacifier is overhyped, we also didn't want it to actually become a problem. We also thought it was not a bad idea to try to wean her off sooner rather than later, given it has to happen eventually.
It was a pretty painful and painstaking process. It probably took about a month before Lola could stop crying about it before she fell asleep. Sleeping became a very painful affair - what once took a couple of minutes required up to an hour or more of holding, singing, swaying. She woke up more frequently in the middle of the night and didn't know how to soothe herself back to sleep. Many times Michael and I looked at each other and wondered if we should just go back to giving her the pacifier. When we were on the plane to Niseko, a month into the weaning process, was the only time that I caved and offered the pacifier to her. She was cranky, her ears were probably popping, and she was desperately sleepy. To my utter shock and surprise, even though she was calling out for the juju, she didn't take it! It was almost like she didn't recognize it any more. Or maybe she just didn't really want it anymore. Either way, it's now been nearly 2 months and we've really made great progress.
We have been working on the next phase of the sleep training, which is getting Lola to sleep without being held or rocked. It's a bit tenuous at times, and other times surprisingly okay. It mostly requires a lot of singing of songs, namely, Happy Birthday, Humpty Dumpty, Row, Row Row Your Boat and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Lola has never been a very good sleeper - she fights it with everything she has - and I guess this is something that has been present since birth! She is down to one nap a day, right around the 10-11 am mark, and usually naps for an hour to an hour and a half. She wakes up between 6 and 7 am, and goes to bed around 7 or 8 pm. Lately, Lola has started saying "shhh" to indicate that she wants to sleep in her crib. She still gets pretty bad nightmares occasionally, and has been fighting an irritating cough that we just can't seem to get rid of. It finally seems to be on the mend though, thank goodness!
Moana remains one of Lola's favorite things to watch and we allow her a song or two once every couple of days. She knows when each song is going to end and always shouts out "hai yao!" before it ends. Her favorite is probably "You're Welcome" and I love watching her get up and dance. She also broke out into spontaneous dance when Michael put on Madagascar once, and it was just adorable. She also has a list of her favorite songs in Chinese, and for some of them she claps or pantomimes right on cue. Lola generally likes to sign along to The Wheels on the Bus and Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Lola is walking very well and fast - she pretty much runs if we let her out of the stroller or carrier. It's hard to believe sometimes that she only learned how to walk a little over 3 months ago. We have been taking her to a physical therapist because her right foot was turning out. It seems to have improved a lot after only a few sessions and doing the strengthening exercises that the physical therapist suggested. Now that the weather is warmer, we try to encourage Lola to walk around in her bare feet, and to sit properly on her little stool to build up her core strength. Sand probably remains one of the best textures for her to build up her foot strength, but she hates sand with a passion. Today, I took her to the beach and she refused to step off the mat. I managed to cajole her to take two steps off, and she promptly stopped moving and cried out for me to carry her. Grass is the next texture, but it's pretty hard to find a good swath of it in Hong Kong. Thank goodness we have Sun Yat Sen park.
I will try to refrain from going into too much detail, but it's hard not to touch upon our potty training attempts at this stage. Lola now knows to signal when she has to "boo boo," and can generally tell us early enough that we can usher her onto her little toilet seat. She loves to say that someone has boo booed - the zebra boo boos, Mama boo boos, Grandpa boo boos...but it is never her! If you ask her if Lola boo booed, she will instantly and laughingly say, "no!" in a sing song voice.
That's the other thing - for a while Lola refused to acknowledge herself or say her own name. But now, she knows to refer to herself as Lola (which she pronounces more like "Yoya"). In Japan, she would say "My name is Lola," and increasingly now will refer to herself for some things, like "Lola slide".
And that brings me to the last bit of this very long update - Lola loves slides! It's probably her favorite playground apparatus. She hates swings but this little girl can slide all day. She can say "hua hua ti" in Mandarin and "another slide!" in English, which she does often and frequently, to convey her enthusiasm. Today we made a makeshift slide in our living room out of the longest sofa cushion, and she could not have been more enthusiastic or happy as she went down the "slide" with her stuffed dog. She was also fooling around, turning herself upside down and flipping herself down the cushion like a little maniac. There are so many little things that make Lola so happy, it's hard not to get swept up in the sheer joy of things with her.
Her vocabulary is expanding at an astounding rate and we are constantly surprised at what words she knows. Michael and I talk to her like any regular person and she really comprehends almost everything we say.
The funny and unexpectedly difficult thing is that sometimes we don't know if she's speaking in Mandarin or English. A good example of this is how she has recently been saying "qian" a lot to Michael, Jovie and me. Michael and Jovie thought she was saying "stand" in English, but actually she was saying the Chinese word perfectly, which means literally "to lead" but is used to mean holding hands. When Michael finally realized that that's what Lola meant, it all made sense because she would only say it when she wanted to lead him somewhere or to hold his hand.
I knew her meaning because at night when she can't fall asleep and I'm the one putting her to bed, she will stick her hand out between the slats of her crib and say "Mama qian," waiting for me to hold her hand. Then when she wraps her hand around a few of my fingers, she pulls them in toward herself and holds me so tight. It's very sweet.
I have lost track of how many words Lola knows to speak now - it's a lot, and in two languages (plus a few words in Tagalog thrown in). I'm not sure we ever really knew or have known her full level of comprehension, though it is very high. Sometimes it is a bit of a challenge for us to decipher her words, for example, she says "grapes" and "raisins" and "oranges" in English in a really garbled way. But then sometimes her words are incredibly crisp and clear, like when she says "bye bye," "nose," "teeth." We have noticed generally that her spoken Mandarin seems clearer, despite the fact that it's a language that has four different tones. And yet she has no trouble distinguishing when something is a question in English, which is arguably a change in tone or inflection. My favorite language moment (among so many) may have been when we were in Japan. Lola had just sat down on the plush carpet with her bowl of grapes and crisply commanded, "an mo!" which means, "massage" in Chinese. It was pretty hilarious. Our friends were all in awe that she had just demanded a massage while eating her fruit like such a boss.
There are also certain specific moments where I can just see her putting things together, and it is amazing and so cool to observe. For example, a couple of months back, Lola was flipping through her "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book, and came upon the picture of the teacher. She stared intently at the page, and then proceeded to touch the teacher's eyes, then touch her own eyes, touch the the teacher's nose, then touch her own nose, etc., clearly making the connection that what was on the page existed in the real world also.
Yesterday, I was flipping through her Spot picture book with her and we came upon one of her favorite pages, with the monkey and the hippo, which are animals she already knows. I pointed to the crocodile, and explained what it was. She paused and studied the picture intently, then suddenly emphatically pumped her little right arm in a rowing motion and said, "Row!" Just like that, she had put it together - that this was a crocodile, the same crocodile that we always referred to in one of her recent favorite songs, "Row, row, row your boat."
I mentioned in an earlier post that we decided to go cold turkey on the pacifier (or, to Lola, the "nei nei" or "ju ju"). That happened in mid February right after our return from Cebu. Lola's teeth had all pretty much come in (she's missing, like, two more bottom molars and that's it) and we were getting worried about the use of the pacifier on the development of her teeth and jaws. While I think some of the panic over the pacifier is overhyped, we also didn't want it to actually become a problem. We also thought it was not a bad idea to try to wean her off sooner rather than later, given it has to happen eventually.
It was a pretty painful and painstaking process. It probably took about a month before Lola could stop crying about it before she fell asleep. Sleeping became a very painful affair - what once took a couple of minutes required up to an hour or more of holding, singing, swaying. She woke up more frequently in the middle of the night and didn't know how to soothe herself back to sleep. Many times Michael and I looked at each other and wondered if we should just go back to giving her the pacifier. When we were on the plane to Niseko, a month into the weaning process, was the only time that I caved and offered the pacifier to her. She was cranky, her ears were probably popping, and she was desperately sleepy. To my utter shock and surprise, even though she was calling out for the juju, she didn't take it! It was almost like she didn't recognize it any more. Or maybe she just didn't really want it anymore. Either way, it's now been nearly 2 months and we've really made great progress.
We have been working on the next phase of the sleep training, which is getting Lola to sleep without being held or rocked. It's a bit tenuous at times, and other times surprisingly okay. It mostly requires a lot of singing of songs, namely, Happy Birthday, Humpty Dumpty, Row, Row Row Your Boat and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Lola has never been a very good sleeper - she fights it with everything she has - and I guess this is something that has been present since birth! She is down to one nap a day, right around the 10-11 am mark, and usually naps for an hour to an hour and a half. She wakes up between 6 and 7 am, and goes to bed around 7 or 8 pm. Lately, Lola has started saying "shhh" to indicate that she wants to sleep in her crib. She still gets pretty bad nightmares occasionally, and has been fighting an irritating cough that we just can't seem to get rid of. It finally seems to be on the mend though, thank goodness!
Moana remains one of Lola's favorite things to watch and we allow her a song or two once every couple of days. She knows when each song is going to end and always shouts out "hai yao!" before it ends. Her favorite is probably "You're Welcome" and I love watching her get up and dance. She also broke out into spontaneous dance when Michael put on Madagascar once, and it was just adorable. She also has a list of her favorite songs in Chinese, and for some of them she claps or pantomimes right on cue. Lola generally likes to sign along to The Wheels on the Bus and Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Lola is walking very well and fast - she pretty much runs if we let her out of the stroller or carrier. It's hard to believe sometimes that she only learned how to walk a little over 3 months ago. We have been taking her to a physical therapist because her right foot was turning out. It seems to have improved a lot after only a few sessions and doing the strengthening exercises that the physical therapist suggested. Now that the weather is warmer, we try to encourage Lola to walk around in her bare feet, and to sit properly on her little stool to build up her core strength. Sand probably remains one of the best textures for her to build up her foot strength, but she hates sand with a passion. Today, I took her to the beach and she refused to step off the mat. I managed to cajole her to take two steps off, and she promptly stopped moving and cried out for me to carry her. Grass is the next texture, but it's pretty hard to find a good swath of it in Hong Kong. Thank goodness we have Sun Yat Sen park.
I will try to refrain from going into too much detail, but it's hard not to touch upon our potty training attempts at this stage. Lola now knows to signal when she has to "boo boo," and can generally tell us early enough that we can usher her onto her little toilet seat. She loves to say that someone has boo booed - the zebra boo boos, Mama boo boos, Grandpa boo boos...but it is never her! If you ask her if Lola boo booed, she will instantly and laughingly say, "no!" in a sing song voice.
That's the other thing - for a while Lola refused to acknowledge herself or say her own name. But now, she knows to refer to herself as Lola (which she pronounces more like "Yoya"). In Japan, she would say "My name is Lola," and increasingly now will refer to herself for some things, like "Lola slide".
And that brings me to the last bit of this very long update - Lola loves slides! It's probably her favorite playground apparatus. She hates swings but this little girl can slide all day. She can say "hua hua ti" in Mandarin and "another slide!" in English, which she does often and frequently, to convey her enthusiasm. Today we made a makeshift slide in our living room out of the longest sofa cushion, and she could not have been more enthusiastic or happy as she went down the "slide" with her stuffed dog. She was also fooling around, turning herself upside down and flipping herself down the cushion like a little maniac. There are so many little things that make Lola so happy, it's hard not to get swept up in the sheer joy of things with her.
No comments:
Post a Comment