Big Surprise = I'm right again :)

I knew Rob would be a great dad and he is doing amazingly well with our little girl!! Geez - I was totally right...

After re-reading my emails from Rob again (& again), I realized I should be bragging about my husband and how he's such a good daddy! He's doing a great job teaching our daughter all sorts of new things.

This is also a good activity for me. I'm homebound today. It's snowing. The driveway is icy. The roads are icy. I want to take a walk. I'm gigantically pregnant. I'm trying to be a mature adult. Walking on ice is not mature. This is especially true for gigantically pregnant women.

So, here we go! I'm sharing a few excerpts from Rob's emails to me.

She called me “dada” today! I would point to myself with both hands and say “Daddy” and then point to her and say “Cosi.” So she touched my chest and said “Dada”. I was really excited and praised her. Then she pulled her sweater out a little and said “dada.” Yep. All that time, she thought “dada” meant “sweater.”

She’s picking up on some more things. Playing peek-a-bo around the cribs is a regular. But it has to be done a specific way. She hides on one side, then I have to say “Where’s my little girl?” and then we both peek around the left side and I act happy and say “There she is!”, then we repeat the process, but the second time we both peek over the top of the cribs and the third time we go to the left side.

She saw a water bottle among my stuff today and wanted to play with it. I thought, “I’ll see how this works.” At first, not so well. As with the juice box, she wanted full control. Once it was clear that full control was not an option, we made progress. I kept telling her, “Daddy holds it, Cosi drinks.” Eventually that became “Daddy holds it, Cosi helps.” It’s not like she knows the difference, but it mattered to me. Anyway, I took the cap off and slowly got the bottle to her mouth. She tried to put her fingers in it, tried to grab it, wanted to squeeze it, but eventually, she drank out of it as I held it. After a few times of doing this, she started holding her hands behind her back now and then. She did pretty well drinking from the water bottle! She still would rather do it herself, but no way I’m letting that happen anytime soon.

She also at the end of the day started doing something that Sasha does. I did the tickle monster with both of them last week, and since then Sasha comes up to me, points both fingers at me and makes like a small roaring sound. Cosi did it for the first time today- it was cute. There were several moments where she really was acting more like a little girl than a baby. It’s hard to describe, but it’s something about her face and the way she moves.

She likes being tickled (what kid doesn’t?) and if I stop too soon, she’ll put her fingers on her back or side and look at me and say, “tickle tickle tickle!” So I’ll eventually tickle her until she can’t take anymore, which I know is the case when she tries to bite or kick me.

I also brought one of the containers of the puffs. They went over really well. I pulled them out in the car, and I would pour 4 or 5 into my palm and she would grab them all and stuff them in her mouth (if she was really hungry) or eat them one by one (if she wasn’t as hungry). After she would finish a handful, I would say “more?” and do the sign language for more. She didn’t pick up on it at first. Then, after I thought she had had enough puffs, I put them away. About 20 minutes later, after we played some more, she came right back to her seat, looked at me with a big smile, and did the sign language for “more”!!!!! Of course, she thinks it means “puffs.”

She likes it when I hold her and beat box. When I beatbox, she puts her head on my shoulder, puts her arms around me, and cuddles. If I stop she pulls away, looks at me and tries to make drum noises so I know what she wants… I wonder if she likes to feel the vibrations in my throat…

But - lest you think Rob is the only one teaching our daughter new things -

-I taught Cosi to stomp her feet. That turned into "let's stomp on Daddy's feet," which I thought was great practice at coordination of feet & leg movements. But, if you could have seen Rob's reaction, you would have thought I was teaching our daughter how to punch a baby!

-I attempted to teach Cosi to say "Zip your bag!" We'll need to work on it a bit more in the future, but this could be VERY useful b/c Rob has a habit of forgetting to zip his SIDE bag (not a purse, definitely not a purse).