14th Month Notes

My babies seem to hit cognitive growth spurts every 6 months. I observed this with Noey and it seems to be the case with Nomi as well.

After she turned 1 about 2 months ago, Nomi seems to have grown up a lot.

She’s practically running everywhere these days. She’s gotten pretty steady over the last month and when she thinks Gor-Gor is on her tail, she shrieks with delight, pulls up her shoulders and throws herself forward as fast as her legs can carry her. It’s very cute and I believe the two kiddos will be chasing each other around before long!

Apart from the running, the most apparent sign of her growing maturity is how she seems to understand everything I say now. Maybe it’s because I have an older child whom I know does understand me. As a result, I speak to Naomi fully expecting that she understands what I say. I expect her to understand basic instructions like “sit down” and “stand up” or “put X down” and “give Mummy X” . Also another of her favourites: “Put X into the laundry basket”. (I decided to train this one earlier to help out more around the house!) But I catch myself smiling in surprise sometimes when she does follow more complex multi-step instructions. Like the other day when she took a DVD out from the TV console drawer. I told her to “put that back and close the drawer”. And she did!

She now understands “wait”, which is great. Now I need her to learn “wait for 5 minutes”.

She continues to be a very loud baby. I don’t know why my two children are so noisy! (Wait, don’t answer that.) But I love to hear Nomi speak — when she’s not whining. She has the cutest sounds and a cartoon manner that just makes everything she says and does really adorable. Or maybe that’s just me as her Mummy speaking.

At least she now has quite a few words to add to her jabbering, though it is questionable how many can be understood! The list as it stands:

Words
Papa, Mama, Mum-mum (Food), Nen-Nen (Nai Nai), Popo (Por Por), Baw (Ball), Boo (Book), Ba-Ba (Bye-Bye, said in a high pitched, sing-song manner), Theretherethere (There), Nonono (No), A-ma (Amen), Up, Doh (Go), Ssssh (Shoes, usually while pointing to them), Pooh-Pooh (Poop), Hi, More-More (No more).

Sounds
Whoa Whoa (bark like a dog) — This is her generic sound when she sees any animal.
Mmmmm (growl like a lion)
Moe Moe (moo like a cow) — She doesn’t always get this right.

I think she’s doing alright for a 14 month old, but I got a bit worried when I looked back at the list of words that Noey had at the same age. It was so much longer! I was at once beset with guilt and started wondering if I wasn’t teaching her enough. I annoyed DD plenty by harping on this for a few days.

Since then, I’ve decided to lighten up. Yes, every child is different. And Nomi is learning, though maybe not what I want her to learn. But I’ve also re-looked at the amount of time I spend with her and made some adjustments to try to be with and speak to her more.

Also, while she might not be as quick as Noey was at picking up words, she has plenty of wonderful qualities which he didn’t have.

Like a ready smile for all and sundry. She really is my Miss Congeniality, going up to random strangers and trying to engage them. She’s really popular wherever she goes, and people are always trying to carry her. She turns down strangers but if you’ve had sometime for her to warm up to you a little, she would generally oblige.

She’s an adventurous eater. She would always take a taste of any food that is being offered to her before she chooses to reject it. Unfortunately, this also means that she tastes everything. She’s totally ruined all my sponge/foam balls, for example, by taking a bite out of each of them. Sigh! Nomi still has her own porridge on most days, but she always wants what’s on Noey’s plate. I’m still holding out till 18 months to start replacing her porridge with table food. It’s not that I don’t want to at this point, but the dear girl still only has 4 effective teeth! Her remaining 4 incisors have cut through over the last month but are barely there in her mouth. That has hindered her ability to eat a larger variety of food.

Little miss hasn’t been too happy about that. So now we compromise. We give her a bowl of food from the table — the noodles without the gravy, white rice, or tofu/veg/egg — and let her feed herself that while we feed her the porridge. Seems to work pretty well so we’re sticking to this for now.

Also, while she might not be picking that many actual words, she is awfully good at mimicking my tone. She likes to pretend to sing, and when she does, there is actually a tune, though I don’t know what it is! She prefers us to sing though, and when we do, she’d enthusiastically join in with the actions. Her favourites are “Twinkle twinkle little star” and “”If you’re happy and you know it”, and she’d often go “ng ng ng!” at me while looking at me meaningfully, willing me to sing the song over and over again. I think she’ll be my musical child.

Unfortunately one thing she has learnt from Gor-Gor is how to find her way into our bed. I feel she’s perfectly capable of sleeping through the night. Except that she doesn’t. She’d wake up once, between 12am-2am, only to ask to be transferred to our bed. DD had brought her over a couple of times when I wasn’t free to get her, and that was it. I only have to bring her over and put her on my bed, and she puts herself back to sleep. If I put her back on her own bed, she’d wake up every 5 minutes thereafter to complain and ask to be carried. I don’t have much will-power of stamina in the middle of the night when I really want to be sleeping, so I haven’t managed to break this bad habit. My only hope is to eventually move them both out together into their shared room. That can’t come soon enough!

There are just so many things to love about her at this age. The cheeky faces she makes when asked to smile. The random hugs she’d give to Noey or me, without us asking. The way she runs away at top speed after taking something from Noey, or when she thinks we’re going to catch her to send her to bed. The way she loves to draw her lips into an “O” shape. The way she leans over to look you in the face when you’re carrying her and gives a big smile. The way she looks at pictures of herself and pats her chest in a self-satisfied manner as if to say “that’s me!”. The cute way in which she sways to any music – a jingle, background music of a game Noey is playing, something Noey is singing, any tune at all. The way she quizzically pats her head every time we ask her where her eyes/nose/mouth are. The way she barks “Whoa Whoa” at any animal that she sees, whether it is a dog or not. Today my helper tells me she mooed at a dog. Hahaha.

Dear Meips, you really are the cutest thing alive.