All of last week, I was concerned that there was something wrong with Abigail's left leg. When she walked, it looked stiff and awkward and it always seemed out of synch with her right leg. I kept having my mom, dad, and brother watch her walk, but no one could quite pinpoint anything wrong, especially since she still ran with great ease.

Come this week, we now realize she was trying to learn to gallop!! (Although, she calls it "skipping.")

We had to prompt her to do it tonight so we could get it on video.

The first part of the video is of her practicing her throws. She shouts, "diu" at the beginning, which means "to throw."


Learning to Gallop from Cecilia Newell on Vimeo
A boy hit on Abby today.

He was around 5 years old.

We were getting ready to leave Abby's school when he saw her coming around the corner and he gasped, "Oh my god!!!"

He leaned down towards her with his hands on his knees and told her, "You're SOOOO cute! How old are you?"

Abby frowned at him, so I chuckled and told him she was a year and a half.

Right then, Abby crinkled up her nose and gave him a squinty-eye smile over her shoulder as she walked away from him to join me.

Such a flirt!!
I can't remember where I first saw this, but I have come across it many times and it still makes me laugh.
I worked late last week and my dad was watching Abby one of the days. I came home and my mom greeted me at the door with, "Don't be mad, but...."

Of course, I was not mad at all. A little shocked, perhaps. In the end, it was just quite funny.

My dad had gotten annoyed with Abby's hair getting into her eyes. Results are as follows:



I ended up trimming the longest strands, but kept it a little choppy to avoid creating the boyish bowl cut. Her hair is curly and it's actually quite cute!! Thanks, Dad! :)
Our house in Clarksburg, Maryland is finally under contract and has been since Friday. The offer was received on Thursday afternoon and it was such a clean offer - and one we could live with - that we accepted it.

I did not get the sense of glee I thought I would, though, and I couldn't figure out why until Paul hit on it. We loved the house! If it weren't for its location in a state that was not Colorado, we would probably be there forever. It was perfect for us - unique, the right size, the ideal layout.

After months of househunting in Colorado, I just haven't found anything that's felt just right and I'm in a funk. Which is why even though we have yearned for selling the Clarksburg house, I was really sad.

It made me feel a little better learning yesterday that the family who is buying the house LOVES it.

On Tuesday, the contract will be ratified. Following the inspection and the appraisal, the relocation company buys the house from us and sells it to the buyer.

When Paul comes out here next week, we will be househunting in more earnest. There are a lot for us to choose from. We just need to be patient to find the one that will suit us the best.
My lunch bag has been getting on my nerves lately. It's this big, rectangular, purple thing and that is such a waste of space and hard to carry. I hate the hard container inside that restricts the types and size of food containers I can use. When I have lunch to bring, sometimes I just throw it in my purse without bothering with the lunch bag, but I sometimes wind up forgetting to put items in the fridge when I get to work that they end up spoiling and I hate wasting food like that.

So, I have been casually - very casually - monitoring shopping blogs for lunchtime food solutions and I was thrilled to have stumbled upon these totes from Spring Los Angeles.


Just the right shape and size (they come in medium and large bags)! Plus, they're so darned cute, which is always a great reason to buy something, right husband? ;)
I always think Abby's the toughest little girl, completely resilient, but I know after today that I will never lightly make that assumption.

While shopping today, I watched Abby take a mild stumble that somehow scared her more than it probably should have and she cried so hard she was not able to take a breath. The few seconds that followed had to be the scariest few seconds of my life! All of a sudden, there was no sound coming out of her mouth. I laid her back and her eyes were rolling backwards and eyelids shutting. Luckily, my mom was with me and she shoved her forward so she could put pressure just under her rib cage and started rubbing her back. I don't know if Abby actually completely passed out, but it did not matter. The moment of panic that rushed over me, knowing she wasn't breathing made me so numb with fear that I'm still trying to shake the feeling.

She recovered quickly, but I'm keeping a very close eye on her tonight to make sure she continues to do well.

I'm still mystified about why this happened. I have heard of kids losing their breath from crying traumatically for a long period of time, but this happened to Abby only on her second cry! She must have really freaked out from the fall, as harmless as it seemed from an observer's point of view.

Regardless, I am just so, so grateful that this whole episode only lasted seconds.
Abby had her 18 month well-baby checkup today - almost one month late because we were busy getting insurance switched and finding a pediatrician. This was our second appointment with a civilian doctor. Abby's first one was a few days ago to examine her persistent fever. Today was her scheduled well-baby, but if she was still running a fever, the doctor was going to treat it as a follow-up of the first appointment and not give her the immunization shots she was due.

Abby's been feeling just fine and the doctor confirmed that her chest sounded clear from any of the bronchiolitis wheezing that was heard earlier this week. So, we proceeded with the well-baby, complete with shots.

I am still shocked at how different civilian doctors' appointments are compared to military; the MOST surprising and pleasant difference is that everything happens SO MUCH QUICKER. We can make appointments and see a doctor the same day we call AND when we arrive, we are seen immediately. Between Abby and me, we haven't had a doctor's appointment last more than an hour yet! Now I understand why my co-workers and managers got so frustrated when I had to take a HALF DAY off for a doctor's appointment back when we were still on Tricare Military Medical Insurance.

Anyway, Abby is doing well. Nothing significant came out of the appointment. We have a prescription for a concoction of Triamcinolone (hydrocoritsone cream Abby has used before for her eczema) mixed into Aquaphor (moisturizer Abby has also used before) to help control her dry skin and eczema rash. Abby was a perfect patient. She didn't cry at all during the exam and even when she received her shots (all 3 of them - Acellular DPT, Polio Vaccine, and HIB) she only started crying after the second shot and only for 10 seconds total before she looked out the window and insisted on going outside.

Abby loved the doctor's office because of a huge tank of turtles in the waiting room.

Stats
Weight: 22 lbs 7 ozs (45th %-ile)
Length: 33 inches (75th %-ile)
Head Circumference: 18.5 inches (50th %-ile)

After seeing the doctor, I took her to a park just behind the doctor's office and she had a good time at the playground.

The second part of my friend Sijen's question was requesting tips and suggestions for raising a bilingual kid. I'll take a stab at addressing this with a few "Things to really try to do" and a couple of "Things you don't really have to do."

Sijen speaks Chinese, but like me, she was raised in the US. Our families are 100% Chinese, meaning that we were raised speaking strictly Chinese at home and English everywhere else. I think she would agree with me that we both feel Chinese is our secondary language in that our mastery of English is superior. However, the biggest hurdle we face is that both of our husbands are not Chinese nor do they speak Chinese, so trying to raise our children to be bilingual in a multi-racial household is not going to be easy without a conscious effort.

I'm sure I will need to revisit this as time goes by because there is so much I am still trying and learning for myself. This list is based off of my own experience being raised bilingual and also what I have observed trying to teach my daughter two languages.

Things to really try to do:

1. Speak the secondary language often yourself. It does not need to be spoken to your baby, necessarily, just around him is sufficient. Talk to your friends or family often in the language and allow your baby to hear it spoken. He needs to be familiar with the sound, tone, and rhythm of the language.

2. When a baby is learning any language, nouns are the first and easiest to be taught. As you teach each object, teach in both languages.

3. Speak in complete sentences. It's easy to just interject words here and there of the secondary language, but you need to expose him to the differences in sentence structure and grammar, not just the vocabulary.

4. Understand your ultimate goal. Do you really need to have your child be able to speak and read and know all the proverbial idioms of the language or do you want him to be comfortable enough to speak the language to some degree, knowing he can learn to read and memorize those idioms at a later time? For me, I just want my daughter to speak the language to some degree with little or no American accent. I'm still trying to figure out how to effectively achieve that, but just coming to terms with this goal means I can create attainable objectives with my immediate resources. The other alternative - which was a dream at some point - would require so many more resources and external involvement because it's beyond what I am capable of myself.

5. Encourage any means of communication. As Abigail started to speak, she would choose words from whichever language was easiest for her to say. I was tempted to insist on the corresponding word in the other language every time she spoke, but realized I would probably confuse her and hinder her language development rather than helping. Sure enough, she is actually picking up both languages. Encourage your baby to communicate in whichever language he wants to so long as you're also giving him a chance to hear the other.

6. Exaggerate your tones and inflections. This is true for teaching any language to a baby, but especially important for a tonal language like Chinese. English is a very flat sounding language and because that is my main language, I tend to speak fairly flat. My inflections are subtle and that's just due to the nature of how I speak. This is not good for teaching my daughter tones because she has a hard time hearing the differences. As a result, her Chinese sounds like she's speaking English until I over exaggerate the tones and inflections for her.

Things you don't really have to do:

1. Trying to remember to speak in both languages all the time and starting at infancy. When the language explosion happens - you'll know when it hits - your baby will pick up language, no matter what it is, so fast you won't be able to keep up. At this time, you only need to say something once or twice and he'll learn it and remember it for weeks, if not more. This is why it's pretty important that he has been exposed to the sound and rhythm of the language. It will make it easier for him to figure out how to properly say the words you try to teach.

2. Buy DVDs, tapes, books, flashcards, CDs, etc. in the secondary language as teaching aids for a baby. My parents gave me several books in Chinese for me to read to my daughter. I was secretly hoping that I would overcome my illiteracy and learn to read as I teach my daughter, but trying to learn and teach at the same time is exhausting and more trouble that it's worth at this point, making me abandon the effort for the time being. I thought having Chinese television, movies, or music on in the background would actually provide good exposure for my daughter to hear the language, but I did not realize how different the language sounds from normal, every day speech. For a toddler just learning to talk, this was completely useless. I can imagine, though, that these teaching aids would be useful as the child gets older, but for now, normal conversation is the best.
My good friend Sijen asked me recently what my perspective on raising a bilingual kid is. A couple of months ago, I wrote a little about it (http://a-newell-life.blogspot.com/2008/11/polyglot.html), but I have a few more things to add.

I will say again that if you have the opportunity to give your child the gift of another language, it really would be a waste not to give it a try. However, I am also practical in understanding that in a multi-racial family, sometimes speaking in more than one language can be inconvenient, confusing, unnatural, and sometimes - though rarely - even offensive to other family members who may feel "left out" of conversations. I think that everyone just needs to keep an open mind about how the child should be raised. A child equiped with more tools and skills will fare better in the world, so why not give your child that leg-up?

From what I have noticed about Abigail's learning experience with Chinese and English (and even sign language to some extent) is that she is just so much better at expressing herself than many toddlers her age and even toddlers older than her. She absorbs everything we have taught her and she uses whatever is the most convenient for her to get her thoughts across. Over the past few months, she has been building up her vocabulary in both languages and making associations between the two. These days, if she says something in Chinese we don't understand, she will sign it or use the English equivalent and the same goes for any English words coming out of her mouth we don't understand - we will get a Chinese translation, if she knows it. Taking care of her has become so easy so quickly because she communicates well enough to express her wants and needs and as a result, she is a very, very happy kid.

Last week, I found out something really cool. At daycare, a couple of her teachers have learned to speak some Chinese! Abby just uses her Chinese words enough and - when necessary - explains by other means, so that some of her teachers understood and will now use the Chinese words with Abby. Cool, huh?

If Abby can continue to pick up both English and Chinese as she has, then I'm pretty confident she can become fluent in both. Moving to Colorado and being close to Paul's parents and my parents means that Abby will grow up knowing two different cultures and environments. I can't wait to see what she makes of them. I really do not intend to push her hard in Chinese because I feel that pushing may create an opposite reaction and cause her to resent the language and culture.
This Infantino Shape Sorter is a great toy. Abigail got it for her first birthday. Not only is it a cute looking toy, but it is very creative in that there is no need to turn the whole thing upside down to find the right slots for the shapes as with other shape sorters - you just spin the body with your hands or by cranking the elephant's tail! Once the shapes get into the elephant, a baby can easily get it out by pushing on the ears or the trunk to dump it all out. The best thing is that it teaches color matching as well as shape sorting.

At first, Abby would not bother figuring out the elephant; she just liked to take the shapes, stack them together, and blow on them. With the tiny holes in each shape, they whistled nicely.

A few months ago, she started to take interest in the elephant and figured out how to stuff the shapes up the elephant's trunk and then press on the trunk or the ears to spill it all out again.

Now, she takes great joy in spinning the body and matching the shapes by color to the slots they need to go in. She is just learning her shapes and still struggles when I ask her what shape she has in her hand and ask her to sort by shape, but she is a pro with matching the colors! She can say all the colors in this set except for orange. Her favorite color to shout is yellow.

The only con about this toy is that there are only 5 shapes to sort. Box shape sorters would give you a lot more. However, this is a simple toy that has held Abby's interest for over 6 months, so that makes it worth writing about and recommending.
"There's something" going around daycare right now that has Abby's class reduced to 5 attendees from 10 and Abby was sent home today for supposedly having a fever of 101.9 degrees.

She has had a slight fever off and on since last Friday. Add to that a runny nose, a cough, and irritability, I have kept her at home for 2 days already.

I took her to the doctor's yesterday and she was diagnosed with bronchiolitis, which is like adult bronchitis with wheezing. She was given a breathing treatment and was much better. The treatment is to wait a week or so because it's viral.

Well, Abby has been happy and bouncy for the most part and that definitely was the case yesterday when she was also fever-free, so felt it was ok to take her to daycare. At around noon, I got a call from the school, asking me to pick her up because they took her temperature and she has a fever.

I rushed over to school and was greeted with, "Mama!!!!! Hahahahaha!!" Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. My eyes narrowed and I was a little irritated when I grabbed her coat and bag. She didn't SEEM sick.

When I talked to her teachers, they said she's been acting fine. Her daily report says she's had a GREAT DAY! She ate all her food and has been overall happy. She didn't look flushed and the huge grin on her face made me very suspicious, so I touched her forehead, finding it cool! I know the school is not allowed to give them any medicine, so I wonder if the school/teachers were just digging for an excuse to send kids home....

They kept saying, "There's something going around the school...." but they can't say what. I think I'm doubly irritated because Abby was sent home early last Friday as well because the "school doctor" thinks that she had hand-foot-mouth disease. Apparently, some kids have come down with it and Abby happened to have some red blisters on her hands. Turns out Abby's "blisters" were her typical eczema rash, which completely cleared up as soon as I put some paw-paw ointment on it. What kind of a doctor can't distinguish between blisters and a rash?!

Anyway, Abby's not allowed to go back to daycare tomorrow because she must be fever-free for 24 hours.

Abby's doing just fine, but this week's going to be a total bust for work!
They say a baby's brain works 2-3 times faster an adult's brain and I don't doubt that. I just never expected to find myself in a condescending situation with my child until she was a little older...like, say, two years old.

We have moved beyond generic words, I believe. Abby is learning to talk, but her vocabulary is still not large and she is just starting, so I forget that even though she does not speak certain words, it doesn't mean she doesn't know them. As a result, I use generic terms way too much around her and she is now pushing me to be more specific!

A couple of weeks ago, we were in the parking lot at daycare and a flock of geese flew overhead. I pointed to them and said, "Abby, look! Birds!" She looked up, then stared at my face until I turned towards her. "Geese," she informed me in a very serious and patronizing tone. I was expecting a condescending pat on the head after that.

And yesterday, we were getting ready to go out, so I asked Abby, "Which shoes would you like to wear? These shoes [holding up one pair] or these shoes [holding up another pair]?" She grabbed her favorite pair, put them on my knees, leaned forward and said, "boots" pointing at them a couple of times, her eyes full of sympathy. I could have died of embarrassment. I guess she won't let me get away with using shoes to mean general footwear anymore.
Abby learned to blow her nose sometime around 14 months. However, we have always had to hold the tissue to her nose and help her "finish the job"........until today!

She came down with a cold on Friday and has had to fight a runny nose the whole weekend, but I think she finally got sick of having me chase her throughout the house to wipe her nose.

We were watching the Superbowl today and somewhere around the 3rd quarter of the game, she marched over to the Kleenex box, grabbed a tissue, blew hard once, twice, wiped, then gave one last thorough blow and an absolutely perfectly executed series of clean-up wipes. When she was done, she ran to the trash can and threw away the used tissue.

I couldn't believe it!! I'm so excited about this new development.

My baby can blow her own nose!!!! :)