Yesterday, Ruby and I went to the Seattle Public Library and got her first library card! We checked out five books – some I chose, and some she chose – and took them home. We’ll go once a week and get five new ones. I think it may take a couple of trips before she really understands how it all works, but at least she’s enjoying the books.
I was happy to see my old friend Frances again.
In mid-September, I introduced Ruby to fingerpainting. We did it in the bathtub (for easy cleanup), and she had a ball painting the walls, the paper, and herself. I got some good photos.
There are also a few more photos from September here.
When Ruby became mobile, we put her board books on the lowest shelf in the playroom so she could enjoy them. We moved all other books out of her reach, including the children’s books made of paper. Those we put on a shelf she could see, and occasionally we would take one down to read to her.
This week, her interest in the paper books skyrocketed. She started moving her stool over to the shelf in order to reach them and take them down. When I noticed she was reading them (instead of ripping or otherwise destroying them), I moved the paper books to a shelf she can reach.
Now, almost every time one of us is in the playroom with her, she grabs those books and asks us to read them to her. After only a few days, she already knows the name of each book (there are about 13) as well as details from the pages. When we come to the end of a book, or when she tires of it, she jumps up, asking “Two? Two?” (two more books) and runs back to the bookshelf to select new ones.
I had a few photos from the end of August that I posted here.
We took a bunch of photos in September, and I’m still sorting through them, but here’s the first batch.
This weekend, we went to the Puyallup Fair, and Ruby had a great time seeing all the animals. She got to touch a cow and a rabbit, and hear some animals making their sounds for the first time (instead of an adult’s imitation).
However, we were disappointed to find that there were NO RIDES that we could take her on. Absolutely everything, even the carousel and the ferris wheel, required you to be at least two years old (or a minimum height of about 36 inches). It wasn’t fair! Ruby would have had a lot of fun on some of the gentler rides. I guess we’ll have to wait until next year.
She did, however, enjoy a famous Fisher scone (a fair tradition):
Ruby’s vocabulary has exploded in the past month. When it comes up, I’ve been saying to people, “she must know a hundred words already.” Today I decided to count and see how accurate that was, hoping that one hundred was not an exaggeration.
Imagine my surprise when I came up with 205 words! These are all words that Ruby not just understands, but says. They’re all words that I’m confident she knows and have heard her say at least a few times. (I left off some of her most recent words in case she doesn’t really know them yet.)
I poked around online and found that the toddler “vocabulary explosion” or “linguistic leap” is a known milestone, and after it begins, children learn about 10 words a day until adulthood.
The list of words is an interesting window into Ruby’s world. Here they are:
This morning, I babysat Maia, a friend of Ruby’s from our parents’ group. I got some good photos, and a video of their most fun moments:
Our friends Molly and Brian babysat Ruby for us on Friday evening. Luckily for us, Brian is a good photographer and he got a bunch of great portraits of Ruby.
