from zero to Exie (words) » Grace

letters form words

Grace — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:21:38 +0000

Exie now seems to understand that a bunch of letters in a row is (sometimes) a word. The first word that she seemed to get was “bears.” I sometimes wear an old Cal sweatshirt of Susan’s that says “bears” on it. We were practicing identifying letters one day and then I ran my finger along the whole word and said, “That spells bears!” Of course, that didn’t sink in for a while, but eventually she would answer correctly when I asked, “What does that spell?” I soon discovered, however, that she produced the same answer no matter what the word was. Eventually, however, she has come to realize that different groups of letters form different words. Seeing the gears turning inside that little head is truly incredible!

Now she recognizes a number of words – here are a few of them:

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reading practice 3/3/10 (1min:10sec)

mac joke

Grace — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:31:54 +0000

Exie has made up her first word joke! For better or worse (Susan might think worse), this is a trait that she has inherited from the Stanat side (my father has a propensity for bad puns, and my brother and I seem to have carried the questionable genes proudly forward).

At first Susan and I didn’t get Exie’s joke, but now that we do, it is a constant source of amusement for the whole family. The joke goes something like this: Whenever we ask Exie who is coming over (or whom she saw at the park today, or whom she is calling on the phone, etc.), there seems to be about a 50% chance that she will answer it correctly, and a 50% chance that she’ll say, “Max!” Max is one of her playgroup friends and her current favorite answer (other favorites have been Aude, Ama, Yeh-Yeh, etc.).

After she says “Max,” she sometimes pauses and then says, “Mac!” (over-annunciating the “c” at the end). When asked who “Mac” is, she busts out laughing, then says, “Mat!” or “Mitch” or “Muuch!” or “Mackie!” or something else that is not quite “Max.” She is quite happy to make this joke for a long time, and since we are her parents, it never gets old.

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Mac Joke 2/15/10 (2min:1sec)

forty-five

Grace — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:49:05 +0000

I don’t feel like I’m forty-five, but unfortunately I can’t come up with any convincing arguments to the contrary. Susan continued the awesome tradition of breakfast-all-day for my birthday this year, Stella and Spencer came over in the evening and joined in our homemade donut extravaganza, and I had help blowing out the candles. I have an amazing wife, an incredible daughter, and good friends. What more could I ask for? LIfe is good.

rough

Grace — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:36:27 +0000

Last month a lot of holiday stuff wedged itself into our lives. Included in that pile was a big book that had various textures in it. One page had a star on top of a Xmas tree. The star was a very rough texture, like sparkly sandpaper. Not surprisingly we said things like “star” and “red” (which it was) and “rough” when Exie was looking at it and touching it.

Tonight we were outside on the balcony looking up at the stars. Susan point up and said, “Exie, look at all those stars!”

“Rough,” said Exie.

kinch & heather tie the knot

Grace — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 06:32:30 +0000

We received a surprise call from Kinch and Heather about a week ago. Of course, since you have read the title of this post, you already know the news. Whoohoo!

the wedding party

They decided to have a very small civil ceremony; we met in Oakland at the County Recorder’s Office around 10am and waited our turn (first come, first served). But we didn’t have to wait long; the process started around 10:30am and we finished up before 11, paperwork and everything. Then we snapped a few pix and headed off for a celebratory brunch.

Most of the amazingly tiny readership of this blog already know who these two are, but in case you don’t, Grace met Kinch met at Oxford (actually in D.C. when 1987 batch of Marshall Scholars were collectively dispatched to the U.K.), and they have been best friends every since.

Kinch now teaches in both the Philosophy and Law departments at Berkeley, and Heather is finishing up her law degree, also at Berkeley, where she specializes in environmental law. Until recently, they were living in Oxford where Kinch was teaching, so we didn’t get to see them very often (though we did manage a few great vacations together, including Mexico and a whole month in Italy when they joined us on our world trek – which was absolutely awesome since Kinch speaks Italian and has spent a lot of time there). Kinch was our Best Man and Officiant and we’ve known Heather since they got together way back, so of course we are happy as clams and excited that they’re making it official.

Note to self: Someday I should look into why clams are so happy anyway?

just like her mama

Grace — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:44:56 +0000

Baby loves to dance. When the music starts, she just can’t help herself. When the music stops, she says, “More, more.” There is no question which side of the family this comes from.

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dancing & spinning 12/26/09 (2min:32sec)
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letters & numbers

Grace — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:20:13 +0000

We have some of the standard learning-letters-and-numbers toys: blocks with letters and numbers on them, big rubber bath letters and numbers, etc. Exie has always shown a strong interest in these. At first, she just sucked on the bath letters, and some favorites emerged: in the letter category, ‘E’ was tops, and in the number category ‘8′ reigned supreme. But this was long before she was talking (Exie was about 8 months old), so perhaps she just liked their lime green color.

A few months ago, she started learning the names of these strange hieroglyphics that adults use. ‘E’ has maintained its position as letter favorite, but ‘9′ stole the number favorite position. When we’re out and about, Exie often exclaims, “E!” – this means that she’s found an ‘E’ in a sign somewhere.

Now she can identify all the capital letters and most of the lower-case letters, as well as the numbers from ‘1′ through ‘10′ (and sometimes ‘12′ since those are on clocks).

number two

Grace — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:57:34 +0000

random verbal accomplishments

Grace — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:36:47 +0000

When Susan came down this morning, Exie and I were sitting in the corner of our kitchen/dining room, where most of Exie’s toys live. As usual, Susan asked what we had been doing so far this morning. I replied that we’d been working on letters and numbers and then I said to Exie, “Can you go get the paper that we were using to show the difference between ‘2′ and ‘Z’?” To my surprise, she ran over to another part of the room where there were a few pieces of paper on the floor, picked up the right one, and brought it back. Zowie. We’re used to her being able to follow simple (usually one-step) directions, but this was significantly more complicated. Next time I’ll see if she can grab the broom and sweep out the garage.

So I figured this was a good time to compile some of the random notes I’ve been keeping about verbal stuff.

8/9/09 (“bow-wow”) & 8/16/09 (“waffle”): first two-syllable words in which the first and second syllables aren’t the same
9/2/09: first phrase: “he tang” (“drink soup” in Mandarin)
9/10/09: “Yeh Yeh” (“Grampa” in Mandarin, or more specifically, “father’s father”). She started saying this within 15 minutes of hearing it. Previously, she didn’t have a word for “Grampa” since she can’t yet say “Pigah” (the traditional family word for “Grampa” ever since Josh, my sister’s oldest, first decided that “Pigah” was a lot easier to say than “Grampa”).
9/13/09: first identification of a written number (“Nine”). Oh yeah.
9/20/09: first contraction (“Ma bau”). “Mama” means “mother” in Mandarin, too. And “bau bau” means hug or hold. So I guess that “ma bao” means “Mommy, hold me.”
9/25/09: Nola says “Exie.” Nola is one of Exie’s playgroup pals, and the first one to vocalize Exie’s name. Nola is quite advanced in her speaking already!
10/17/09: first unsolicited thank you. Actually she said “Xie xie” (“Thank you” in Mandarin). Fittingly, she said it to the person at the Taiwanese restaurant as they handed us our food to-go. She also says “Kanku” quite frequently, but so far only when prompted.
10/23/09: shapes and colors right more than wrong: She’s known the words for most simple shapes and colors for a while, but now she’s actually starting to answer correctly when we point at a particular shape or color instead of blurting out a random word. She still doesn’t have it completely figured out, but she’s correct about 75% of the time now.
11/26/09: She stepped on the digital scale, looked it for a while, pointed, and loudly stated, “One!” Indeed, there was a number one on the scale.

weightlifter

Grace — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:50:11 +0000

“Biiiiig! Heaaaavy!” Actually, at the moment she seems to think all balls are “heavy.” This particular ball actually *is* relatively heavy, but the vast majority of the other balls lurking around the house are not. To make matters worse, it is quite difficult to explain that those other balls are light, since that tactic sometimes ends with her pointing up to light on the ceiling. The only other antonym I can think of for heavy is “weightless,” and… well… since we don’t live on the Space Shuttle we don’t have much reason to use that word when describing everyday objects.

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weightlifter 11/22/09 (32sec)<
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