Tivona really started coming into her own in these seven weeks. For a while, it really seemed like she was boxing, and we all found it highly entertaining, as you can see from these two videos.
Tiva boxes Dada
Tivona boxes on the change table while Taya laughs
Taya was in training herself--here she is lifting weights and counting (and cheating!). As I've mentioned, I squeeze in tidbits of workouts, and Taya really enjoys it and imitates.
Taya lifts weights and counts (but tries to cheat)
Tiva is and was a very smiley baby--we count ourselves very lucky!
Taya had an absolute obsession with midwifery, labour and delivery. Nanna and Grandpa brought the University Report magazine from the Globe and Mail, and Taya proceeded to love it to bits--largely because it had a picture of a midwife looking at a young mother's belly while her toddler daughter looked on. Taya wanted to look at that picture every morning for breakfast and for hours after. She'd open the magazine to that page and put it on the couch, and she was prone to tantrums if anyone moved or put something on top of the magazine. And she's fascinated with birth stories. When Taya turned two, I told her the story of her birth. She ate it up and asked for it again and again for weeks. At first it was just her birth, but after a while she started showing an interest in others' births, too. In this video, Taya pretends that she's going to give birth to one of her toys (Doggie, I think), with the help of Mama or Nanna as the midwife.
Taya pretends that she's in labour and enlists midwife help
Taya gets to play in the park a lot. Here she does a round of the playground at Tyee School. It's one of two nearby playgrounds that's going to get torn down (and thanks to the BC government's bizarre ideas about education funding, not replaced--BC no longer pays for public school playgrounds).
Taya runs around the playground at Tyee
And here Taya does some swinging on her belly, as we banter.
Taya swings on her belly
Tivona didn't get as much play-time in her earliest days as did Taya, but here she is mesmerized by one of her play mats.
Tivona is mesmerized by her play mat
Taya loves to collect things in bags and containers and to carry them around. Here she carries around four bags full of stuff, then does a jig-a-lig-lig.
Taya the bag lady
Ljuba is very concerned that our babies should be kept warm. So when we had a cold snap, they were bundled. This picture of Tivona was just the beginning--there was probably a snowsuit and a lined cover on top of that! In fairness, it's true that--the polar opposite of Taya--Tiva's feet are almost always cold. We had to order special wool socks for her!
Taya loves to sing and to play roles and imitate. We got her into imitating different people and animals singing about the wishy-washy woman, and she really took to it. Here Ljuba coaxes her to sing. Watch Taya drag it out and out with all kinds of ploys and stalling tactics (grad students looking for stalling tips for comps and defences, take note!), before delivering with aplomb.
Taya plays with Mama, then finally caves and sings
The cold snap also brought some snow, which was a delight for Taya. Such a change from last year, when the crunching of snow beneath her feet freaked her out.
Such an innocent smile!
Taya has had a fascination with all things medical, not just midwifery. It may have started with the many trips to the midwives, especially as they had a Fisher Price doctor's kit that Taya would use to imitate the midwives checking out her mama. Babica got Taya the same kit for her birthday, and it was game over. From then on, Taya started calling herself "Dr. Taya", and for a while she refused to answer to anything else. She got distraught when we finally tried to get her to acknowledge that she wasn't yet a real doctor. To mollify her somewhat we had to also tell her that she could pretend to be a doctor, sometimes. From then on, whenever we pointed out that she could sometimes be just plain Taya, she'd rebut, "I can pretend to be a doctor!" Anyway, here's our little doctor, checking out Doggie, one of her babies, in video and a still.
Dr. Taya takes care of Doggie and explains what's wrong
Tons of tummy time for Tiva.
Tivona went through a phase where she wouldn't stop playing with her tongue. Sometimes she'll stick it out like this for several minutes, forcefully. It made breastfeeding difficult, Ljuba reported.
Taya's attachment to things is exactly as mine was, as a child. Auntie Elisa and Uncle Tony got Taya this gorgeous housecoat, and Taya fell in love with it. Once we put it on her, she refused to take it off, even after she was sweating profusely and her cheeks were burning red. Temper tantrum numbers 212-219 for the month of November…. ;) (Yes, Mum, you warned me that I had it coming!)
Is it just our hearts that are warmed by their smiles?
And their conversation? Here's a 10 second clip.
Tiva talks
Watching me watching you.
I'm so glad that Ljuba finally pulled out the camera for this nighttime conversation. For weeks she'd been telling me of the delightfully cute chatting that Tiva does during the nighttime feeds, and I'd been imploring her to get it on video. I left the camera on the nightstand, and here we have it--for posterity's sake.
Tiva's midnight conversation
Back to Taya and her performing of the wishy-washy woman. Her cheeks are humongous in this (the camera's on wide-angle), but that just adds to the spectacle.
Taya sings the wishy-washy woman, alligator and mouse
"Raa!" (Tivona mid-roar.)
I put Tivona down to sit once, needing two hands to do something else, and then looked back at her propping herself up like so. She sat just like that for several minutes.
It's been hard to make Tivona laugh, but we've been trying. Gigs are easy (one-syllable giggles), and full giggles aren't too hard, but more than that is tricky. We get lots of loud sighs (an indication that she's tired) and sometimes lots of grunts (but not nearly as many as when she was younger). For laughs, Ljuba found that this technique was good.
Jiggles and giggles from Tiva
Speaking of Tiva's noises, this video captured some pretty impressive squawks, which are Tiva's trademark noises. Just now, after sleeping from 5pm to 9:30pm (a first!) and getting us worried that she might be ill, she woke up. She flailed her arms around and grinned silently for a minute as I picked up and cuddled her awaiting Ljuba donning her nursing pillow. She then let out the loudest squawk we've heard. She's such a creature of contradictions--the extreme quiet serenity so quickly followed by the squawks, and in unfortunate evenings, by bloodcurdling strangulation screams that defy the best of our earplugs. To think that a few days into her life, Ljuba and I worried that she might not have enough fire and personality!
Tivona's battle cry
Tivona is not a good public feeder. For Tiva, the slightest sound of my or Taya's voice is generally enough to make her come off and look for us. Of course this makes it tough for Ljuba to take care of the two of them alone, and it means that we don't get all that much time for the four of us to interact. Ljuba tried feeding Tiva in this sling (here Tiva shows off her big eyes), but soon gave that up (the noises were still a problem).
Taya is still very much a social animal. I told her several days before Ed's (a PhD student with me) comprehensive exams that we were going to go have dinner with them and help him celebrate, and I pointed out the restaurant. She was so excited! Driving to the pool with Ljuba a couple days later, Ljuba asked Taya what she was doing, and Taya replied, "Just looking for Bandidas the restaurant." The dinner itself was great (except for a meltdown due to the sheer overabundance of nervous energy): she said "congratulations" to Ed and was in squirmy smiley heaven for the almost two hours we were there. By the end she was initiating hugs and high fives all around, on an absolute high. Here she is on one of the preceding quieter dinners, but with equally shiny eyes.
Taya isn't always fascinated by Tivona (sometimes she's simply immersed in her own things, about which she's constantly creating elaborate stories), but she is increasingly interacting with her.
"Hi smiley!"
Here's Tiva, distracted by my presence enough to give a good face shot.
Taya still loves to sing. She gets lots of practice--many nights she spends an hour or more lying in her crib talking and singing to herself and her toys. Here she practices "Baby Beluga", by Raffi.
Taya practices singing/reading "Baby Beluga"
It's really nice how easy it is to get a smile from Tivona now. We know it won't last for all that long!
Zoom to Mama, zoom to Dada
Tivona reminds me of a penguin when she flaps around dressed in this snowsuit.
Our little penguin
This was the first year that we missed the holidays in Toronto. While we did have a nice quiet time at home, we were very sad not to be with family. The reason is that we're going to Toronto for Ljuba's brother Tony's wedding to Elisa, in less than a month, and we couldn't imagine two trips in a month. Talking playfully about that time, I asked Taya, "Should we leave you here in Vancouver to take care of Tiva while Mommy and I go to Toronto?" Taya's response: "That doesn't make sense!" How right she is. So we'll all make the trip Jan 25.
Happy New Year, all!
No comments:
Post a Comment