Over the holidays I've been pretty busy, so I haven't been doing much in-depth blogging. So over the next couple of days, I'm going to be catching you up on all Mira's recent developments.
Around mid-December, Mira discovered that she could point.
She started by pointing at things and I would describe them to her. Well, really quickly she figured out that this was a great game and a cool way to get my attention and interact with me. So it evolved into her pointing at something and saying "Ha!" and me telling her about that thing or even bringing it over for her to investigate, if possible.
Pretty soon she started pointing at the pictures in her books, getting me to tell her more about the images on the pages. 
Shortly after that, she began to point at things while she was eating, to indicate what she wanted another bite of, or what she wanted more of, or when she wanted her sippy cup. Now she is pointing all the time. I've really enjoyed it, because there are so many different things she can communicate to me simply by pointing at something. I feel like for the first time, she is *telling* me what she wants rather than me having to guess.
Well, not too long after she learned about pointing, she got her first word: "cat". She has said "mama" and "dada" before, but never with any meaning behind it. But she uses "cat" in context, so I feel like it is her first real word. She doesn't use it correctly all the time, though. Most anything furry is a "cat", including our dogs.
Toward the end of December, Mira and I went with some of Brian's family to the San Antonio zoo. I had the opportunity to go to the Austin zoo when Mira was about 9 months old, but I decided not to go. At the time, whenever I'd point at something, she'd just look at my finger instead of looking beyond to the thing I was pointing at. But by December, she'd learned to look beyond my finger and I could point to things and she would see them, so I felt that she was ready for a zoo visit. Sure enough, she was able to see quite a few things. For the most part, an animal had to be moving for her to see it, but since the weather was cool and clear alot of the animals were up and about so it worked out well. She really enjoyed the flamingos who were wading around and flapping their wings, the black bear who was pacing his enclosure, the tiger who got up from his nap right when we were watching, the elephant who came right up to the edge of his enclosure and begged us for food by stretching his trunk out to us, and the monkeys who had a couple of curious and playful babies. But as you might expect, if you asked Mira, all of them were "cats". >.<
2 comments:
Overgeneralization is totally normal, don't be frustrated. :D She'll figure it out eventually. Sometimes kids then swing the other direction to overspecificity, where "cat" ONLY refers to the cat at home but all other cats are called something different.
But it does count as a "real" word since she uses it consistently to refer to the critters. :D
Anjea
We're in the midst of massive language leaps over here, and the whole communication bit-- anytime they are able to start communicating new things and thoughts, etc with us-- is just SO DARN COOL. And also very helpful. =)
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