I haven’t updated recently. We’re back from Beijing, we have been for like two weeks. Tristan’s passport should arrive in 2-3 weeks from now. Still waiting on Yivan’s update, but that’s still a month away from the projected time.
Now, onto the purpose of this post..
Tristan is a smart baby, but I think every parent says that of their own child. He has reached the age now (he’s over 9 months) where he can recognize specific words and, in some cases, perform actions in response.
The first thing he learned was shaking his head, and was a few months ago. Yivan and her father both started shaking their head saying “nonononononono” which sounded more like “nawnawnawnawnawnawnaw”, just a Chinese nonsense sound. The baby eventually started to mimic the head shake, and now will shake his head if you simply make the nononono sound. It turned out to be really good, though, because he figured out that shaking his head also happens to mean the same as the word “no”, and he will often shake his head in response to things he doesn’t want to do, like “give daddy a kiss”.
He knows the Chinese phrase for give me a kiss, but he pretends he doesn’t know it. I am still working on teaching him the English (we do so by saying the one he knows, then saying the same thing in the other language) but it’s hard to know if he gets it and is just playing, or if he hasn’t learned it yet. His usual response to give me a kiss is running away with a smile and sometimes a giggle, but in the early mornings he is really affectionate and usually gives as many kisses as you want. Tristan’s kiss, however, is just him putting his open mouth on your face. His mouth is also full of saliva because of the teething. It’s kind of gross.
He learned “clap your hands” in Chinese in about two days. He’d already been doing the motions on his own, but to learn the words and the action associated took only two days. The day he came home and Yivan demonstrated his new trick (he was at his grandparents’ when he’d perfected it) I immediately started on the English clap your hands, which he had mastered by the same night. The following morning we tested his memory and he could still do it.
Tristan also knows his favorite stuffed doll’s name. We can ask “Where’s Jack?” and he will look for it. He doesn’t know he should point yet, but he’ll look at Jack until we praise him. Tomorrow we’ll introduce him to a new one, probably named Sam.
Finally, in the last few days he’s begun expressing wants in a more direct way. When he is being held he will point to something and make a baby sound, usually “dah”. You take him to whatever he wants and then he’ll smile and play with it until he’s bored. Then he looks around the room until something else catches his eye and it starts over again.
He’s also been displaying a fairly good memory. A week ago he was playing with a flowerpot and it fell, the flowers fell into his face and scared him. Now he holds his head back and is very gentle with them, rather than his usual behavior of pull/smack/drop. We also have a game, it’s a daddy and baby game, where I hold his hands and he leans his body back and dangle him off the couch. He knows it’s only a game to play with me, and he knows not to drop back until I’m holding both of his hands.
I have some new pictures which I’ll post here and on Facebook when I get a few hours to relax one day.
