Musings

I just got back from taking a walk with Meleana through downtown Culver City. We walked Gary to work and then hung out on in front of Restaurant Row. She's so cute when she smiles at the people strolling by. Just yesterday she started talking again. Gary and I were surprised because she hadn't really said anything in two weeks. She'll laugh and giggle a lot, cry and scream every once in a while, but no babbling. It's funny because she would make this "Yoda face" and blow air through her closed lips, like she's trying to say something but nothing would come out. So now she's back to "ba-ba-ba-ba".

Last night she learned how to climb up on the futon. She also knows how to find me in the apartment. If she's with Dad in the living room and she knows I went to the bathroom, she'll crawl over and greet me through the door with her adorable toothless grin (well, she's got a tooth in the front poking out). She still makes "zerberts" when she's bored and her favorite pastime is pulling out all the DVDs from the shelves after she's done flipping through the pages of her "The Story of Mary" book. Every so often we'll put her in her makeshift Pampers boxcar that Gary made her and take her for a ride across the living room floor, though most of her day is spent exploring and learning as much as she can about our humble abode.

We're still teaching her words and numbers as much as we can, though we haven't moved as quickly through the program as Doman prescribes because I've had a hard time keeping up with making the cards. Nevertheless, she really likes it so we're just going to try to step it up again now that I'm on vacation. She loves the Word World segments on YouTube, and since she sees me on the computer a lot, anything she gets to watch on the computer is always a treat for her.

Word World is now one of my favorite kid shows - it promotes children's literacy through this world that is made up of words. Everything is spelled out...from the characters' bodies to their houses and their furniture. It's pretty neat because it uses literacy concepts like phonics and word segmentation to stimulate reading. What's interesting is that Don Moody was inspired to create the show as his young child was growing through the early developmental stages. He himself was a Title I student who knew the importance of building a solid foundation in early childhood literacy. For those of you with little munchkins at home (or want to have a little munchkin someday), check it out! It's on every day at 10:30am on PBS.