2007: Smart like a dog

Well, it finally may have happened... Scarlett may now be as smart as Toby dog. This is no, small feat, mind you. Toby knows over 280 commands, has 3 different modes of walking off leash, and knows both hand and vocal commands.

But we figure Scarlett probably knows almost as many concepts, and has begun one-trial learning; that is she can observe something and then being able to mimic and incorporate and generalize those actions.

Just today, she saw me open and close the baby gate, and promptly walked over to the baby gate, and lifted the handle (which I haven't been using the child saftey switch yet) and opened it. She then walked down the hall to another baby gate and lifted the gray handle, generalizing what she had learned right away. That is actually a very sophisticated cognitive step, superior to anything Toby knows. Time to use the baby safeties. (On an aside, we've also decided she is also part monkey, as when she couldn't open the gate, she has started to climb the gate, holding the top of the gate and putting her feet on the gate off the ground.)

She is also really grasping language and its usage. Today, we could tell she was acting hungry, and asked if she wanted a bottle, and she said "bah", walked across the room, and pointed to the bottle and again said "bah". We picked her up and she drank from the bottle, which she doesn't do if she isn't hungry. There is so much going on there cognitively--- she is associating a word (bah), with an object (bottle), that will satisfy a feeling (hunger), and then an additional second step action to walk towards the bottle to retrieve it... while it seems simple, it is actually very complicated set of cognitive actions.

She's done other amazing things like we asked her to go get her Neh-Neh, and she walked across the room, grabbed her horse and brought it to us, demonstrating she knows lots of things she doesn't even say yet. Mow-mow is her newest word for cat.

Oh, yeah, she's still blonde, still blue-eyed, and still tiny. Even though she looks big in most of the closeup photos, at 12.5 months she's still not quite 18 pounds yet. A 1-yearboy at her gym class today weighed over 30 pounds. Here's a photo of Arley to scale at the beach--- which she loved by the way.... she also kept walking over to the surfer boys--- a bad habit we'll have to nip in the bud.

Other great holiday pictures

...more to come...

Holiday Yearling

December is a big month. Scarlett turns one and we turn our eyes to the holidays and to family. We had a great holiday-themed birthday party for Scarlett.


Her production vocabulary (words she says) is over a dozen words: Noh! (No--- which is getting used with increasing frequency), Toh Dah (Toby Dog), Quo (Crow), Dow (Down), DaDa (Da-da), Mah (Mom), Blue (Blue berries), O-pah (Open), Wow (wow in a whisper, which is very cute), ohhhh (oh, with an inflection in the middle for when she is surprised), gua-gua (spanish for woof-woof, she makes when Toby barks), Puh (Puff- - a baby treat she likes), Bah-Bah (Bottle) and while not a word, she's started going mmmm for a kiss (the mmmmm sound like the sound right before a kiss, but tries to take a bite because she can't pucker quite yet). Of course, she's makes dozens of other sounds in what seem like long sentences--- we just have no idea what she's saying.

She's doing all kinds of neat things like fake choking to get attention, and fake laughs to crack herself up, initiating playing peek-a-boo by lifting and holding blankets over her head, then pulling it down and laughing, and she totally loves baths. She's fully mobile; running even... but managed to fall and get a minor black eye right before her visit to santa (which went surprisingly well... actually, she was very serious... but at least she didn't cry).

Around this age, kids enter something called the mine phase, where they start getting possessive. While she's still happy to try and feed us while eating, she does try to do everything she can to hold as many things in each hand as she can. She's also figuring out she can stack items in other items to carry more--- it is the genesis of the purse! She also loves to put caps back on bottles and cans... not sure what that means, but she loves it.

She ended up being the only girl available at church for the Christmas nativity scene, so she played the youngest virgin Mary of all time.


Her eyes are still blue and her hair is still blonde, and she's starting to get the cutest blonde curls---

Month of November

It has been a great but busy couple of months.... time to get caught up with all of Scarlett's changes.... Here, Scarlett takes her first merry-go-round with grandma right after Thanksgiving.

In Novemeber, Scarlett continued to improve her coordination in Novemeber, taking her first steps and going three or five strides. She also shifted from making a grabing motion to show she wanted something to pointing, and accordingly, has developed the ability to really show strong preferences. Of course, it is a mixed blessing... while she can better communicate what she wants, she is developing strong likes and dislikes, so if she sees something she'd prefer, say some fruit in the kitchen, she will refuse to eat what's on her plate and just point at what she wants until she gets it.

She's eating pretty much eating everything now... blueberries are her favorite food with pasta/mac and cheese and chicken and carrots and peas not far behind. We are pretty lucky she's been so easy with food, and actually really seems to like veggies like carrots, peas, and corn. Other new foods include jello and oranges. She has 6 teeth (4 top, 2 bottom) that have come in like giant shards of glass, but after getting these teeth in early, she hasn't gotten any other teeth.

Scarlett is looking older and and older in big girl dresses, but still finds a little time to get into all kinds of trouble--- her strong sense of adventure coupled with her uncanny ability to open draws and doors have gotten her into all kids of trouble----so that's why they invented baby locks....