7/12/08 Regress and progress

Is Katrina saying her first sentence? She most certainly says a blob of words, repeatedly, that sounds much like "I want a bicycle!" And I'm sure she really means that. But is it one long word to her, or an actual combination of individual words? Language development -- fascinating. She's repeating back and imitating words all the time now, using phrases she's heard just once or twice in the correct context, and makes intonations that sound very much like actual questions or statements. A language explosion right now.

Meantime, her brothers...Dave took the boys to the BMX park today, for the first time in months. They were both really excited about going, but Julian has suddenly gained some fear about it, and won't go up or down the start-stop plateau or even any of the smaller bumps. I'd expect that of a 4-year-old, but it's hard to imagine that he was zipping up the plateau when he was still just 3.

When we were in Pennsylvania, we visited a longtime family friend at her home in nearby New York. Sally lived on our block in Brooklyn and her daughter Hillary was my kindergarten chum and is still a friend today. Incredibly, 40 years later, my mother and Sally ended up within 10 minutes of each other in the same area of NorthEastern Pennsylvania, though Sally is right across the border in NY.

ANYWAY, Sally invited us to her beautiful riverside home with a small pool, and the kids all went to play in the pool. Gabriel wanted to play on a toy tube, but I told him he had to show me he could swim across the pool first. Easy, the pool was barely 10 yards long, and he's passed much harder swim tests than that. But he got out a few strokes over his head and panicked, treading water and crying out in terror, and I had to reach my hand out to rescue him. Later, at my Mom's place, he wanted to swim on a noodle in the pond, a far more dangerous water situation. Again, I insisted he show me he could swim just a short distance, and once again, he panicked and had to be rescued.

So much for starting swim lessons at 4 months old.

In fairness, the boys haven't really been swimming in months, not since they got tired of swim lessons last December. I'm sure it'll come back quickly, but apparently swimming is not sufficiently ingrained to instantly come back after a 6-month layoff. Come to think of it, my swimming wasn't really established until 4 summers of sleep-away camp from 6th-10th grades.

We're slowly digging out at home -- I can't believe I have yet more unpacking to do, from our trip now. And I still haven't finished unpacking from the move! At least I finally found my cookbooks; I was really getting worried about them. I feel much more settled now that I have them, isn't that funny?

7/12/08