Elia turns 10 months. It has been a big month for Elia. On the 15th, she got her first tooth, that week she said her first words, learned to “high-five,” and let go of both hands and stood for a moment. This month when you play music she sways or claps to keep time. She has always been a good eater and has begun to feed herself. She has branched out to more and more solids and it seems her baby food days were just a matter of weeks.
Early in the month she started to be more intentional about her words. “Dee-dee” when she saw a light, “momoma, or dadada” though not specifically toward us. She is so outgoing and her babbling seemed to be imitations of conversations. At the same time, we taught Curie that little sister was “Mei-mei,” and big sister was “Jie, jie;” and she wanted to know what to call everyone else – more on Curie’s blog.
In any case, we would ask Curie, “where is Mei-mei?” Or Elia, “where is Jie-jie?” So it is our theory that the Chinese names for family members lends itself to baby-talk, because one morning when asking “where is Jie-jie?” She says, “De-de.” But she says a lot of things. Then we repeated it, and she repeated it and looked to Curie. Curie’s first words were “all done!” And Elia’s is “Jie-jie,” big sister. She now says it regularly.
If you remember when Curie was one, her favorite song was “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider (or The Eensy Wincy Spider depending on how you learned it), Elia’s is “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” to which she will always clap, and like Curie, she perks up when she hears it. This is also courtesy of Curie; Elia had already been clapping, and Curie would sing it when Elia clapped. Now when you sing it, Elia claps as a result.
Around the same time we had gotten shaker eggs and miniature maracas from Guitar Center while waiting for dim sum, and found that Elia keeps pretty good time to music. We gave her some clave sticks and she hits those together pretty well too. That and her dancing and swaying makes for a happy baby when you sing to her.
So the second child seems to go so fast; its been almost a year. Albert loves that she sleeps on his chest and on his shoulder each night, Erin remarks how this is her favorite age. Curie keeps trying to play with her little sister, though she does want “no Elia, only Mommy” time more and more. Elia though, has hero worship for Curie, wants to play with what Curie is playing. Wants to stand on what Curie is standing on. She looks up literally to her big sister and you can catch her tracking Curie watching and learning. So it is befitting that her first words are “Jie-jie. A bit of Chinese heritage while letting her big sister know how much she loves her.
