The musical tastes of a one-year-old

My lovely daughter just had a bite of dinner, and is sort of chilling out - the perfect mood in which to listen to some music. So I threw my music collection on random, and am sampling her reactions to some of daddy's music...

Van Halen - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
- smiled immediately
- tapped her foot and nodded her head to the beat
- sang along with the "Hey hey hey" bit

Rolling Stones - Rain Fall Down
- more smiling

Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
- looked unimpressed
- tried to shove her finger up her nose
- pointed out a balloon (from her birthday party)

Tony Bennett - One
- looked pretty angry
- made monkey noises
- pointed out the balloon again

Billy Ocean - Caribbean Queen
- smiled, pointing at her mouth
- wiggled around
- went into a yawning and nose-poking routine

The Killers - Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
- looked vaguely concerned
- pointed out another balloon
- started lip-syncing the chorus

Barenaked Ladies - Brian Wilson (live)
- started smiling and drumming on her highchair tray like a beatnik
- mild grunting and crying
- pretended to use a walkie talkie

Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters
- happily headbutted me twice
- tried to say "Ghostbusters" at the appropriate time (came out "oh", but the intent was there)
- did that take-your-thumb-off magic trick
- tapped her hand in time (twice) during the chorus

So there you have it. Random reactions of a sleepy child to random music. Read into it what you will, although if you use this as grounds for predicting a career as a disc jockey or something, I might disagree. (Not that I wouldn't love to have a disc jockey daughter, I'd just argue about the merit of future-job-prediction based on ten minutes of listening to music. Besides, she's going to be a fish-monger or some such thing, that's already been proven in San Francisco.)

Happy 1st Birthday, Sophie!

The "first word" conundrum

I always figured that babies/toddlers just one day said a word, and that was that. First word, plain as anything. But this whole business has been anything but clear cut.

To begin with, Sophie made a wide range of noises from pretty early on, but obviously without meaning. For example, one day when she was quite young, she said "yogurt", pretty as you please, but I'm quite sure she didn't mean anything by it. So there was absolutely no intent.

Then, she got into a mimicking stage - if you said something simple, like "mama" or "dada" or "baba", she'd parrot it back, but it was still lacking a certain something. She'd call me "dada", but she'd also call our refrigerator "dada". Very indiscriminate. But she was making the noises on a more consistent basis, so maybe that qualifies? Also, in terms of interest, "mama" or "dada" as a first word is pretty common, so it (like Holly says) lacks panache. (Holly also says her first word was "panache", but I'm not so sure about that.)

So now we're getting into the fun stage. Sophie is starting to associate people/things with words, and she's much more consistent in saying the same words, and more often in the appropriate context. This is where I figure we should be counting first words, and for the honour of first word, I put forth two candidates.

The first: "fan". Sophie loves ceiling fans, and she learned to respond to "where's the fan?" by looking up, even outside, sometimes. There were a few days where she tried to mimic us and say "fah" when we pointed at the fan, and that was pretty cool. However, it didn't stick, which is why I tend to lean towards the second option:

"Book" (pronounced "booh", like "book" but without the "k"). As first words go, I like this one. Simple, classic, memorable, and it follows in the footsteps of her bookworm parents. And what's more, she's sticking with it, and using it correctly. (Mostly. A few non-book things get lumped under the "booh" banner, although it may be that she's just thinking about books.) Holly took Sophie into a bookstore today, and Sophie was wide-eyed, looking around, pointing at everything, saying "booh, booh, booh, booh". Sweet.

There we have it. I say we go with "book", although to be fair, it's a sliding scale.

Happy Easter from Sophie!

Sightseeing in San Francisco

We were down in San Francisco recently, where I was attending GDC (Game Developers' Conference) for my work. The conference was pretty neat, partially because what seemed to me to be the biggest-hyped game was one of ours this year - check out the banner for Prototype!



During one lunch break, I met up with Holly and Sophie, and we took Soph on the carousel in downtown San Francisco. She (and we) really enjoyed it - we went twice!





And how could we visit San Francisco without checking out the Golden Gate Bridge? We bused to the south side of it, and then walked over it and back again. It took us about half an hour each way, and we saw someone attempt a U-turn in the middle of the bridge, in busy traffic. They didn't quite make it, and ended up doing a three-point turn. Twits.




The final picture here is stitched together from a number of pictures - that's Alcatraz on the left, then the Bay Bridge, then the city, and the Golden Gate Bridge (where we're standing) on the far right.

Three small steps for Sophie...

We have an exciting video post for you today. Sophie has taken her first steps! Our thoughtful daughter made sure that Mommy, Daddy and Grandma Star were all present for this momentous event. If she can take three steps at ten and a half months, who knows what she'll be up to at a year!

Miss Sophia is 10 months old!

Our little girl is ten months old today, so I thought I'd share a photo so you can see her in all her ten month old cuteness. I believe this is the first photo that has caught any of her upper teeth! It may surprise those of you who haven't seen her in person recently, but she has four top teeth. In other developments, she continues to improve her balance and walked with me while holding only ONE of my hands today!

Here she is, covered in veggies after a very typical meal. I have a feeling she's going to like finger painting.