mylène daily

It has been a while since I put the latest pictures of our little girl online. So, there are still quite a few nice ones you can check out here. Have fun!

-Talking: Unlike what was written before (I still have to smile when I think about the successful April joke .. haha), Mylène does not talk in words yet. She is producing lots of sounds, though. The tones she produces are mostly with "a" or "uh" in it: babwababwa .... mama... buhbuhbuh ... muhmuhmuh
-Crying: Yes, she has quite a repertoire ... but we found out what cry means what ... not that it helps much, though :-).
-Laughing: It's so funny to find out ways to make Mylène laugh loudly. This is a sound I cannot get enough of.
-Moving: By now, she not only rolls over her right shoulder, but also over the other one. Besides that, she has found out how to move around in circles on her belly. She doesn't crawl yet, but her ass does move up often. Furthermore, Mylène can almost sit by herself without support already. She likes it a lot when you let her grap two fingers and pull her up to sitting position.
-Sleeping: Sleeping during the night goes very well. She goes to be around seven, and wakes up around 6:15. During the day, she usually sleeps twice or three times: one time in the morning around nine, quite long (up to 1,5 hours) after lunch, around 13:00 and sometimes shortly, around five. Sleeping in the car seems to be over permanently.
-Eating: 5 times a day. After waking up and a diaper change, she gets a 250 ml bottle with H.A.2 baby milk. Then, another bottle around 10:30. Around 13:00 she gets veggies with meat. In the afternoon around 16:00 Mylène eats rice porridge (with H.A.2 milk). We try to let her drink some tea afterwards, but she does not like tea and refuses to drink it. At 19:00 she gets the last 250 ml H.A. bottle.
-Observing: She is a very active observer and keeps a close eye on everything that happens around her.
-Hair: Really growing, and it seems to be getting lighter.
-Weight: approximately 9 kg
-Size of clothes: 68 and 74
-Other: Mylène is imitating. When clapping two objects in two hands against each other, she observes very closely, and then tries to imitate this with two objects she is holding herself. Because the eye-hand coordination is not so great yet, she doesn't always manage to let the objects hit each other though :-)

Playing with Mylène is getting nicer and nicer. She observes very carefully, and also started to imitate, a while ago. I noticed this, when I was hitting on the floor with a hard object, as she was lying on her blanket close to the edge. She was observing me, must have heard the noise the hard object made, while hitting the floor, and hit the floor herself with what it was she had in her hand at that moment.

Today, Shiqi showed Mylène a small box on wheels, with building blocks inside. There was a rope attached to the box, and Shiqi showed Mylène how to pull the box towards her. Mylène observed this for a while, with her mouth half open, and then, imitated the action!

What she also imitates, or repeats, is making the "pffft..." noise with her lips. She knows how to do that, as I wrote before, and if we do that ourselves in her direction now, she points her lips forward, and starts to blow: "pffft...."

I should have written this post already a few weeks ago, because that is how long it has been since we were there. But I just did not get to do it, until today. A few weeks ago, we visited a flee market for baby stuff, babybasar they call it here in Germany. We were looking for a second-hand baby box, so when we saw the announcement of this baby basar, we were hoping to finally find what we needed. We already missed several of these basars, but this time we promised ourselves not to let that happen again! Well, we kept our promise, but we did not find what we were looking for. The basar was very very small. In fact, it was just one room in a small village club-house. Upon entering the building, the first thing we saw was a table filled with home made pie (of course ... we were in Germany, after all). We past table, and entered the basar itself, the place we had been looking forward to for such a long time .... what a disappointment! Well, at first, I have to say. After a while, I accepted the fact that we would not find our box here, and felt that this tiny baby basar (now I know why it was called "baby" basar, hahaha) was actually quite cute. Shiqi did buy some baby clothes and a milk bottle warmer (which we did not use until now...) . It took us about ten minutes to get through, and after that, we drove home again.
Here are some pictures I took, with my mobile phone.

I remember writing one day on this weblog, that in the beginning I was wondering whether I would be able to write something new about Mylène every day, if I had the time. After six months I can say now: yes ... IF I had the time, I could write something new every day. Sadly though, time goes by so quickly, that before a new development has been written down in a post, other developments that are worth writing about have already followed.

Time to catch up with some old new developments.

A few weeks ago, we noticed that Mylène started to make associations between events or occurrences. I noticed this for the first time, when I was changing her diapers. After having put a new diaper on, I took a wet cloth for cleaning her face, as I always do, and moved with it towards her face. At that moment, even before the cloth even touched her face, Mylène closed her eyes, tried to turn her head away, and made a very disturbed face. I was excited: she KNEW what was going to happen, because she saw me with the wet cloth, moving towards her face.
From this moment on, I tried to look for other examples of associations, Mylène already makes. And there are several:

• She opens her mouth when you move a spoon with food towards her mouth
• When she sees a bottle with milk, she reaches out for it, and if we move the bottle closer to her face, she opens her mouth
  (the previous two examples only work when she is hungry)
• When you take a t-shirt or a pull-over, roll it up a bit and moving it towards her, she starts to make disturbed noises or starts shouting, because she knows what's coming: that thing is going to go over her head ... and she hates that!!
• Mylène knows that when she is hitting a hard object on the floor, or on another hard object, it produces noise. She likes that and is hammering on the floor with many objects very enthousiastically.

The reason this development excited me so much, I think, was that making associations and using it as a trigger for particular behaviour, is, rather than reacting on intuition, the first step towards argumenting or logical reasoning ... a definite sign of intelligence. Perhaps trivial in the eyes of most people ... to me it was fascinating to notice!

This week, I went to the doctor with Mylène for the 5th regular check-up, the so called U5. The appointment was at 9:30, which is a bit of critical time, because usually Mylène wants to sleep around 9:00. Also that morning of course. When all was ready, and we could actually go, she fell asleep on her belly on her blanket on the floor ... at 9 sharp. I decided to let her sleep for about 20 minutes, because I would probably have had a very difficult Mylène with me otherwise. So, at 9:25 we went to the doctor. It is not far away from us, so we were not even that late.

After waiting for about 30 minutes, it was our turn. I went into the treatment room, took off her clothes, and a few moments later, the assistent came in and checked her length, her weight and the circumference of her head. Mylène was 70 cm long, 8.995 kg heavy and had a 43 cm head circumference. She is still a large baby for her age, but the weight matches her length very well, and also the head circumference was normal.

After the doctor came in, he asked a few questions: does she roll, does she laugh, does she turn her head in the direction of noise, does she take objects that are offered to her, does she have teeth.
Then, he did a lot of small tests, very quickly after each other, so I cannot even recall what he checked exactly. Luckily, we have a booklet in which we can look up the contents of the check-up. Het felt her head, the inner organs, checked the genitals, moved her legs, swung her from side to side a few times, listened to her heart, her lungs, checked her ears, and a few more things. Whatever he did, the result was the most important in my eyes: everything fine ... pffew!!

Of course, we prepared a list of questions ourselves, which the doctor answered me ... everything fine ... pffew!! About one question I would like to spend a few words. We noticed that the shape of the back of Mylène's head was a bit flat on the top, with a small bump in the middle, and wanted to know what caused this and if this was something to worry about. Of course, it was nothing to worry about. But interestingly, the doctor said that inheritence was a likely cause for this shape .... Shiqi has the same shape: a flat part on the higher part, and a bump in the middle! So, the whole thing might not be caused by lying on the back all the time, after all. It is just a genetic "abnormality", nothing serious .... what a relief .... hahaha

Even though we like to think of our little girl as a wonder kid, I have to let you know that at least regarding to the first words of Mylène, you will have to wait a little while longer before I can upload the first recordings with REAL words.

Yes ... you were tricked!!
"Dee ... dee ... dee" did not actually happen.

1 April! Did we fool you?
Here's a "fresh" picture to make up for the disappointment.

Cheers :-))

Don't forget the link in the left column with Mylène's favourite pictures if you want to keep track of the latest photo shoots. The photo site is regularly updated.

I still almost cannot believe it, but because I was a witness myself, I can assure you it's true: Mylène spoke her first REAL word. It happened when Mylène was sitting in rocking chair, waiting to be fed. There was a coulourful toy lying on the table, which caught her attention. Focussing on the toy, she suddenly pointed her little finger in it's direction, and cried "Dee ... Dee ... Dee" repeatedly. This word means "that" in Dutch and in German. Surprised and thrilled at the same time, Shiqi and I first looked at each other, without being able to react for a split second. Then, of course, we started laughing loudly, and praised Mylène with what she had just done. Unbelievable ... we did not expect the first words to come so soon already!!

Mylène looked at us, smiling proudly, but kept pointing at the toy: "dee ... dee ... dee". Needless to say that she got what she wanted this time.