Category: Nem Nem Niamh

2nd

Alex / / Alex, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia

Late last night I made too much sound in the hallway closing a door and I think it woke up Nem-nem.  Maybe that isn’t what woke her up, I don’t know.

Her distress cry didn’t die down; it got worse.  We let her cry for a very long time and finally thought we’d try calming her.  I changed her diaper and it calmed her, and I realized half way through that it didn’t need changing.  It didn’t calm her for very long.  We tried to soothe her and help her get back to sleep and she got angrier.  Eventually she was in angry hysterics and we tried addressing many possibilities – hunger? – wanting to sleep in our bed? – rocking? – thirst? – wanting her blanket and doll? – needing a massage? – just leaving her alone again in her crib for a long time? – nothing worked.

Finally I decided to try to take her on a car drive and play lullabies from my iPod.  No change – still angrier.  After maybe half an hour driving she began settling down, after she’d fussed and fidgeted with her blanket for a long time, and apparently got it the way she wanted.  Her anger settled to fatigued, heartbreaking whimpers.  Then she was quiet for a good five minutes.  Until she started mildly whimpering again.  I thought she had finally fallen asleep; apparently not.

I thought she might want help spreading her blanket over herself, because with all her fussing with it she’d managed to get it fairly well spread out (after first kicking it off and rejecting it several times).  So I pulled to the side of the road and went to her car seat to help her with that, but when I spread the blanket further over her, she got very angry again.

Then it clicked for me.  If we try to feed her at meal time she gets upset.  She wants to use the spoon herself, or use her hands, without our help.  With the blanket now this was the same thing.  She’s not getting enough recognition for her independent learning, not getting enough sense of accomplishment and admiration from us for all that she does and learns by herself.  Mago got plenty of that – every new milestone was a marvel for us, because we were witnessing the growth of our own baby for the first time.  Even being aware that parents tend to not do this with their second or subsequent children, and making sure she’ll have plenty of video tape and photos of herself as a baby (as second children often don’t), I’ve overlooked the marvels of her progress, of what she learns and does.

Realizing all that at that moment, I told her I’m sorry; she can arrange the blanket herself, and told her she’d done a good job.  I started talking to her about how mom and dad are proud of how much she’s learning and doing, that she’s a big girl, that she does so many things by herself and is learning so much, and that we’re so happy to have her and watch her learn and grow – and with this kind of talk she calmed right down.  She knew exactly what I was saying.

When I got back home she got angry when I picked her up out of her car seat and wrapped the blanket around her.  I said she can wrap the blanket around herself, and I’ll put her in her crib and she can go to bed by herself.  Again she calmed right down.

When we got to her crib she was still wide awake, but I told her she can put herself to sleep, and she went back into her crib and let me leave the room without any complaint, and there was no further complaint the rest of the night – she was probably back to sleep within minutes.

There are several entries Tia and I have wanted to write, about Mago and Nem-nem – I fear the memories may be leaving 🙁

Nem-nem still babbles delightfully, and the babble is becoming more nuanced and expressive.  It often seems there is some clear meaning I’m missing if I only knew the language.  She’ll often mix in, when she’s upset, our names: “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!” or “Da-duh-da-da-da-da-da-deh-da-da!..”

Sign language signs she knows, or things she has words for:

Bear, cougar, lion, tiger (a low, nasal grunt)

Cat

Flower (exhales in imitation of sniffing)

Dog (pants and sticks out tongue like a dog)

Water

Elephant (she makes the same sign for a giraffe)

Frog

Bird/Duck

Light

Tree

Horse (does a lip-flapping noise)

Cow (moos)

Baby

Insect/Fly (Makes a buzzing sound)

Probably others I’m forgetting.. I owe it to her to keep a list going for a while 🙂

Walking and utterances, sleep talking

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia

Nem-nem for a while has been learning to walk, and has abandoned crawling and walks pretty well by now.

I took her for a walk recently down the same place where Mago used to visit the deer lawn ornaments (we still do sometimes) which I swear I’ve written about but can’t seem to find the entry.. hope it’s still there.. anyway I took her for a walk. On the walk she pointed to a tree and signed “bird”, and when we passed flowers, she scrunched her lips and nose together and exhaled sharply, to imitate sniffing: this is her own sign for “flower”. I set her on the sidewalk to examine some purple daisies in someone’s yard, and she batted them, and when they bounced on their stem she laughed. Then she noticed some ants and stooped down to examine them, and she did this short low sort of raspy grunt. It’s her word for “creature”: she does this for bugs, dogs, animals she sees on TV etc.

The other day she looked at me from her car seat while I was outside the car, and she called: “Dada”. I pointed at her and said “Baby”. She smiled and did the sign for baby: holding one hand on the other elbow and cradling her arms back and forth.

Tia tells me the other day when they went to a playground, Nem-nem said “play”, and the other day she said “doll” when handed a doll. This morning we read a muppet babies book, and seeing baby Kermit she made the sign for frog: hold the back of your hand on your chin and curl three fingers down and up several times.

Mago has amused us with more things he says in his sleep. Tia heard these ones:

In the way a child declares small facts like having visited Denver, importantly:

I’m someone’s brutha!..

Then in a sing-song sort of way going up on the second word, he continued:

Whatch’your name?

Recently I put his blanket back on him at night and he said:

You’re the nice fishy.

Another night I put his blanket back on him and he stirred and urgently whined in alarm:

You’re underwater!

The other night I just went and held him while he was asleep. In his sleep he instinctively tried to put his arm around my neck, but it just kind of flopped up to the side of my neck and he couldn’t get it far around. After I stayed there for a while he whined in his sleep:

I can’t reach you!

So I let his arm drop and I put his plush monkey (Millie) in his arms.

Father’s Day, Sambo-Wan

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia

At the city carnival just over a week ago, I took Nem-nem on a ferris wheel and held her tight.

I didn’t know it was going to go around fast. She was terrified for her life, screaming, sobbing, squirming, and inconsolable. I felt terrible. I’d have never taken Mago on a ferris wheel when he was an infant – I was too protective. Maybe I’ve swung too far the other way.

(Although usually I’m.. very protective.)

Driving home from dinner at my dad’s this past Sunday (Father’s Day), I played favorites in the CD player that lulled Nemmy off to sleep. One of them was Time After Time as it appears on the album for STRICTLY BALLROOM (probably Tia’s favorite film – or she showed it to everyone in High School). I reached back and held Mago’s hand and sang to him in between treacherously brief glances back to the road (I can’t believe that either considering the last paragraph I wrote) and he lovingly smiled back at me. In a while he asked:

Daddy, does this song teach you to pick me up if I fall down?

That night around 10, about an hour and a half after I finally got him in bed (Tia was off late in another city taking someone’s family photograph), he came to the bathroom as I cleaned out his toilet. He held up a folded paper card he’d colored – I guess from Nursery at church – and said:

Daddy, I forgot to give this to you. This is yours.

It was a line drawing of a father holding up his kid, a boy about Mago’s size/age, the card colored with blue marker scribbles solidly clumped together roughly inside every shape. Inside was a note scrawled with a nursery worker’s help:

Daddy I love you too.

A simple thing like that from any little kid cuts any parent down into a burbling lump much smaller than the kid.

The other day I was holding Nem-nem and making her “jump” on a bed with Mago, and other general riotous fun, including making silly babbling monster sounds for her and chasing Mago around the room, all of which she laughed uproariously at and squealed and giggled. Then Mago said:

Let’s play Sambo-Wan.
Okay, how do you play that?
You go like this.

He stood, bending down to touch his foot with one arm, thrusting the other arm up in the air behind him, making a fist. Another way to play Sambo-Wan apparently is to “Do tricks and stuff”, including jumping off a bed and getting as many little kicks as you can in, midair and crouching before you land.

Doggies, dada

Alex / / Alex, Nem Nem Niamh

I’d have written last entry, if I remembered, that Nem-nem also said “dog” when shown images of piggies, and also an elephant, to which she said “doggy” (with a light “d”).

Yesterday when she met me at one point Nem-nem looked at me and said “Da-da”.

This morning I woke up late and came into the main room where Tia was playing with Mago and Nem-nem. Nem-nem was off by herself with toys, and when she saw me she started babbling, crawled over near me, picked up a rattle, held it up to show it to me and rattled it, put it down, crawled in front of me, looked up at me and signed “Dada” (extend your thumb and tap it twice on your forehead), then reached up for me to pick her up.

Duck, bird, dog, work, a need

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia

Nem-nem is really coming alive with babble. Also starting English (if her babble isn’t strictly English) words beyond “Ma-ma” and “Da-da”. When she sees a duck she’s sometimes said, several times in a row, “duck” with a kind of guttural scraping – German? – g sound, and signs “bird” as she says it. She also says “bird” (“bii”) and, starting yesterday at the pet store, “dog”, which she repeated later when shown pictures of dogs.

The other night Mago came from his bed a while after bed time and said to Tia:

Mom, I have a very important job to do. I have to feed you, and dad, and Nem-nem, and me.

And headed for upstairs, Tia then learned from him, to get cookies.

Mago sometimes talks in his sleep. It can be quite funny when he mumbles indecipherable things with great meaning (the babyhood exhibited in Nem-nem so well has never and will never escape him, I hope.) Last night he came and slept on a mattress in our room because Nem-nem was keeping him up. This morning he was stirring in his sleep and said

Mommy, I need..

She rushed to him and put the blanket back over him:

A blanket?

He went back into deeper sleep. Maybe fifteen minutes later when I was up, I put the blanket back on him again and put Dermitt (his plush dog toy named after a character in P.B. Bear) back in his arms, and I suppose he finished his sentence, whispering importantly, with a kind of awe:

.. treasure.

Fishes addendum, painting and coloring

Tia / / Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Pictures, Tia

I took these pictures yesterday, the last of which is Mago with his “aquarium”.

svgallery=2008_june_ussins

Last Friday I was working in the yard for maybe 4 hours, and finally came in and Mago had put on Clifford’s puppy days DVD all by himself. I rested in bed and when Clifford put painted paw marks all over his owner’s shirt, ‘painting’ her shirt giving her a great idea for her friend’s birthday party, Mago giggled delightedly. I then told him we could go buy shirts to paint. We’ve done that, and he painted with sparkly paint on a green shirt, using stencils: a crab, a seahorse, a fish, and waves and smears.

Alex’s addition: A week or so ago in church Tia showed crayon drawing to Nem-nem, with a large red crayon. I think that was Nem-nem’s first seeing crayon coloring? As she watched the crayon leave the first broad marks on a page, she smiled.

“Stickers”, Abd

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh

Tia sent me this IM on behalf of Mago:

Yesterday morning Nem-nem spotted a fat robin on the front lawn and pointed to it. (Tia notices birds too. We’ll be driving on the freeway and she’ll tell me there was a hawk or some other bird of prey – and it’s past too soon and I don’t see it.) I pointed to the bird also, said “Bird” and signed it to her, by moving my fingers like a bird’s beak. (I forgot the beak goes on your chin when you sign this.) Nem-nem tried to say the word:

Abd. AAbd. Aadb.

– and imitated the sign. A while later from downstairs she ventured upstairs (I stayed behind her to keep her safe) and to the front door, to go back outside. I picked her up and we waited in the front yard. She signed bird – she wants to see it again. In a long while the bird emerged from the bushes again, hunting for worms. “Aabd, aabd” she repeated and signed. We watched it listen to the ground and then peck – finally it tugged a really big worm with a lot of tugs out of the ground and chewed it apart in pecks until swallowing it whole and flying off to prevent an arriving bluejay from stealing it.

I hope those last grisly details really helped you appreciate this whole entry more.

Tia reports that Nem-nem picked a tissue up the other day, held it to her face and blew several times – just blowing, not any effective nose-blowing – just imitating.

From the Mouth of Babes, etc.

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh

Mago tends to like old-style “chiptune” Nintendo music. This is pleasing to his father. I played for him my mp3 album ripped from the game Legacy of the Wizard – explaining to him that this title more or less means “remember the wizard” – whatever that is supposed to mean, ha! – and he liked it. Here’s an exemplary track to accompany your blog reading.

[audio:08 Shop.mp3]

(download .mp3, ~1.2 MB)

I also explained to Mago that this is from a game I played as a kid. On the same drive (this was all quite a while ago – but every now and then he’ll ask me to play it again) a song from my collection came on entitled ShadowFire –

[audio:02 ShadowFire – tr 02.mp3]

(download .mp3, ~2.2 MB)

– a Commodore 64 tune I found and burned. After he learned this was from a game I hadn’t played, Mago said:

I played ShadowFire! when I was a kid.

– which he reminds me every time the song is played.  On a different occasion while I was playing with him before bed, he said:

Daddy, I want to come live with you at work.

Whoops.

There’s a wall in the bathroom without an if-I-knew-the-name-of-it-it-would-probably-be-there thing that would keep water from spilling into the wall, and spiders from coming out of the wall – though we haven’t seen but very few spiders (as opposed to dozens) since politely asking them to find somewhere else to live – if you have faith, this works! – but by those spiders he has seen coming out from under that wall, he has dubbed it “The bug wall”.

Nem-nem has started waving “hello.”

Humming at her shadow, Eglor, more answers

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Tia

Two evenings ago as I was holding Nem-nem she saw her shadow on a curtain in front of me, and was delighted – as if something alive were in front of her – and she started humming at it and waving her arm. I never capture the best of this stuff (by the time I get my recorder the best has passed), but I did get some of it:

[audio:2008-04-04_Nem-nem_hums_at_her_shadow.mp3]

(Download mp3, ~33KB)

A few days ago Mago explained to me about a movie he watched. Here is that:

[audio:2008-04_Mago_explains_Eglor.mp3]

(Download mp3, ~780KB)

[Note: it turns out these are at a MHz rate not always playable by the Adobe Flash player (I’m guessing older versions of the plugin). If these sound funny from the player here, you may download the mp3 and listen to it in any other player.]

Tia has clarified for me that “Eglor” is his way of saying what they called Bilbo – a burglar. She also said he absolutely loved it – this was the cartoon rendition of The Hobbit done I think in the 70’s (that rendition was awful – my opinion – but you can’t keep the magic of these stories out of any rendition – it’s the stuff of magic). He watched it twice.

“Eglor” sounds so much like a name for a character you would find in these series that as Mago related this to me I wondered if I’d simply forgotten about some character. I’ve heard it said that good writing is remembering things wrong – so here’s to the tale of Eglor.

This morning around 3 AM Tia nudged me to go to Mago, who came out of his room for some reason. I opened the door and he stood there, and seeing me, he started whining and throwing a tantrum – he wants to see mommy, not me. Sorry, friend. I took him back in his room and his tantrum mounted; finally I got out of him that he’s looking for Snowman (his plush toy). I searched around the house (I wouldn’t but he’d been searching and asked for help). I came back and found Snowman at the foot of his bed. I started putting Mago’s dinosaur blanket back on him to meet another tantrum from him; he insisted I have to be in the chair, like mom, not beside his bed, to put the blanket on. I’d indulge this if he weren’t throwing a tantrum, and I prompted him that I respond to a big boy voice. He kept his tantrum up so I simply put the blanket on, and he was relieved to see it can go properly on from beside the bed (as well as the chair). I thought I’d capitalize on the learning opportunity:

Did daddy put the blanket on you from beside the bed?
Yeah.
Did he put the blanket on right?
Yeah.
What did you learn from that?
Stop hitting.
Okay.

I gave him a hug.

Do you want another idea?
Yeah.
Did you learn that daddy can put the blanket on right from beside the bed?
Yeah.

I snuggled him for a while.

Did you look for mom?
Yeah?
Who came?
Daddy.
Did daddy help you?
Yeah.
What did you learn from that?
Loving Jesus.
Okay.

I can see as I’m writing this it’d be better to prompt him for details of events – he’d put it together more, he’d be doing more thinking. I’m doing better with this though.

Audio recordings Copyright 2008 Richard Alexander Hall all rights reserved.

Aliens

Alex / / Alex, Art, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh

This morning I was listening to the finale music for the film SIGNS (a very favorite film, also featuring this very favorite music), and Mago asked me what it was. I told him it was from a scary movie with aliens where the people are in danger, but they (SPOILER if you haven’t seen it!) [spoiler]beat up the aliens[/spoiler]

Naturally, he said he wants to see the film, and I told him I’ll let him.. in many years. But I held him tight as the music progressed, as if we were endangered (as the music so well conveys).

In a while Nem-nem awoke and I sat with her and listened to the same music continuing. Mago looked at her admiringly and said:

Heh. She’s scared of the aliens. She’s like, I want to see the scary aliens!

I don’t know where he picked up that idiom, but it tickles me. He’s three years old on Monday.

Mago wanted to draw the aliens (which I explained to him are scary pretend monsters), and he did so. Here are three drawings of them. These are done with his left hand – he’s a southpaw like his dad – and like his uncle who shares his middle (real) name 🙂

You can right-click (on Windows – I dunno fer Mac, sorry) to see an option to view in a new window – larger. I don’t know why the first isn’t showing as large as the others – I like the first best.

svgallery=Mago_Aliens

Bop

Alex / / Nem Nem Niamh

A few days ago Nem-nem was sitting and removed a sock from her foot. Looking at her mother, she held the sock and waved it up and down, saying affirmatively and instructively with each wave:

“Bop. Bop. Bop.”

[I actually did make preparations toward exporting and posting video of Nem-nem and Mago when I said I’d post video – I just didn’t actually export and post. Technical difficulties – I’ll get there..]

Smiley, Ma-ma, They won’t let us give up

Alex / / Alex, Mago Elf Liam, Nem Nem Niamh, Religion, Tia

Last night as I read a book to Mago for bed time he noticed a small smiley-face sticker I had put in the center of the face of my watch. I’d put that sticker there as a reminding device a week or so ago because it came as sudden inspiration to the question: how can I keep myself on track, on duty, and remember what I’m supposed to do? (I can be quite distracted, and even my very simple daily list gets neglected).

Mago: You have a smiley face on your watch.

Me: That’s to remind me to be nice to you, because when I’m nice to you, I’m really being nice to Heavenly Father, because he wants me to be nice to you.

Mago: And when it’s frowning, you’re mean.

Nem-nem started a few days ago to clearly say “Oomm-a, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma, ma-ma..”. And it refers to Tia. One evening Tia left Nem-nem in the crib to go to sleep, and left the room, but Nem-nem didn’t sleep, and pulled herself standing up beside the rail and called:

“Ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma..”

Reports Tia – I copy this from a web site for her siblings to keep in touch with Tia’s parents on a mission:

..the other day as [Mago] was giving me a hard time, I whined and crawled into his bed and complained,

“[Mago], I give up, I don’t want to be a mommy any more. I just want to be Tia and have friends, and go shopping, and do my own thing!”

And he said in a very sympathetic tone,

“Mommy, you can’t give up. You don’t have friends, you just have a boy and a girl!”

He helped me make biscuit dough and tasted it, and said “Ick, it tastes like grownup skin!”

A little bland and salty? And this is an apparent contrast with baby skin, which evidently does not have an unpleasant taste.

I didn’t want him to watch a video segment on insects because it was so gross I was afraid it would give him nightmares, and he said “Mom, put it on and don’t say ew!”

Tia’s sister Janae related having the same experience that same day:

…Just tonight I [said] i was about to give up being a mom.

“I have no more Mom energy…i think i’m just going to quit.”

[My boy] gave me a kiss on the cheek and said,

“Please keep trying…you have to be a mom …because you ARE a mom!”

He’s right; It’s a job you just can’t get out of. Hang in there, little Mommy… We’re all in it together!