Esther's absolute favorite food for the past year has been blueberries. Her birthday just happens to coincide with blueberry season. So, for her second birthday, we invited her little friends and their families to come join us at a pick-your-own farm to pick blueberries. Here is how Esther's morning went:

On our way to the farm, raring to go!

Getting a lesson in how to pick (and which berries to choose).

Sampling a few berries.

And a few more...

How many berries are in the bucket?

Picking...

...and eating.

Yum!!

Funny...I could have sworn this shirt fit a couple of hours ago!

Language Explosion

At 16 months, Esther was not talking. No Dada and Mama, nothing. By 17 months she had one word: there ("deh"). Slowly she began adding others...down, up, tick (as in the sound a clock makes)...and by her 18-month check-up she had maybe six words that we were pretty sure really were words. I think we barely avoided getting sent to speech therapy!

Then suddenly, towards the end of her 21st month, her vocabulary took off! By the end of that month she had at least 30 words. (Her first 30 included some usual suspects, like no, baby, Daddy ("Dada") and this ("dis"), and some very, um, unique choices, like Sears ("Seeuh") and shock ("sha," meaning a static electricity shock which she got going down the slide). By 20 1/2 months she was consistently adding two or three new words a day, and by 22 1/4 months she was up to about 60 words, including, finally, Mama! (At first she still didn't address me as Mama, but would point to a picture of me and say Mama.) After that point I stopped keeping track, but I would guess she's said at least a couple hundred by now. (My criteria for counting a word as a word are that it has to be said spontaneously, not just as a repetition of something someone else has just said, and that it has to be said in a context where it makes sense.)

Mind you, it's not always easy to recognize a word! At first, many words sounded alike. Humidifier, firehat, and her friend Safina were all "fie." Ball, bus and diaper were all "ba." Car and doll were both "dah." Usually the only reason I understood what she was saying was context! But it has been fascinating to watch her language develop, and it has put me back into linguist mode.

I remember, for instance, that in my second language acquisition class we were introduced to the concept of an "interlanguage." This is a regular system used by a learner (the human brain is a great regularizer!) which matches neither the learner's native language nor the target language. Well, Esther's language development is essentially first language acquisition, despite her experience with Chinese, but I can definitely see an interlanguage at work. For the most part, she follows very regular rules in translating English words into her own pronunciation. At the beginning, her rules for syllables would have looked something like this: All words are one syllable and all syllables are open (that is, they end with a vowel and not a consonant). When she first began producing words with two syllables, she usually used two matching syllables (Dada, Mama, "bear-bear" for her panda bear, and "bee-bee" for blanket, baby or bellybutton--Tim pointed out that there was great potential for confusion if people saw Esther pointing at my tummy and saying "bee-bee"!) Now she can pronounce multiple different syllables, but she is going through a phase where the final syllable of new multisyllabic words ends in "ee." So her friend Noah is "noewee," stroller is "stoewee," an umbrella is "UHbehwee," elephant is "EHfoewee," and the swimming pool (unfortunately) is "puwee." For a while, lotion and rolling were both "wowee" (lotion has now graduated to being "woeshee"). When Tim was putting on lotion one day and she was saying "wowee" and rubbing her arm, he understandablyt thought she was trying to tell him that her arm hurt--but actually she was telling him that she wanted lotion on her arm. Interestingly, her rules don't seem to apply to words that she started saying before they were formulated. Despite her not putting final consonants on syllables until recently, three of her very early words (this, mine and five) have all had the correct final consonant from the beginning. And the "wee" rule doesn't seem to apply to, say, apple, which she has been pronouncing completely correctly for a while now.

Another tidbit from linguistics is the concept of underlying form, the idea that our mental representation of a linguistic structure may contain more information than is evident from the language that we actually produce. Well, one characteristic of English is that vowel length and quality is affected by the following consonant. Vowels followed by voiceless stop consonants (/p/ /t/ and /k/) are shorter than vowels followed by other consonants. And even though Esther wasn't pronouncing final consonants, the vowels were being affected by the consonants that should have been there! For example, even though the words on and off were both "aw," I could tell the difference because the length was different. Fascinating! At about 23 months she started adding in the final consonants on words like off, bus and step. As for milk...well, that will come up in another paragraph!

Another fascinating set of rules in Esther's interlanguage has to do with how she handles sounds she can't pronounce. Right now she can't pronounce /r/ at the beginning of a word or /l/ anywhere in a word, so she substitutes /w/, which is a pretty common speech characteristic of young children. She also substitutes /f/ for /th/--again, very common. The other sounds she has trouble with are the velar consonants (/k/ and /g/ and presumably /ng/), and that is where things really get interesting. This particular difficulty is not unusual in young children, and the normal "fix" is to substitute /t/ for /k/ and /d/ for /g/. Esther does that sometimes: go is "doe," for example. But when there is another consonant in the word, Esther will sometimes borrow the characteristics of THAT consonant to substitute for the one she can't pronounce. So grape is not "day" but "bay." Scoop is not "stoo" but "spoo" (or occasionally "poo" or "poop"). Catch is not "teh" but "cheh." And milk went through a month of being not "miwt" but "miwp." However, cup and cap were "tuh" and "tae," so the rule wasn't completely regular--or at any rate, I couldn't figure out the subtleties. (As of this writing, more than a month after I began work on this entry, most if not all of these pronunciations have disappeared, and she is now substituting /t/ and /d/ as one would expect.)

moral development

I've been fascinated lately to see how Esther's sense of morality is developing.  Actually, I was interested enough to do a little internet research on typical child moral development, but mostly all I could find were summaries of a certain person's theory that lumped ages 1-6 into one category.  If my memory serves, this stage was dubbed pre-conventional morality, and children's moral behavior throughout this stage is supposedly driven by the desire to avoid punishment.  Thus, young children's sense of right and wrong (according to this theory) is externally based rather than internally based.  

Wherever Esther's ideas of morality come from, she certainly has them.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where she saw another child breaking one of the rules I have for her.  Once a young houseguest was fiddling with the knobs on the stove, and once a little neighbor was walking onto someone else's private patio.  On both occasions, Esther said, "No!  No!" to the other child and sounded almost distressed.  She also looked at me as if she wanted me to intevene.  (I did redirect the child at the stove, but not the one on the patio.  Esther eventually followed the little boy onto the patio.)

I also remember reading a fascinating study done with very young children where the child was put into a room with an interesting object and observed.  An adult would then walk into the room and either behave neutrally or react to the object with disgust.  If the adult reacted with disgust, the child would decrease the amount of time they spent looking at or interacting with the object, even though the adult made no effort to dissuade the child from engaging with the object.  Once the adult left the room, however, the child would again pay attention to the object.  So it seems that a motivation to please adults is present, but that the child may not internalize the values of the adult they are trying to please.

Along these lines, the other day Esther walked up to me to show me something, but she had a very strange expression on her face.  I finally figured out that she had a piece of cereal in her mouth (which she had swiped from the table, breaking a rule) and was trying very hard not to open her mouth or chew so that I wouldn't find out what she had done.  So her desire to please me was strong enough that she didn't want me to know she had disobeyed, but not strong enough to obey in the first place.  Sigh.  I guess I have to be on the lookout for deception from now on!  (There have also been a couple of times recently when I've caught her playing with something she wasn't supposed to have, and she's jumped almost out of her skin and tried to put the object back where it belongs as quickly as possible.  Some of the misdeeds were a little hard to disguise, like when she unrolled a tube of toilet paper in her crib!)

Easter fun

We had a beautiful Easter. The church service was a moving celebration not only of Jesus' resurrection but of the new life that he makes possible in everyone. Then after an Easter egg hunt for the kids in our community group and a quick nap, we headed out to spend the afternoon with dear friends from our community group, eating delicious food, talking and singing.

Besides a beautiful Easter, we had a beautiful Esther! We took lots of pictures of her in her Easter dress, and so many of them turned out well that it's hard to decide which to post. But here are a few.



"These eggs have good stuff in them!"


















Methodically checking out the loot.













Family portrait












And a beautiful girl in a beautiful dress!

celebrating Family Day

We weren't quite sure what would be the best way to celebrate Family Day with a child too young to understand what the fuss was all about. But we definitely wanted it to be a special day for Esther, and we wanted to somehow affirm her history of becoming part of our family.

For the "special" part, we decided to go with special food. For all of Esther's meals that day, I picked out foods I know she really likes. Here was her menu:

Breakfast: a milk box, oatmeal, and hot chocolate
Lunch: strawberries, sardines, and toast with vegemite
Snack: grapes and a ginger snap
Dinner: rotisserie chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, and 4 ounces of blueberries

I think the pictures demonstrate how she felt about the blueberries!

For the history part, we gave Esther a photo album with pictures taken of her in China before we met her and pictures from our adoption trip. I "read" it to her a couple of times during the day, and she seemed to enjoy it.

Esther's first Family Day

One year ago today, two dazed and exhausted adults entered a Civil Affairs office in Kunming, China, to meet a small, curious baby with a lot of hair who was going to be part of their family forever. It probably wasn't a very good day for the baby. These strangers with their big noses and funny way of talking weren't all bad, of course. They carried her almost the whole rest of the day, and they never had to put her down to tend to somebody else. But they didn't know the right way to fix her bottle, and she was hungry and tired and everything was strange. At night, instead of sleeping in her own little crib, with the other babies in their little cribs all around her and a familiar ayi to watch over her, she was put to bed in a big crib with no-one else in the room but the two strangers. No wonder she cried herself to sleep!

But this was a baby who knew how to make the best of things. Even on that first day, she tried new foods and laughed at her new parents' silliness. Before long, she had decided that she liked these people and wanted to stick with them. And her parents learned, too: the right way to fix a bottle, what kinds of things she liked to play with, how to tell when she was sleepy, and where her tickle spots were. All the transitions from hotel to hotel were hard, but as time went by, the three began to feel more and more liked they belonged together.

Looking back, it's amazing how much can happen in a year.

The baby who, at nine and a half months, was on the cusp of crawling and could barely sit up straight is now a toddler who walks confidently up and down steps (sometimes without holding on to anything!), launches herself gleefully down the highest slide on the playground, and climbs anything we'll let her (as well as a few things we'd rather she didn't).

The baby who was used to getting most of her nutrition from a bottle (but LOVED trying solids) is now a toddler who will still eat anything, but only if she can feed it to herself, preferably with a spoon or fork.

The baby who loved fingering objects with interesting textures is now a toddler who can open and close locks and take the lids off all sorts of containers.

Most importantly, the baby who wasn't too sure about being left with these strangers now gives us hugs and demands kisses; quiets down instantly when we pick her up after a bad dream; revels in our attention; and copies such random details of our (often unconscious!) behavior that she leaves us in stitches.

Then there are some things that haven't changed! When we got our referral for her, it contained some information about her habits and personality. As we got to know her, we discovered that whoever had written the information up must have known her pretty well, because it was spot-on! Here are some of our favorite excerpts:

1. "When she sees food, she wants to eat." We quoted this a lot during our first weeks together! We learned pretty early on in our history with Esther and bottles that the minute she saw a bottle she would cry for it until it was in her mouth, so we had to try not to let her see us during the preparation phase. We also couldn't eat in front of her unless she was eating too, which meant eating in shifts the entire time we were in China. Even now, she will kick up a huge fuss if we eat anything in front of her that she can't have (like nuts). This child loves food! Another comment in her report was that "She can accept food that she's never eaten before," and that is still true as well. When we were in China we switched formulas and flavors of rice porridge on her several times, and she either didn't notice or didn't care. She will try absolutely anything, and likes almost everything, including raw onion, vegemite, and fresh, unsweetened cranberries. She does not, however, care for Swiss cheese. Oh, I don't think she cares for spicy hot food either. I gave her some once, and she not only ate very little, but rubbed her tongue afterwards.

2. "very active, high-energy" Yes, it does require both adjectives to adequately describe our girl! One of the most frequent comments we get about her is, "She has a lot of energy, doesn't she?" (Maybe that explains why a child who loves to eat as much as she does is barely on the bottom of the growth chart for weight! It certainly explains why I've lost weight in the last year.) Esther loves to be on the go, and would probably spend all day outside if I were willing to stay out all day with her. (This morning I got out of the shower--with wet hair--to find Esther with her shoes on, waiting to drag me to the door. She was quite offended when I wouldn't take her outside to play in the steady rain and 50-degree temperatures.)

3. "loves to listen to music" And loves to have one of us dance her around to music! That can get tiring...

4. "loves to be held....When she cries, if anyone holds her, she will stop." They neglected to mention that the person holding her has to be standing up! With all her energy, she has never tolerated being held by someone sitting in a chair, unless she really wasn't feeling well. (Lately she has let me hold and and rock her as long as I sing at the same time--but if I stop singing, she's out of there!) However, she will calm down remarkably quickly if one of us will walk with her. This is what got us through our first day together, and it has gotten us through many nights of teething and illness since. She also loves to be carried around on someone's shoulders.

5. "very playful...loves to laugh...loves to be teased" Now Esther has turned this around and loves to tease! When I go to get my shoes on, for example, she will sometimes grab them and run away with them, hoping to be chased. She also loves playing hide-and-seek, being tickled, and doing silly things (like putting a stuffed animal on her head).

6. "She responds positively to strangers and novel stimuli." If one of the comments we get most frequently about her refers to her energy, the other is, "She's not shy, is she?" Esther LOVES people, and will often wave madly at total strangers, saying "Hi! Hi! Hi!" until they respond. (She does not, however, like to be picked up by people until she's been around them for a little while, and sometimes not then.) She also loves anything new and interesting. We call her our Curious Esther.

And after a year of sharing life with this amazing little person, we are still occasionally exhausted, but much less dazed, and so incredibly blessed. It's good to be family! Happy family day, Esther!

Esther and Daddy

I just had to share a few photos of Esther and Daddy having fun together. Esther thinks she ought to do everything that Daddy does...including shaving! So here they are shaving together in the morning. (Esther's "razor" is a plastic shape with a magnet on the bottom that goes with one of her toys. It happens to be a similar shape to Tim's razor, and she "shaves" with it regularly.)





Esther also likes to "help" Daddy play his guitar. Here she is checking out how it feels to be in a guitar case.











Of course, listening to the music is pretty cool, too.












Esther's turn to play!