Up/Down

Here’s the new movie… go ahead and start downloading it so it’ll be done by the time you’re done reading this:

Molli’s become a little monkey girl. She’s been climbing things for a while, but this past week she’s become very reckless. Her favorite way to amuse herself at home now is to climb her Tripp-Trapp chair. That’s not a terrible thing, since it’s probably the least unstable chair in the apartment, but she’s been assimilating a lot of language this week and it’s created an interesting problem.

If you set Molli loose in the living room and take your eye off her for a moment, she’s almost invaraible climbing the Tripp-Trapp chair the next time you glance at her. And when she’s standing upright on it, sometimes not even bracing herself with her hands, then it’s very natural to tell her, in a calm but commanding tone: down!

So we’d been doing that for a couple of days when the problem presented itself. Suddenly she started climbing the chair, standing up perilously, and shouting “Down!” at us. Because that was the association. When we taught her “hot,” it was by touching something hot and saying “hot.” When we tried to teach her in and out, we would put one thing in another and say “in,” then take it out and say “out.” So when she’s standing on top of her chair and we’re always saying “Down!” (in an unusually loud voice), Molli drew the obvious conclusion: the word for being up high is “Down!“

And naturally she generalized her knew knowledge, so that she will now climb up high on anything and sternly proclaim “Down!“

My response to this dilemma was to try to reverse her out of it by teaching her what down and up actually mean. Man, did I screw that up!

So a lot of this video is footage of us trying to undo the damage I’ve done.

* * *

Molli seems to be fast-forwarding a lot of language development this week, and not all of it’s been backwards. If you get her attention and ask “Who’s Molli Malou?” or “Where’s Molli Malou?” (in English or Danish) she’ll proudly thump her own chest. And if she’s in the right mood and you ask “Where’s Daddy?” or “Where’s Mor?” (again in either language, including the option of calling me far or Trine mommy), Molli will actually come to us and thump our… well, whatever she can get a hand on. But those are still sketchy. Her own name, though, seems absolutely understood.

(Have I mentioned that her friend Anna Lina calls her “Moo-Moo,” and that whenever we drop Molli off at vuggestue little Anna Lina comes running over to her, says “Hej, Moo-Moo!” and gives her a kiss?)

She now knows and uses hej/hi correctly virtually all the time. She greets everyone you pass on the street with it, peering out of her stroller and calling, “Hi!” She gets a lot of smiles that way. She also knows and uses “hej/hej” and “bye-bye” correctly and interchangeably, which is very strange. (Bye-bye is actually “buh-bye” or “b’bye,” but sounds like any American would say it.) She associates outerwear with departures, though, so if you put a coat on in front of her she’ll start waving and saying “buh-bye… hej hej… b’bye…”), even if you’ve already put her coat on and are getting ready to take her out with you. Also she tends to say “hi” everytime she encounters someone. If you spend three hours with her in a room and go to the bathroom, she’ll come right back at you with a giant “Hi” (or “Hej!”) when you return. (And sometimes she’ll stand outside the bathroom door and say “hi” to you the whole time you’re in there. I don’t know why she does that.)

She’s playing around with a lot of other words and sounds, as well. She likes to says haps, and dee-dee, and doe, and doo-doo-doo, and seems to have meanings associated with them that we can’t quite figure out. She understands much more than she can communicate, so you can actually give her very small commands sometimes. (Put that back, for example, or spit that out, or bring that here.)

She’s also finally achieved enough motor skills to be able to place a peg in a hole. Prior to that, the only thing she knew to do with a peg was a trick Trine had taught her: she’d put it in her mouth with one end protruding straight out, then bring her head close to one of ours so we could bite the extending end. Then she’d open her mouth so that it was left it ours only. Then she’d come back in and chomp down on it, and you had better open your mouth on your end, for her to take it back, or you’d get a finger in your eye. This morning she and I played a version of this game in which she merely used her hand to stick the peg in my mouth, or at least the general vicinity of my mouth, repeatedly and somewhat violently. That game’s days are numbered.

She has called me dada and daddy (dah-dee!) several times this weekend with unambiguous intent. It’s still startling for me to hear anyone refer to me as their father, so I’m glad it’s taking a while for her to get the hang of it. We’ll work through this thing together.

Anyway, your video should be downloaded by now, and hopefully what might otherwise seem bizarre will make some sense based on what I’ve said… enjoy it! (And once again I went with no music or titles, so it’s close to 5 minutes of Molli but less than 12MB.) We also have a backlog of pictures, including some from this afternoon’s baby meeting, but those’ll have to come later.