It's been awhile since we posted a big update on how Carmela's doing, so now that the exhaustion and jet-lag have been dulled by the return to work, and considering Carmela had a check-up yesterday, now's a great time for it.
As just about everyone saw, Carmela is a noodle. She tops the charts at 33 inches (back up in the 95th percentile for height), but she barely ekes out 22 pounds, placing her solidly in the bottom 25th percentile for weight. Her doctor is not concerned; after considering it for about 3 seconds, he pronounced that she will probably be shaped like her daddy.
Mom promises that she feeds Carmela well. While she's still not a terribly great sleeper, she remains a fantastic eater. Now that her vocabulary is growing (by leaps and bounds), she greets tasty bites with an enthusiastic "mmmMMMmmm," and opens her mouth like a baby bird for more. There aren't too many things she won't eat, and the things she turns away are usually either too tough for her to manage or have a funny texture she's not familiar with, such as mandarin oranges, which she spit out yesterday. She did the same thing with peaches awhile back, but now she loves them.
Carmela has a firm grip on object permanence now, and her doctor this time checked her for shared interest, which is another way to chart social development and to rule out autism. Shared interest is the social phenomenon in which a person will look in the direction of what someone else is looking at, rather than simply looking at the person (or failing to notice that the other person is looking at something). Not surprisingly (at least not to Mom), Carmela looked at what her doctor was looking at, so he determined that she's right on target with her social development. Now that she's a bit older, it appears that she's going to be a sensitive, outgoing, social child who will be interested in what others are thinking, doing, and feeling. She's already tuned in to what others are feeling and seems sympathetic: If Mom makes a happy face, Carmela beams, but if Mom then makes a very sad face, Carmela makes a sad face and begins to whimper and make sad noises.
Carmela is still very attached to her blanket, but doesn't seem to have any great affection for her other toys. Her neighbors let her borrow a toy that she's sort of obsessed with now, though; it's see-through box with holes in the top and colorful balls that squeeze into the holes — the toy comes with a little mallet for banging them into the holes like a Whack-A-Mole, but Carmela prefers to use her hands to smack the balls into the holes. The balls fall through a maze inside the box and emerge from a hole at the bottom of the toy. This toy is a miracle, and will entertain Carmela long enough for Mom to make dinner. Mom wants one for every room. Carmela also loves coloring and drawing still; Mom has stumbled across little scribbles on various surfaces throughout the living room, dining room, and kitchen. That's OK. These crayons are washable.
Language is absolutely pouring out of Carmela, and it's been really amazing to experience. Lately we've heard "mouth," "Tiny" (our little black cat's nickname), and "thank you." Mom meant to keep track of all of Carmela's new words, but there are proving to be too many to keep up with. Carmela has two ways of communicating. The first is a reaction to something she sees, and usually involves pointing and naming. If she sees Tiny, she'll point and say, "Tee," which is her word for "kitty." If a bus goes by, she'll point and say, "bus!" When she hears Daddy's key in the door, she'll run for the door saying, "Abba! Abba!" Her second way of communicating is the construction of something like a sentence, but composed mostly of gibberish. She'll look at Mom purposefully and say, "Mama." When Mom says, "What honey?", she'll follow with incomprehensible babble that obviously mean something to her (she repeats it verbatim), but that Mom seriously can't understand.
Carmela becomes a little more independent each day, and gets a satisfied look about her when she manages to pull something off by herself. For example, tonight she wanted to help Mom cook dinner, so she went to the dining room, picked up the step stool, and wheeled it into the kitchen, positioning it next to the cabinet where Mom was cutting vegetables. She grabbed Mom's hand for help, and climbed up on it, then proceeded to make herself very useful by retrieving silverware from the silverware drawer and dropping things into an almost empty glass of water on the cabinet. Mom was very proud.
