Erik’s Blog

As I mentioned a month ago, there was some very mild concern about Nora’s slow development in both speaking and walking, and an appointment was made to see a specialist. Well, we just got back from the specialist today, on her seventeen-month birthday. We were initially surprised that our appointment was in the Rehabilitation Department of the Valdecilla hospital in Santander. “We don’t need rehabilitation; we need habilitation“, I quipped. After some reflection, however, it makes sense that experts in the task of learning to walk and speak would probably best serve the people in a center for injured adults that need to relearn those skills.
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Today I took Nora to the pediatrician to learn the results of a blood test she had recently. Her mild anemia has been rectified by the iron supplements we’ve been giving her. I mentioned to the doctor that we’re mildly concerned about Nora’s language development. Her only word is “no”. No mamá, papá, mommy, daddy, bread, water, pan or agua. It’s also totally unclear to me whether or not she understands anything at all that we say. Confirmation bias makes it easy to remember the times she gets a command or question correct and all too easy to forget when she has some random response. The doctor asked if we thought Nora’s hearing was okay, and I said there’s no doubt that her hearing is great. Whenever there’s the faintest bit of distant music, Nora’s gettin’ jiggy wit’ it. The doctor said that Nora’s situation is a little unusual by this age, but that being in a bilingual household is known to retard initial language development. In the philosophy of “better safe than sorry”, she’s referred us to a specialist that is somehow going to “evaluate” her at some not-yet-made appointment in the near future. I’m almost more curious to see the means of evaluation than to get the result.
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Well, Nora, you keep getting more and more interesting to be around. You have no trouble whatsoever pulling yourself up to standing on almost anything, but you still lack the ability to stand up from a sitting position pushing off only the floor.

Sometimes you surprise me, like when your grocery store friend, Tona, recently asked you, “¿Dónde está la nariz?” and you pointed to your nose. I immediately asked you, “Where is your nose?” and you gestured correctly again. But you either forget things or choose not to do them. You’ve completely stopped saying your first word, Up. And your rhinolocation trick happens so rarely that seems an awful lot like chance.
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Over the course of the World Cup 2010, I have seen increased traffic to my utterly useless page about Spanish soccer chants. So I have decided to write this page to actually inform the curious internet searchers about what those crazy Spanish soccer fans are on about.
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Nora is standing nervously on the branch of Babyhood, contemplating taking the plunge into Toddlerdom. No longer content to sit and play with an object, she must be upright and moving at all times. Unfortunately, her sense of balance is more or less equivalent to that of a World Cup striker in the penalty area.

At the moment, she requires, and demands, a helping hand to hold her as she walks, but every day she is using that hand for balance less and less. Even worse than this stage when she can pull herself up, but doesn’t yet know how to fall (she arches her back so her cranium hits the floor first) is the stage we are entering in which she needs to teeter along solo, but you have to have your arms there to catch her if she falls. We are not yet ready to let her start falling all over the place yet, since she does it so badly.
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After a few dozen “You should cut her hair!” comments from friends, we finally broke down and cut Nora’s hair on her 14-month birthday today. I didn’t get a chance to take a “before” picture, but, let’s face it, she was pretty scruffy-looking. Neither Marga nor I have never really understood the point of keeping the first locks cut off a baby, so we passed on that.

Shortly after her daycare pickup time, a huge (for us) storm rolled in and it started pouring rain. I called up Marga and she said she was in a peluquería getting Nora’s hair cut. A few minutes later, I got a call requesting that I go down to the local peluquería and bring an umbrella and the plastic bubble to put on the stroller. When I arrived, I found little Nora sporting a nice new do (and some doodoo, too).
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Today, for the first time, I found Nora standing in her crib by herself. And then later I witnessed two such rises to bipedalism. However I highly suspect that yesterday was the first day she ever stood up in her crib by herself. Let me explain…
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Nora said her first word today, at an age of 13 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days. She’s a little behind the curve, but then she’s behind a lot of curves. And what most parents consider a word, I don’t. For me, for a baby to have said a word, it needs to occur within proper context, and only within that context.

Nora’s been voicing phonemes that sometimes make words by chance for a while now. It doesn’t count if she says “mama” or “dada” when she sees her mother or father if she continues to say it when she is by herself or seeing another object or person that doesn’t have that name. She’s been doing that for months, but it’s not clear that she understands that the sounds have specific meanings. She could say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, but if we’re not talking about coal miners, lungs or silicate dust, then it’s just out of context jibberish.
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On Friday, March 19, 2010, my beloved grandfather passed away, the day before his only great-granddaughter, Nora, was scheduled to fly, with her mother and me, to visit him. What saddens me most is the unfortunate circumstance that had given us hope for an encounter between my grandfather and Nora. His mind was sharp until the very end, but his hearing made communication difficult. His deterioration was slow, as he never really had any illnesses, and he was a good sport until the end. He was the favorite of all his nurses at the nursing home because he would nod in agreement to anything suggested, partly because of his poor hearing and partly because he was just such an agreeable person. I understand this completely because much of my initial charm to my Spanish family was based on my smiling and nodding and going along with whatever they suggested, when a lot of the time I had no idea what was being suggested.
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Well, Nora, here we are, less than ten days until your first birthday, and I must say that you’re a little on the slow side. Other kids that were born with you in March (or even April and May!) are pulling themselves up to a standing position, and some have a smattering of vocabulary. And you, my dear, can’t even crawl!

This is nothing new. Over the past year, you’ve shown nothing if not a chronic, systematic laziness that makes sloths look hyperactive by comparison. Pretty much ever since I cut your umbilical cord on that cool March morning, you’ve been annoyed that the world has had nothing but expectations of you to do stuff. You refused to breast feed, instead preferring to have the milk dropped into your gaping mouth requiring you only to swallow. The only thing you learned faster than your contemporaries was to turn yourself over onto your back, thus requiring less effort in the long run. Your future looks bright as a welfare mooch.
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