Anna and Alexis

In a most serendipitous occurrence coininciding with the holiday song Anna’s two front teeth are making an appearance. This is great for us because it means we can return all of her presents since all she wanted for Christmas, clearly, was her two front teeth. Instead we will be spending the money on frivolous electronic items for ourselves.

If you’ve received one of our Christmas cards you should know that there were four different pictures. Leigha took care to make sure people who frequently see each other got different pictures so they could see them when they visited. However, if you are anti-social or live in a remote location, fear not. I just uploaded the four pictures to Anna’s gallery. I would have uploaded them sooner but they were classified super-secret until all of the cards were received.

Finally, if you actually read this and did not receive a Christmas card but would like to receive future mailings, we did not omit you with malice but, more likely, because we didn’t have your address or didn’t think you’d be interested. Please let us know and we will rectify the situation at the next opportunity.

We are spending a low key holiday at home. Leigha’s mom (Renee) is here and her brother (Ed) will be arriving tomorrow. Hoping everyone has a lovely holiday.

First an addendum to the eight month update. In the eighth month she also:

• Successfully started feeding herself cereal. She discovered it’s not enough to just grab a fistful and slam them into your mouth. There is a fist-opening component to this exercise.
• Started log-rolling across the room. Not always in the same direction as the desired object, but consecutively rolling over nonetheless.
• Was able to stand up while holding onto an object. She was also able to do the same while only holding on with one hand for balance.

Another month has left us in the dust and we have much to report about Anna’s development. Most significant is that Anna had her first cold this month. It doesn’t seem to bother her much except for the nasal congestion. She can’t seem to shake the stuffy nose, but in the last couple of days it has been unusually runny, what we hope is an indication of the coming end of the affliction. It’s unclear whether she still has a cold or whether she’s suffering due to the climate change.

Leigha would like me to report that she has been feeding herself. Anna has been shoving puffed cereal into her mouth for a while now, although her success rate and accuracy have improved.

Since Leigha gets to spend all day with Anna, I don’t usually get the benefit of being the first to see her do something. This month was an exception. She pulled herself up from sitting to standing by herself (and some clever coaxing by yours truly). According to Leigha while standing she is also able to let go with both hands balance for a few seconds and grab back onto the support item.
Leigha taught her to do “So Big”. For foreigners like myself who are unaquainted with the technique. You ask “How big is the baby?” and the baby responds by holding her arms over her head and responding “So big!”. Obviously, Anna could only do the first part of the response. The funny thing is she knows she gets a positive response so sometimes she does it out of the blue. We call out “So Big!” even when she does it unprompted.

Crawling progress has come to a stall. She can move easily from sitting to crawling position but still shows little interest in attempting it. Despite a lot of encouragement, demonstration, and assistance she does not seem hot to trot in this area. I’m starting to think she’ll probably skip right to walking to which, I suppose, there are worse things in life.

I uploaded some new pictures to the gallery including her nine month picture and the nine month family picture. We are awaiting the top-secret Christmas card pictures for mailing out later this month. Look for them in a mailbox near you.

I was feeding Anna some of her puff snacks today when the idea hit me to do some experiments with her.

First up: object permanence. As usual I have done no prior research as to what age babies generally develop object permanence, and do what extent. At the tie of this writing Anna is 9 months and a 9 days old. We’ve had the impression she’s had permanence for a while but I don’t think we did any conclusive testing. Here was my experiment. I would take a cereal puff that she eats with her hand. I would place it in front of her and made sure she saw it. Before she could reach for it I would obscure said cereal with a toy. She would reliably remove the toy and eat the cheerio. But that in and of itself doesn’t prove permanence. She might just be attracted by the toy, move the toy and realize that magically a cheerio appeared. So the second part of the experiment began. I would place the cereal in front of her and made sure she noticed it. before she could reach for it I would place the same toy in between her and the food item so as to obstruct her view. At the same time I would discretely remove the cereal. Result? She would remove the toy and then look confused as to where the cereal might have gone.

Result: Success! Object permanence verified.

But how long would such permanence last?

Experiment 2: Three card monte.
In this experiment I retrieved three plastic concave bowls from the kitchen each of a different color. I would place a cereal in front of her and made sure she noticed. I would then place a random colored bowl over the cheerio along with the other two bowls. Anecdotally it seemed that she would initially reach for the bowl with the cereal. However, before she could do so I would rearrange the bowls in front of her as in the game three card monte. Unfortunately, there was no evidence to support the fact that she remembered under which colored bowl the cereal was located. However, when she did discover the cereal she never once ate it.

Result: Inconclusive. It is unclear whether she was no longer hungry or the bowls presented a more interesting object but I don’t think there is enough evidence here to conclusively indicate whether she did not know or did not care where the cereal was hidden.

Bowl-o-rama:

In this experiment I was trying to determine whether the bowls really were a more attractive toy for her than her traditional toys. I took two toys that she frequently prefers: A toy dog and a blue stress ball. I presented two toys at a time. One of the aforementioned toys and a bowl. Both times she chose a bowl regardless of whether the bowl was on the left or right. Then I presented both bowls to her to see which color she favored. She picked them both up.

She played with both bowls for a while. So I decided on my final experiment. What would happen if I gave her three bowls to play with? Would she pick just two and play with those? No. She alternated between the three bowls. Alternatively dropping one and picking up the priorly ignored one. No color preference was noted.

This concludes the latest installment of experiments with Anna.