Month: October 2006

SWEET LEILANI

Written by Harry Owens
Sung by Bing Crosby and Dennis Pavao

         the song leilani                
“Original” Baby Leilani

Sweet Leilani, Heavenly Flower
Nature fashioned roses kissed with dew
And then she placed them in a bower
It was the start of you.

Sweet Leilani, Heavenly Flower
I dreamed of paradise for two.
You are my paradise completed.
You are my dream come true.

Sweet Leilani, Heavenly Flower
Tropic skies are jealous as they shine
I think they’re jealous of your blue eyes
Jealous because you’re mine.

Sweet Leilani, Heavenly flower
I dreamed of paradise for two.
You are my paradise completed.
You are my dream come true.

You are my paradise completed.
You are my dream come true.

Source: Sweet Leilani by Harry Owens was written Oct. 20, 1934, for his daughter when she was 1-day-old; the song flowed like a rippling stream and was completed in one hour. Recorded by Bing Crosby in 1935, it received the Oscar in 1938, for best song from the movie “Waikiki Wedding”. Credited for helping revive the record industry during the depression, it was on the Hit Parade for 28 consecutive weeks. Taught to swim by the legendary Duke Kahanamoku, Baby Leilani’s first hula teacher was Napua Woodd, composer of Haleiwa Hula and grandmother of singer Amy Hanaialii Gilliom. Copyright Royal Music Publisher

TGIF

No that is not a format I save my photos in. It stands for Thank God It’s Friday. Having worked as a salaried employee for a great part of my life, and endured school and college for another substantial part I felt the TGIF and the Monday blues often. Even now, that only Andy is working I am much happier on Friday looking forward to the weekend.

Leilani can tell when it is Monday (or maybe I should call it Dadda-going-back-to-work-day). 4 out of 5 Mondays she is cranky – really unpleasant. Almost all other days she is fine, unless she is sick or hurting, or in the car or otherwise constraint for 3, 4 hours. The strangest thing is I noticed a few a-typical Mondays (like Andy had worked the weekend, or took off half the Monday) when she still was cranky.

Friday we usually go to the beach. Last Friday she got up much earlier than usual, just past 7am, and one of the first things she said when I took her to the bathroom was – pointing to my bathingsuit which hung there – becc*- her word for beach (unfortunatelly pronounced almost the same as milk – mecc* – which she says in German, but the pointing helps.) Anyway… we went to the beach and she was happy. I believed for an entire day she could thell it was Friday, until she started the same thing Saturday. Since we didn’t go to the beach on demand she kept saying it all day long. Andy thinks it doesn’t mean anything and is just babble word.

I do have a plan to fix the Monday problem – I will pick an activity that she really likes, this Monday it will be the children’s discovery museum, or find a playgroup, and try to do it consistantly every Monday, and see if that helps.

* in German the sound at the end is ch – close to the spanish J but harder – so there the spelling would be beech and meech… she has troubles with the L

“This Flower Smells Nicely”

“I’d like to wear long pants too” – this is not quite as Leilani says it – but she makes it clear what she means.

Yesterday I put a beautiful orchid on the kitchen table, too busy to notice the subtle rose-like fragrance. When Leilani sat down for her meal she pointed at the flowere, crinkled her little nose and sniffed like a dog. When I let her smell the flower up closely she was very pleased.

Today was the first cold night, in the morning I still wore long pyjama pants and Leilani was already in her day-clothes, no pants. She sat on my lap and said “Me, Me” (attention getter I think, the me – you concept is still too advanced) pointed to her legs, and then pulled on the fabric of my pants. I asked if she wanted to wear pants too, and she flashed a big smile and babbled happily – my interpretation she was happy that I understood. We picked out the pants (white dress pants) together, and she wore them until noon.

Smart Baby

Leilani is rapidly developing language and comprehension skills, it seems like she does something new every day. Gone are the days when she was a passive baby who just observed the world, smiled at her parents, and cried when she needed something. Now she has playing habits, understands a lot of language, knows many “words” (many animal sounds) that she can say when asked, and even responds to questions, directions, and commands. Here are a few recent anecdotes:

  • We always end up with random baby items all over the house, and one day she found a bib on the floor while exploring in the living room. She picked it up and waved it around, like she does with many cloth items. Thinking it probably fell from the laundry basket, I wanted to take it from her. When she realized this, she put it on her head and pulled it around her neck. She didn’t put it on or even try to, but she obviously knew it was a bib. Realizing it was late morning and she had her usual light breakfast, I asked if she was hungry. She answered with a few syllables of baby-talk that definitely had a positive, up-beat tone, so I took her to the kitchen and fed her.
  • I was with her in the play-room, and she had spread lots of toys all around. After a while, I remembered I had given her the cell phone to play with, but I didn’t see it in the room anymore. I asked her in a playful voice “where’s the phone, where’s the cell phone?” She looked around the room and eventually stared in one direction. When I looked there too and moved closer to her eye-level, I could see the phone which had been hidden by the couch from my level.
  • Leilani crawls all around the 4 main rooms of our house, for example from one bedroom to the other to find something new to play with. I assume she is starting to “know” where to go, not just go randomly to another place. So one day when she was playing with her in the play room, I heard my wife doing something in the kitchen and I wondered if Leilani could find her. I told Leilani to “go find Mommy in the kitchen, go see Mommy.” She looked up at me, looked around and when she heard noise in the kitchen she went and crawled to Mommy.
  • We used to entertain and sometimes pacify Leilani by holding or bouncing her in front of our curio displays. It was enough just to have something to look at. But recently, she isn’t interested unless we interact with her and tell her about the objects. I think she likes to hear the names of things and she’s probably picking up vocabulary.
  • One of the curio displays is in the hall, so we had never really shown it to her. But it has lots of little animal figures, stones and sea shells, and Mommy began to entertain her with the names of all the objects. It really was a big hit. First it kept her attention for a long time, then when she was looking for a new game to play she would crawl into the hall, stand up underneath the display and bang on the wall. More recently, she crawled into the hall and pointed at it. Now that I think about it, she must’ve learned that from us, because we often point out interesting things (like a cat or dog she hadn’t noticed), and she quickly understood that it wasn’t the finger that was important but where the finger was pointing.
  • Like all babies, Leilani loves animal sounds. They entertain her and we use them to get her attention when she’s being cranky about something. She has her own words for dog and cat (panting and purring), but for the barnyard animals, she just has to believe us (there is actually a goat in the neighborhood, but it never says anything). She can now do the sheep (baaaa, or ba when she says it), and the cow (we say mooo, she says mmm because she can’t make the oo/ou sound yet). She loves books that have animals and we just read them by making the animal sound for each page. But some books have fish, so I started mimicking the mouth of a fish, opening and closing with only a faint “bubble” sound to get her attention. Now she learned that too, and makes the non-sound mouth motion when we see fish.
  • She recently learned to make the sss and shh sound, and now she can say “fish” too. It started one day when I was trying to take her picture. Just to get her attention, I said “say cheese” and then to my great surprise she very clearly said “cheese.” Then Mommy taught her that the snake which we saw in California goes ss-ss (even though it goes rattle-rattle).
  • Finally, she is learning that she is “baby” or “baba” as she says it. She can pick out her picture among others when Mommy tells her to “find the baby.” She also sometimes pats herself when we say “patsch patsch baby (pat the baby). Oh, and since she knows how to pat (with an open hand) it was easy to teach her to “give me five” since it’s essentially the same thing. I’m not sure at what age she will really differentiate herself from others, because when she see a picture of all three of us, she usually says “dada” (which makes me happy) and doesn’t seem to associate “mommy” or “baby” with the photo.

Crawling and Teetering

After the frustrating trip to the Big Island, Leilani finally got down to crawling and really satisfied her desire to interact with the world. So many new things were now within reach, so many new places became accessible, and she discovered new games such as chasing a ball, a cat, or being chased by Daddy.

Recently, she loves to climb over obstacles such as Daddy’s legs when he’s playing on the floor with her—and she learned to avoid a face-plant. She even learned to “bear-crawl” on her feet instead of her knees whenever she wore a dress that tripped her or whenever going over rocky ground that hurt her knees.

But all that is not enough, it’s a big world and the big people are all doing interesting things far above her reach. I can’t remember when she started to pull herself up on furniture, but now she just stands up and holds on for balance, and does it all the time—all that baby proofing the entire house is paying off. She is also very good at leaning back down and then tipping backwards to fall down sitting.

The more she practices, the more confident she gets. A few days ago, we saw her let go of Mommy and lean towards Daddy to catch herself—no hands for half a second. And she routinely plays on shelves, either leaning and using both hands, or holding on with one and waving the other. The problem is that she sometimes forgets the need for balance and lets go at the wrong time. Today for the second time, she let go indadvertently, hit her face on a lower shelf, and cut her lip on her little sharp teeth. This caused her to bleed a bit and cry a lot. Fortunately, it was never serious and stops quickly, but today she has a swollen lip and she definitely feels it when she nurses or eats.