Calming presence

When I was pregnant with Maggie, a friend asked me if I could tell anything about her personality from her behavior in utero or how I felt with her in utero.  She mentioned that a friend of hers had felt that she temporarily acquired some of her children's personality traits during her pregnancies -- and then saw those traits in her children later.  It made me stop to think; I had never really considered this as a possibility or noticed it.

While I did notice that Shay was a pretty active baby in utero and then was a pretty active baby (and toddler) after birth, I couldn't really think of personality traits of his that I had temporarily acquired while pregnant with him.  But, as I thought about this question while pregnant with Maggie, I did notice that I felt calmer and less anxious than I have ever felt as an adult.  I was in a (luckily very minor) car accident while I was pregnant with her, and even as I was transported via ambulance to the hospital to make sure that there were no internal injuries hurting the baby, I felt calm and confident that everything would be okay.  I had less of the palms-sweating-before-teaching-a-class or before important meetings than I have ever had. I never had little anxious moments in the middle of the night, wondering if I had said the right thing in that conversation, or mailed that form in to the right place.

I sort of forgot about the question, though, until this last week, when I started noticing little minor flutters of anxious thoughts -- did I remember to do that thing?  Should I be worried about this?  At first, it felt unfamiliar -- I wondered why I was suddenly such a worrywart.  But then, I realized that I've always had those little flutters of worry here and there, save for the last year.

So, I think that Maggie's presence in my life has been a very calming one, from way before her birth.  But now I'm interested in seeing how this will translate into her behavior out in the world.  She is already a pretty calm baby -- a good sleeper, pretty easy-going, with lots of happy smiles and coos.  I wonder if or how this calmness will play out as she grows?

What about you?  If you have children, did you notice yourself acquiring any of their traits during your pregnancy with them?

Language Lessons

I know from some of the reading I've done on language development and acquisition that when a child mispronounces a word, you should say it back to her correctly in a sentence so that she hears the right sounds and context.  But, sometimes, we find ourselves using the words that Shay mispronounces in the way he pronounces them.  I don't know whether we're reinforcing his notion that a banana is really a "nana," or whether he really thinks he IS saying "banana," and wonders why we're being silly and calling it a "nana."

One of these words is "Bapa."  My parents decided they wanted to be called "Grandma" and "Grandpa," so we referred to them that way until Shay was about 18 months and started calling them "Bapa" and "Bapa."  For a while, we said the names back to him correctly, until he eventually began calling them "Grrrandma" (with a nice French rolling 'r') and "Bapa."  So, we know he can do the 'g' and the 'r' sound together for "Grandma," but he still goes with "Bapa" for his grandpa.  None of us can quite figure out whether my dad is just "Bapa" now, or whether we should still push to correct it into Grandpa.

Another one is "dickle."  One of Shay's first words was more like a repeating sound of "c" and "l", referring to bicycles, tricycles, and motorcycles: "clclclclclclclclclclclclclclc!!!!" he would yell, whenever one drove/rode by.  We would reply, "Yes, a motorcycle! Wow!" and he would respond "clclclclclclclclclclclclc!"  Eventually, he began calling them all "dickle."  One of his most treasured toys is a beat-up little plastic motorcycle toy, and when he can't find it, he'll ask, "dickle?"  I find myself responding, "I don't know where your dickle is.  Where did you see it last?"  Just a moment ago, he cried out in his crib and when I went in to check on him, he whined, mournfully, "dickle" and pointed down in between his crib and the wall.  Toys end up there a lot, and it's a hard spot for me to reach, so I told him Daddy would get it.  I came out of the room and found myself telling Patrick, "you're on dickle rescue duty. It's between the crib and the wall."  Through the baby monitor, I heard Patrick retrieve the toy and give it to Shay, telling him, "You have to be careful with your dickle. Don't throw it out of your crib."  I know we should be working harder to correct this one, before he winds up at school talking about his dickle and I get called into the principal's office.

What do you do, do you correct your kids when they mispronounce words? Or do you adopt their words into a special family lingo?