The Baby Goes Beep by Rebecca O’Connell with pictures by Ken Wilson-Max.
Onomatopoeia is big right now developmentally speaking. We visited Cosley Zoo. Ezri saw a cow and said, “moo! moo!” When she falls she says “boom.” She likes it when I imitate the sound of the wind chimes – “ting-a-ling.” Ezri likes to hear “bring-bring” for the phone and “hisssssss” for her snake puppet. This love of sounds made the book The Baby Goes Beep perfect for her. It’s text is very simple and rhythmically repetitious. “The baby goes Yum. The baby goes Yum Yum. The baby goes Yum Yum Yum Yum.” The illustrations show scenes taking the reader through baby’s day from riding in the car with “beep” to bedtime with “shh.” The repeated sentences make reading this feel like chanting and it’s hard not to develop a strong cadence. I can tell this book is successful because she will listen repeatedly and I am happy to reread it for her.
My Body by Heidi Johansen from PowerKids Press. This book hit perfectly with Ezri. It is a board book with pictures of babies with one body part highlighted. For example, one page has a baby sleeping and there is a blow up of that baby’s ear next to the baby with the words, “My ear.” Pretty simple, but Ezri is just learning the names of her body parts and reveled in pointing to them in the book and then on herself and then on her baby doll. The photo enlargements let her know exactly which body part was a knee or a hand in a way other body books haven’t. I don’t think she understands what an arrow in a graphic means yet, so the enlargements worked where other body books didn’t. The ending page with “my smile” may be lost on her at this point, but I can see I slightly older child liking the ending with the smiling baby.
Peek-A-Boo What? by Begin Smart Books is a board book with full page sized flaps. Like other books (Peek-a-who? by Nina Laden comes to mind) it rhymes peek-a-boo with another phrase underneath the flap. So, for example, the top of the flap says “peek-a-boo” and you lift to get “peek-a-two” with a colorful illustration of two dogs. The flaps have holes where the O’s in “peek-a-boo” are. Ezri can easily open the flaps and likes the bright illustrations. Like other Begin Smart books, which are designed by a team rather than created by a single artist or writer, the book feels more serviceable than inspired. These books won’t be the ones that have life into her preschool years, but Begin Smart does a good job of knowing what interests the toddler/baby and they are publishing books just for babies. We have several other books by them in Ezri’s library and I anticipate picking up more at the library.
In other developments, Ezri has started to sing. In addition to her adorable dancing, we are now treated to a rendition of the alphabet song. It starts ABC and there are other letters that follow and it has a tune. She sings other songs we can’t quite make out, but it’s cool to hear her singing.
Re: the photo
With the carseat in the car Ezri is not that interested in sitting in it. She’s usually pretty good about being strapped in, but it isn’t her favorite.
When the carseat is on the porch, Ezri loves sitting in it and climbing on it and treating it like her easy chair.
She really wants to blow her own bubbles, but just holding the wand in front of her and making an “o” shape with her mouth is not working. Putting the wand in her mouth is certainly not working.
Once we imagined Dandelion Death Squad would be a good band name. Ezri has joined the band. She likes to pick and crush dandelions. Guess they won’t get the chance to go to seed.
Ezri went out to DeKalb this afternoon and visited the park at Lincoln School where her dad played as a kid.
This is a new slide since her dad’s time on the playground.
This is Ezri in the concrete cheese play structure that Eric and Amy played on as children.
It seems much smaller to Eric to be inside it now.
Ezri’s gotten much more steady on her feet in recent weeks. She now refers to slides and swings as “wheeee.” I guess I know what noise I make when I push her on the swings or send her down the slide. “Wheeeee!”
Here Ezri is giving her pig a ride on her trike. Is it anything like a hog on a Harley?
As much fun as that was, Ezri then decides to leave pig in the dust.
