A Payton Post

I guess it would be a good time to write a post about Payton. It has been awhile.

First of all, she now says Mama and Dada. She can also say ball when she wants it. She understands Samson, but she cannot say his name. But if we say where is Samson, she will point to him. She can also clap and she will wave when you say “Hi” or “Bye.”

She was stringing sounds together pretty early and at times it seemed like she may say a word. However, being the type of person I am, I just could not accept that she had said something until I was 100% sure she understood the word. I know people who will say “my kid was talking at 3 months, she said MaMa.” Sorry, probably not, she may have stumbled into the sound and you heard what you wanted, thus reacting positively, making your kid say it more. Did the child connect the word to you?

This experiment is something I did with Payton. I would show her pictures of Lindsey and I when it was just us and see if she would react. It wasn’t until a month or so ago that she would point to Lindsey and say “Mama!” Or at me and say “Dada.” So I am able to say with confidence that she is not just parroting sounds, but instead knows those words. In case you are wondering, she said mama first, it took her awhile to say dada–it came out deedee or diedie for awhile.

Also, she is still sort of crawling. She can do a pretty good army crawl, where she just pulls her body along with her arms and sort of uses her legs, but she does not get up into the base and actually crawl on all fours. Every time she does this though and goes really fast, I say “Bubba, I can’t feel my legs.” Which makes no sense, I think I am combining Major Dad and Forrest Gump.

She does love to walk…well you know, walk around while holding your hands and being super wobbly. Again, I could probably claim she has taken a step. If you count a step as me letting go of her and takes one awkward step, almost falls, keeps her balance for a second, then falls down. I could probably say she took her first step about three months ago. But c’mon, get freakin’ real, we know that is not a real step. That is definitely not walking.

One of my reasons for mentioning this is that you see so many people on social media saying how their child is soooo far ahead of the developmental stage for their age. “My little Mordicai is two months and can already speak eleven languages and just ran a marathon.” I think it causes other people to see that and think “well damn, Sally must be way behind, she can barely stuff these Puffs in her mouth and she is ten months.” Speaking of Puffs, Payton loves ’em! She would probably eat nothing else if we let her.

She does eat other stuff though, the most surprising one was grilled chicken. We were at Applebees one night and we ordered her grilled chicken and she absolutely loved it. Ate almost the entire piece. I was fairly shocked. She also enjoyed Hawaiian pizza, which made me very proud.

People love to ask how she and Samson get along and the answer has not changed. They are great together. Samson loves to lick her face and for some reason Payton loves to open her mouth while he does it. She smiles and laughs like a crazy person. Also, Samson is very aware that she is fragile. A few examples:
1. If he and I are wrestling, and he starts getting very worked up, he will run around the ottoman at full speed. However, if she is nearby, he will stop on a dime to not run into her.
2. He was recently chewing on his bone and she crawled over and took it from his mouth. He then went over to her, and pulled the bone out of her hand, but he was very careful as to bite it where her fingers were not (do you think he would be that nice to me?).
3. She loves to reach up and grab his fur. She will really yank on it. I keep waiting for him to snap at her, but instead he just looks at her, then licks her face. I think he figured out that by licking her face, she will let go.

The picture up top is from daycare. When Lindsey told me about it, I thought it sounded like a dumb idea. Pay money to have someone take pictures of her at daycare? We have tons of pictures of her. I am glad we did not listen to me. I think that is one of the best pictures of her (how did they get her to stay still?). Also, the one of the daycare group is really cool too, Payton looks like a giant compared to the other kids (probably the only time that will be the case).

This is my family…I would say I am a very lucky guy!

Author: Ngewo