Chloe the Character

Chloe is changing so much lately! She's a full-on walker now and goes all over the house. I love her new found freedom and mobility. It makes her so happy and she's playing a lot more with Solana, which is so fun to see.


Her walking is a little scary to me, though, because she still loses her balance sometimes and falls. And her general walking style is "crazy baby on the brink of losing control." Also, because of her vision impairment she doesn't see some obstacles and sometimes has trouble with distance and depth perception. For example, she tends to not see people's feet or legs on our livingroom carpet. I never noticed that our carpet was so close to flesh color! We sort of camouflage into it and she trips over feet and legs all the time simply for lack of seeing them. So I think she's a tad bit more accident-prone than your typical early walker.


The other day I left the front door open for more light. There's a glass door there so it's ok to leave it open. Chloe is obsessed with closing doors, though. She always wants the doors shut and even shuts the baby gate if it's left open.* She went to shut the door but I think she leaned over some shoes that were on the floor and misjudged the distance to the door. When she missed the door she fell forward and all the way down (forehead first) into the wrought iron bars at the bottom of the entryway table. She got a huge egg on her forehead with a red line in the center. I thought she cracked her head open! This was two hours before Dave left for Colorado and I was pretty scared. I wanted to go to the hospital. Solana dragged Dave out of the shower to come look at Chloe as I tried to wrestle ice on her forehead. We held ice there for several minutes and she seemed just fine. The ice must have helped a lot because you couldn't even see the bump by the next morning.

Chloe's speech development took a little haiatus when she started walking. In fact, I felt like she back peddled a little bit. But she's suddenly picking up again. She currently has three favorite words. Hair, Hi, and Up.

She'll pick up a baby brush, Solana's brush, a comb, any hair tool she can find, and walk around saying "hair" and brushing her lovely locks. She'll make sure to walk up to us and say "hair" several times while doing it, too. "Yes, Chloe. You're combing your hair. How nice. Hair. Your hair is so pretty." Brings a smile to my face just thinking about it. She'll also point out my hair ever time I pick her up and sometimes give me a new coiffure, as well.

Her other favorite word right now is "hi!" This is not new. She loves saying "hi" to people and will say it over and over again. I think she loves that she always gets a response. The new thing is that now she says it with emphasis. I imagine she says it like two thirty-something girlfriends who haven't seen eachother for months meeting for lunch. "Hiiiii How are you DO-ing?" She seems to get more expressive and high pitched every day. Love.

She also learned the word Up and asks to be picked up (usually so she can go over the baby gate). The gate sort of loses its convenience factor but the fact that she's learning words is more important. And I love doing something for her when she asks.

Body parts she'll point to: head, arm, leg, foot, shoe, tummy, nose, eye, glasses

Chloe will also say: "Up" (sounds like, "Uh" when she wants to be picked up), Please (sign language) when she wants something, Thank You (sign and verbal - sounds like "da doo") when receiving something and prompted.

And the most exciting was with her Vision Therapist this morning. The therapist brought some books. They are baby board books. They have one object per page and many of them have high contrast backgrounds. They're great for kids with visual impairments. The single objects make it easy to find the object to focus on and the high contrast background makes it easier to see. Anyway, she would open the book showing Chloe two pages and ask Chloe to point at the _______. Chloe got several of them right! Car. Baby. Cat. Dog. Ball. Shoes. There were two pictures to choose from each time (one on each page) and she pointed to the correct picture each time! She actually touched or tapped on the correct picture! We look at similar books together all the time and I'm constantly verbally labeling objects, pictures, etc. It's like she's actually absorbing some of it. So cool!

Wow. I've just written a novel. It's very excited to see these new changes!

*Sometimes I set Chloe down in the living room to play while I cook. The kitchen is adjacent to the living room and separated by a baby gated open doorway. So I can hear her playing. If Solana comes out of the bedroom area and leaves that gate open Chloe will go through the open gate to the bedrooms shutting the gate behind her. More than once have I peeked out of the kitchen because Chloe's being too 'quiet' only to find a missing baby and a closed gate. "How did she get out?" It took me a few minutes the first time to figure that one out...