Talking and signing

Anja has been talking like crazy this past week. Her vocabulary is pretty limited, but she finally understands that words are connected to objects. For example, if you open the refrigerator and she sees the cheese on the door she yells, "Chee!" and reaches for it. She also says "Wahahah" (water). And she just started making the sign for bird! We started teaching her some sign language a few months ago, but we aren't really consistent about it. I'm surprised that she picked it up at all. If she sees a bird in a book she makes the sign for bird, and on a walk today she looked into a tree with some singing birds and held her hand up and made the sign. I have a video of it that I'll upload as soon as I find my card reader.


Her current vocabulary that mostly only we can understand: Cheese, bread, water, baby, bubbles, banana, dog, flower, daddy, no. Just the basics you need to get through the day. It's amazing that she can talk all day long with only those words.

We took a trip to the top of Mt Tamalpais recently, a mountain about 30 min from here. There would have been a great view of San Francisco, but for the fog, which is the norm this time of year.


Here's a cool view from the side of the mountain just at the level of the fog. San Francisco is under that blanket of fog.


As usual, she had a great time. This backpack may very well have the highest cost:value ratio of any baby item we've bought. Well, except for maybe the crib that we got used for $25. We picked up the backpack for $60 on craigslist and it was worth every penny.


Recently we brought out some finger puppets that Anja got as a gift from Grandma and Grandpa S. a while back. She was a little young for them then, but she really loves them now! We only gave her a few, we're saving the rest to bring out on her first plane ride in July as a special surprise.


My field work has been fun. I only have two more days next week and then I start my new permanent job. Here are a couple of pictures from my current gig. This is a cow that was eyeing us suspiciously when we walked through her pasture to our site. It looks like she's alone but there are actually about 50 other cows just below that hill who were all watching us too.


And here's one of the super cool thistles we were surveying. It's called cobwebby thistle and is completely covered by these white hairs. Luckily it's native.