The baby animal stage

Naomi, following directly
after her big sister's footsteps,
holds a "poetry" reading. She
can actually recite significant
chunks of The Poky Little
Puppy and several other not-
easy stories. Yes, the book is
upside-down.

Naomi is getting older, but is she getting bigger? The fact that my tiny girl is still sporting last-year's styles aside, the jury is out, namely because it's hard to set an age for the child. The fact of the matter is, Naomi is solidly in the baby-animal phase of development, which means that, a chronic newborn, any given day she's assuming the identity of a baby polar bear, a baby fish, a baby penguin, a baby meow-meow and much more, and expecting me to know how to parent each of these. Fortunately, having done the baby-animal phase before, I'm totally onto this game. But then again, so is Naomi.

It started with woof-woofs. Naomi's major puppy "phase" (it's only a phase if they ever come out of it, right?) induced her to want to become a puppy, and thanks to her imagination and my apparent adeptness at playing the part of a mommy puppy, she was able to. Her puppy licks at times might be a little too real, but they're no less sweet.

Then she branched into kittens, penguins and sea turtles and shortly after could assume the toddlerish identity of any animal she had ever heard of, although she occasionally mixed up giraffes and zebras (understandable). It's interesting to note that Elise followed a similar pattern: puppies and kittens, penguins and then clownfish, which lasted for about a year.

Naomi can be fairly convincing, if only out of persistence. And I can tell that not only is she learning about important familial relationships (mommy-baby, baby-mommy, sisters-baby, Grandpa-baby, and occasionally even Daddy-baby), but also about the animals themselves.

See, she's almost as proud as
her mommy! She could've
continued all night, fueled
by the enthusiastic cheers
of her family.

The sounds: From miniature to emphatic, Naomi roars, squeaks, woofs, quacks, honks and ribbits to express her emotion as a baby animal. Sometimes she feels teeny-tiny, a mere newborn who can make only a tiny squeak. Sometimes she's a starving polar bear cub that can roar with a fierceness that makes the mommy polar bear forget about the real dinner she was making and jump into action finding some pretend morsel for her cub. Often she's a playful puppy or kitten, or a baby bird calling for its mommy bird. Other times she feels ignored as I'm talking to her sisters, and feels as though increasing her volume will ensure her survival, or at least that of her ego. Roar. Roar. ROAR!!! Silent animals stymie her for a while, but she always finds a way around their muteness. Baby bunnies vocalize their hops, for instance. Baby spiders spin their webs (literally, spin around the room in circles while saying "spin"). Etc. And she's not above making up a sound for the truly soundless, activity-less animals. The baby sloth, for instance, says something like "glurp." Did you not know that?

The sights: Not only does Naomi sound like an animal baby, she also mimics their movements and activities. She hops just like a frog--back legs in between front ones, even though this position looks fairly uncomfortable. She'll walk on all fours, or crawl; she'll flap her wings or curl up into a little ball like a newborn fawn. As a bird, she appreciates a nest as a prop, for added realism. Today she climbed onto a mounded-up brown blanket and declared herself a baby muskrat. Does she know that muskrats live in brown mounds? She really might.

Naomi likes to help me fold
washcloths. She does a
fantastic job, too, and has
branched out to other chores
as well. I think she's the only
person in the family who
likes housework.

The tastes: Naomi seems to instinctively know that all baby animals are after food, and she'll happily-yet-agitatedly baa, chirp, chatter or roar until I grab a handful of air, tell her it's grass or a bug, and put it in front of her mouth. Then she'll sweetly gulp it up, or slurp it if we're being especially silly ("Naomi, you don't slurp grass!" "Yes I do!"). If she's a puppy, she knows to ask for a bone. For unfamiliar animals, she'll cheerfully clarify before asking to be fed (What does a porcupine eat?). Sometimes the answer is, unhelpfully, "porcupine food," which she readily accepts even if she doesn't learn anything by it.

The life cycle: Never mind the fact that Naomi may or may not quite understand that baby frogs are actually tadpoles (and she takes on the identity of a baby frog fairly frequently). She's clearly internalized the fact that birds hatch from eggs and in fact, often takes on the identity of a baby bird that hasn't hatched yet. In this case she walks around in a slightly constricted manner until she proudly announces, "I hatched!" and we all congratulate her as though it actually is her birthday. Then I proactively grab her a handful of air-worms to ward off newborn hunger. I know how it works. Shortly thereafter, she learns to fly, a real-world feat Elise is still earnestly working on (but she found two goose feathers last night, and so feels one step closer--but that's another story).

Blowing her mind: We own a book on animal families, with lots of great photos, that we hadn't looked at in a long time. I pulled it out the other evening, and I'm surprised Naomi got any sleep at all that night. Any given page presented her with multiple pictures of mommy-baby pairs of dolphins, zebras, lions, rhinoceroses, penguins, raccoons and much, much more, with some sisters and daddies around as well. "I'm a baby giraffe, no I'm a baby lamb, no I'm a baby deer, no I'm a baby duckling! I'm this one, no I'm this one." Every turn of the page, Naomi was in baby-animal paradise. If only they were real--except for the big or creepy ones, of course.

Now, Naomi enjoys occasionally becoming specific animals from favorite stories. She's been Biscuit the puppy; Pete the puppy (from a library book); Pal and Penny the puppies (Pete's siblings); and the Poky Little Puppy. She insists, however, that she does not dig holes under fences, and we did, in fact, indulge in some strawberry shortcake not too long ago, just like her namesake almost did. (After all, she really doesn't dig holes under fences--and doesn't that deserve a reward?) Tonight during storytime, she took it another step and acted out the part of the Poky Little Puppy, including sniffing the ground and pretending to sleep.

This cuteness can't last forever, but I'm certain Naomi be up to something just as adorable next. And with any luck, it'll involve some more strawberry shortcake. Or at least a handful of bugs.