From:	Eric Siegel
To:	"emily" ..., "mom" ..., "dad" ...
Subject:	Election Results? Hurricaine Mitch? No, guess again. ISABELLE!
Date:	Fri, 6 Nov 1998 09:06:41 -0700

November 5, 1998

Dear Family and Friends:

Well, it has been at least a few weeks since my last update and I know you are all dying to know the latest on Isabelle's Adventures in Costa Rica.

Well, we know longer take Isabelle out for walks. She takes us out and only holds our hand to get up or down stairs (and that will likely end soon). This morning I wanted to go left (for the newspaper), but she wanted to go right (to see the horse). You know the game of chicken parents play with their kids. They go one way and you go the other and say bye bye Isabelle and pretend to leave her behind, hoping that she will come running for fear of abandonment. Forget it--it doesn't work, at least not with Isabelle.

Seriously though, we are thoroughly enjoying watching Isabelle get more assertive and independent and since we rarely have to get any place at any specific time, we can afford that extra fifteen minutes of horse watching.

The real excitement of the past few weeks, however, has been Isabelle's rapidly expanding vocabulary. We can now add halo (when she is pretending to answer her play phone), bye-bye, ball, book, juice, nose, this, este (this in Spanish), puppy and cookie (both for dogs, since our friends have a dog named cookie and I call the huge dog next door puppy), pio (the noise baby chickens make in Spanish), bow wow, Gaby and Chi-Chi (two friends), Hilda (one of our friends here), Elias (the guy that owns the corner store), to her previous list (yeah, si, tita, no, mommy, daddy, caca...). And these are just words that she uses without hearing us say them first. She repeats just about anything we say (except her name) with amazing clarity.

In Spanish, they emphasize words at the end (whereas English usually stresses the beginning), so babies tend to say the last part of words instead of the first part. As a result, it is difficult for us non-native speakers to know if Isabelle is saying anything in Spanish other than si, caca, and pio. In any event, it is clear that she understands both languages. When we are at our friend's house, we only speak in Spanish, and we sometimes leave Isabelle at this house when we need a baby-sitter. The last couple of times that we were there with Isabelle, she began to cry whenever she heard Rachel or I use any form of the verb 'to go' because she didn't want to be left behind. Of course, once we are gone, she has lots of fun. Hilda sings Spanish songs to her and Isabelle hums them out loud when she gets home. (Well, she just hums one, which is the same tune as happy birthday, but it is really cute.)

I don't want to leave you with the impression that life with a fifteen month old is all fun and games. Before her first birthday, Isabelle rarely cried. Now she is having what we would have to call tantrums at least once or twice a day. Fortunately, they tend to be rather short and so far have only taken place in the privacy of our home. The hard part is we rarely know why she is having one; it is not like she gets mad because we won't let her have candy (although I wouldn't be surprised if that happens soon). We are learning to wait them out, and she is learning to make certain connections that are helping her develop patience.

For example, for about a month, putting on her shoes and socks was a big battle. We constantly tried to explain to her that first we put on the shoes and socks and then she gets to go outside. Well, she has finally made the connection. She no longer resists the socks and shoes, and today she even brought her shoes to Rachel to be put on. Now if we can just get her to understand why we can't go for walks when the rain is coming down in buckets, we will really have made progress.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,

Eric and Rachel