Cameron now signs “eat” by pointing at her cute little pie-hole! She’s also signing “dog” with a little leg slap and she’s saying “ball” very, very clearly now. She is clearly so interested in talking! Tonight at Heather’s house for dinner, she saw Olivia on television and got so excited — she was babbling a mile a minute, and I thought I heard something in there that sounded vaguely like “Olivia!” When she saw a ball and Edwin the Cat on the tv, she made sure to let us know!
In the meantime, Dylan and Taliana started another session of Mandarin this afternoon. Heather was kind enough to pick up Dylan from school for a little pre-class play time with Taliana before taking both of them to class.
Cameron and I headed over immediately after work and got the report that class was “good.” Good enough for us to continue!
Tonight’s dinner conversation was about genetics (wherein Dylan and Taliana were exposed to words like allele, heterozygous, and homozygous), a topic on which Heather just did a lecture. Heather had us do a series of simple things to demonstrate genetic determination. We learned that hand clasping (which thumb ends up on top) is genetically determined (left thumb on top is dominant!); widows peaks, dimples, ability to roll your tongue, second toes longer than big toes, unattached earlobes, straight pinkies, and hitch-hiker’s thumbs are all recessive traits.
The only dominant trait I have amongst the ones we “tested” was the toe one; with the exception of the hand clasp (he clasps with his left thumb on top), Dylan has all recessive traits as well. Once we were home, we discovered Tom clasps his hands with left thumb on top as well (so that’s where Dylan got that gene!), has straight pinkies and attached lobes and he also cannot roll his tongue, has no dimples or widow peak, and an ambiguous thumb indicating that, aside from Tom and Dylan’s possession of the dominant gene for hand clasps, we’re all recessive over here.
We couldn’t test with Cameron, but I’m sure this will be a fun little exercise when she gets older!
Yes, I can roll my tongue.