That Inner Voice

I seriously took to heart all of the developmental advice about talking to one's baby. When I was home on maternity leave, we talked through every diaper change, every walk around the block, every trip to the store, every bath, every doing of chores and eating of breakfast with Abigail perched on my arm and shoulder. Part of this was to keep my brain in a full working order as I think I would have experienced a Blue Screen of Death if I was home all day and didn't speak at all...but mostly it was because I had been told that all of this was good for The Baby's Brain.

And intellectually, I knew it was good for her. Language acquisition, bonding, yah yah yah. But there was still part of me that was all, "really? like she's actually going to pick this up?" Don't ask me why I question, I just do. Then she started babbling and then there were consonants mixed with those vowels and then there was some meaningful mama-dada-up-no action going on...all while I was duly emotional over her learning to talk and completely not connecting it to all the talking I did (and in fairness, that Brian has done and her daycare teachers have done and her aunts and grandmothers have done...you get the picture that this was a team effort, no?).

However, one of the earliest little phrases Abigail busted out with was "oh wow" - which was more multipurpose than it is now and is currently her version of "that's cool" or "i noticed that!" And Brian mentioned this weekend that she must have picked it up from him -- which is true because saying "oh wow" is sort of one of his verbal tics, his verbal filler -- and it all kind of clicked into place. It really should have when she said "book" right at 13 months (and can I tell you I hadn't been that weepy since she mastered "mama?") or when she started picking up all the animal noises that we were modeling (I still don't know what a zebra or a llama are supposed to say, but I have settled on "moing, moing" for a fish), but it didn't. So yet one more reason I am glad that we are doing this as a team ;)

She's also getting better at using all this verbal know-how in contextually appropriate ways. Like enthusiastically saying "bye bye" when you leave...even though you might just be getting the mail. She doesn't know how long this sojourn will take so she wants to make sure you get an enthusiastic send off, I suppose.

But the most recent big kick has been her giving a serious approximation of a kiss. Some babies seem to pop out knowing how to kiss; not so much with Abigail. And while she has been kissed (about a frillion times) since she was brand new, this particular social interaction has kind of eluded her until recently. A good friend of mine spells kisses as "mwah!" and that is just what Abigail is doing...I never realized until now how spot on that spelling really is. You still have to ask for them so it is a command performance sort of thing, but she is getting the hang of it. That and wearing one shoe to stomp around the house -- all the better to look only semi-crazy when she then tries to press her face against the air conditioning vents like an overheated collie.