Today was a Nap Day for Ana.

[conuly]

She could've done without one, but since we were home anyway I just put her to bed when her sister went.

Evangeline always wakes up first, so in the middle-time, we played peek-a-boo on Jenn's bed. I'd hide, the baby would "find" me (not very hard, I just pulled the covers over my head), babble a bit, and then encourage me to hide again.

Then I realized what the baby was babbling, it was so loud and clear - "THERE YOU ARE!" (Dehyuarrr!)

Which she said again when Ana walked into the room, followed quickly by "ANA!!!!!"

That got me thinking - this kid doesn't actually babble very much. Hardly at all that I hear, in fact. So now I'm starting to suspect that, in fact, this kid never just "babbles" other than a very few times when we're playing the repeating game (which she's less and less interested in playing nowadays) - every utterance, no matter how nonsensical, is an honest effort at communication and speech.

And she's got what I consider to be quite a lot of words that I recognize, because she uses them consistently at certain moments:

Da for down, whenever she sits down, falls down, or is put down.
Uh-ah for uh-oh whenever she drops something or sees that there's a ton of stuff she's dropped sitting in the tub
Ah for "open the mouth"
Ma-ma-MA for "I want some/gimme more" (She doesn't use it otherwise, not even crying anymore)
Ana! or ADA! whenever she sees her sister, or her sister ups and leaves.
And now "Deh-ya-arr" for "Hey, look, there was somebody under that blanket!"

And I occasionally get a hi or a bye out of her as well. That's not counting her tiny vocabulary of signs (tickle, milk/food, all done, more, waving/clapping/high-fiving) either. That's a *lot*.

Of course, I could be reading a lot more into this sort of thing, but when she only ever goes "da" when she does, in fact, flop down... one starts to wonder.

Comments

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that's possible too!