BabyG Speaks, Acts, Dances, Kisses...

When she first started speaking at about 10 months, I didn't believe GreenDaddy. I had noticed the woof-woofs, but wasn't in the mood to count them. He noticed the hello, and I didn't want her first word to be delivered into a cellphone. Alas. It was.

The other first thing she started to do around this time was cough. I coughed because something got stuck in my throat, she'd giggle, and then pretend to cough. So I'd cough back, and she'd cough. Funny when we're playing in the living room, not so funny when she's in her car seat sounding like she's choking to death. (GreenDadddy reminds me: if she can cough, she's not choking. Okay. But then I'd have to be freaking out whenever she's silent in the back seat. Not really a fabulous alternative...) BabyG also thinks sneezing is hilarious, and tries to copy. BabyG thinks any grunt anybody makes and she can sort of copy is funny, too.

Her words:

• 1st: woof woof (to the dog next door & who i hate not only because she talked to him before she talked to us, but because he wakes her from her nap a few times a week, usually on days when she REALLY needs a nap)
  
• 2nd: Hello (to the cellphone which we must use more often than I realized)
  
• 2nd: Daicy (meaning, Percy, the cat, and actually, for awhile, all four legged creatures)
  
• 3rd: Qua Qua Qua (Spanish for Quack, addressed to the rubber duck)
  
• 4th: Memememe (milk, mom, feed me. maybe it doesn't even mean mom.)
  4th: Dadada (come notice me Dad. also applies to GreenDaddy's dad, V. maybe it doesn't mean dad. she says neither meme or dada with frequency. i like that our names are not her first words, by the way. i think its a good thing.)
  
• 5th+: bye
  
• dougee (dog)...
  
• aaaaahhhhh
• baa! (to the picture of a sheep)...
  
• duck (to the rubber ducky if she doesn't say qua qua)...
  
• psssst (the ec, elimination communication books said it would happen...and it has! she says psst, at least 50% of the time before she's peed. in oakland GreenDaddy's's mom would screech the car to a halt and BabyG would pee in her potty. in houston, we're just not driving around so much. and it's really cold. sometimes we hear her and don't stop...)
  
• kisses (my favorite by far. not only will she do things like climb over to whatever is impressing her most and kiss it -- be it me or her grandma or a singing airplane toy. and afterwords she'll say, 'kisses')
  

Basically, she's a genius. I think if I tried harder to coach her, she'd know more words. But I don't want to stress her out. She's coming along at her own pace rather nicely. I also suspect she's learning Spanish words from our babysitter, and my Spanish isn't good enough to catch them. I mean, the qua qua thing took me two or three weeks to acknowledge. I never learned the words for things like squirrel or quack, before, you know?

Aside from words, she's mimicing a lot. My favorites: in her picture book that has one hundred photos, she has great responses: yawns at the yawning boy, pretends to wash her hair when the baby's in the bath, and, for awhile, cried whenever she saw either the sippee cup or the spoon, until we gave her one or the other.

I thought the word books were silly when people gave them to me at the shower. I never realized that in all these months when she can't communicate with perfect control of her vocal chords, she'd use them to acknowledge meaning between herself and whoever is looking at the book with her.

Lastly, BabyG dances.  If I sing the Pookey-Poo song, or GreenDaddy sings anything, or the radio plays.  She stands up against some piece of furniture and wiggles her whole middle body like she thinks she's Elvis.