Sami "Sings"

Sami turned 6 months old at the end of February. And just let me say, she could not be more engaging. We absolutely delight in her--day in and day out. It takes so little to thrill us endlessly as we watch her development.

She's eating solid foods (vegetables, cereal and fruits) like mad. She's still a great sleeper and napper. She can sit up on her own. But mostly she's just so... involved with her dad and I now. She sees things she wants and reaches for them. She concentrates so hard on objects she's holding. If we're in the room with her, she wants--no, expects--all the attention to be on her. Well, she's had it no other way, so who can blame her?

And in that vein, she of course has been learning to make sounds. The raspberry was first, and her dad and I were just so pathetically thrilled to have her communicating with us on purpose that it didn't matter that it wasn't perhaps the prettiest or most dainty of noises. That lasted for weeks.

Then, she learned to, and I don't know how else to put this, she learned to bark, in a way. It is/was wildly adorable and comical to watch. I swear you could see the idea pop into her head that she was fixing to muster up some noise, and then she would make a very determined face that involved thinning out her lips and kind of pooching them out, and then she'd squeeze her eyes shut while simultaneously throwing up her arms, and out would come any one of varied--but I'm talking LOUD noises; most of which sounded like an abrupt bark of sorts. Well, blinded by the cuteness of the delivery of it, I made it a point to react with great amusement and exaggerated attention to her every time she did it, and so of course, reinforced it immediately and she added it to her repertoire.

Then, the fake cough made its appearance. Now, she's never even been sick with a cough, but occasionally she'll be yankin' on a bottle too fast and choke herself a little, and I always would run over (oops, this forces me to admit that since she can hold her own bottle now, that I sometimes take advantage of it and let her lie down and feed herself) and while she'd smile up through the milk with her little eyes watering a bit, I'd go, "Geez! Are you awright?" All cheerily, because she never has really choked. Well duh. Of course she caught on in no time that bottle or none, if she faked a cough, she'd be rewarded with me "checking" on her (read: giving her some face time). So that joined the barking.

Now, she's so beautiful and sweet, but the barking and fake coughing weren't exactly the sounds I might have chosen for her to finally learn to make to communicate within the family. Or worse yet, during our first outing to a neighborhood "Moms and Babies" outing where I'm sure the other mothers were secretly horrified that I'd brought my baby to sit with their babies when she was so clearly suffering from a severe bout of whooping cough, or some equally noxious disease involving uncontrollable coughing.

Anyway, just starting around yesterdayish, sweet relief...

She's now saying, "Dah-dah-dah-dah...". Without yet relating her to her dear father; but we're reinforcing the connection constantly, so I don't think it will be long now. But to dah-dah-dah, just yesterday, she started saying "Deet-deet-deet-deet." It isn't the syllables that are so sweet, but the delivery of them in a soft, high, sing-song voice. It just melts my heart. She mostly started doing it when she was playing and concentrating on her own, unaware of me watching her. And she'd just be like she was singing a little tune to herself to accompany whatever she was doing.

So I'm trying to train myself to ignore the barking and the coughing in an attempt to stop reinforcing those noises, and trying to "reward" her singing with lavish attention whenever she does it.

Why didn't anyone ever tell me during my 41 years with no baby, that babies are just so damn sweet? Geez. Who knew?