Baby Babble

Just after her two month appointment, Lana started vocalizing.  For a few days she talked to anything, people, her toys, the ceiling fixtures: Anything that caught her eye, she was likely to try talking at.  That settled down pretty quickly, and she’s become more judicious about what she speaks to, sometimes seeming shy about making noise, even.  We’ve started singing vowel sounds to her, which she tries to repeat.  Sometimes she studies the way our lips move, and she just moves her mouth, and pushes breath through without sound.  Sometimes she actually does make the sound, which clearly tickles her (our amusement and praise probably help), and sometimes, also amusingly, she mimics the pitch of our voices instead of the sound itself.  Still, she seems to be studying the way people move their lips and tongues to make noises.  This girl wants to talk.

She’s been sleeping fairly well at night, and I know that typing that will probably doom me.  The hard part is getting her to go to sleep initially, as she’ll often fight hard against falling asleep at night, but once she’s out she usually does well at staying out, and going back to sleep after her feedings (I do have to qualify that one with “usually” though).  Don’t misunderstand and think she’s sleeping straight through the night or anything, but several good chunks of sleep separated by a few feedings is still really nice.  That does mean that for the most part she is up during the day with only very short cat naps, but since her day has (oh my hubris in posting about this) been starting around 9:30 or so, that’s been okay with me.  (Last time I mentioned that to anyone, she was up at 7 the next morning and wouldn’t go back to sleep – let’s hope I haven’t jinxed myself).

We’ve been continuing our floor time, so she’s still strengthening her neck muscles.  It’s neat to be able to see the muscles at the back of her neck now.  She’s also been rolling back and forth, though not quite managing to roll over (so close at times, but she stops just at the brink).  She still doesn’t use her arms much to push herself around: As soon as she starts doing that I think we may be in trouble.  For now, though, I can still stick her on a blanket on the floor and be reasonably sure she won’t go anywhere.

Wheaten is getting a little more bold around her; he really wants to be able to play.  When she has floor time he hangs around, sniffing at her gingerly and putting out the occasional tester paw (I often warn him away).  Sean laughs that every time he tries to go near her she’s flailed or moved such that he usually gets kicked or punched.  Poor guy, he just wants to be a buddy.

The other cats seem to know better.  They settle for sleeping nearby when I have her on the bed, though they seem to be more often vying for the adult attention than trying to gain favor with the baby.  They’re more likely to ignore her.

Also, I just learned that babies can get teeth about any time, a very few are even born with a tooth already showing – and babies can start teething long before teeth are actually going to break through, since apparently baby teeth are little teases.  I’ve since had that verified by coworkers, who mentioned that their child or grandchild actually seemed to have worse teething symptoms months before teeth came in than they did when the teeth actually broke through.  Lana was drooling madly, gnawing her hands, and showing other teething symptoms for about a week.  The poor thing was doing so much chewing on her knuckles, she would even occasionally gag herself from trying to get her hand so far in her mouth!  And the drool was some serious drool.  I got her a “teething buddies” toy, which I really like so far.  It both entertains her (distraction is apparently a great way to deal with teething pain) and gives her something to chew on (it has textured “hands” made for the purpose).  She enjoys sucking on its nose sometimes, too.  She doesn’t seem to want it to be cold: I had tried a frozen washcloth first, which she almost enjoyed but was uncertain about, so I tried getting the toy cold as well, but so far she seems to prefer the toy at room temperature (she was never quite sure about the washcloth, maybe because it was so cold, but she’ll really chomp on the toy, so I’m glad I got it). I think we’ve hit the end of this bout of it though, as she’s stopped doing quite so much drooling and gnawing: I’ll have to try the toy cold again next time it gets bad.  Of course, what she wants to gnaw on may change as she gets better at holding the item herself.

I notice “seem” in its various forms slipped into that paragraph too many times, but I’m leaving it: Since she can’t talk and tell us what she wants, basically what she “seems” to want is all I have to go on.

So other than an unhealthy obsession with babyGap, that’s what I’ve been up to.  I need to make a better effort at posting more frequent smaller updates!  Three months is just around the corner.