Much better

[velvetpage]

Last night, it took her less than fifteen minutes to fall asleep. It would have been less, if she'd laid down before dropping off. Instead, she fell asleep sitting up, and flopped over, with the result that she was bent totally in half. So I fixed her - and she woke up and cried for two more minutes. Meanwhile, I sat on my bed and did the first three rounds of a baby hat.

There was an hour-long stint around midnight. Those ones are harder, actually, because it's easy to drift off if the crying is medium- or low-intensity, and lose track of what's happening. At five o'clock, I nursed her, and she was asleep in about five minutes.

In other baby news, we think we may have a first word. We're not really sure, because "aadaa" is such a common sound, but in addition to the random usage, she says it consistently at the end of a meal, with the same intonation I use for "all done." Normal development has babies saying a first word that is recognizable as such sometime after eight months, so this is a bit too early to be sure. But I'm paying attention now.

Comments

[iamradar.livejournal.com]

It seems like only yesterday I first heard, "Baby #2 is confirmed!" to, "Possibility of first word." Wow.

[rallymama.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear that things are working out! THat was relatively quick, too.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

If we're at less than five minutes, consistently, by the end of the week, I'll be the happiest mom in Canada. :)

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

I think I need to work on my listening skills, or just start reinforcing Lizzie's random sounds consistently as a set of words. Lizzie babbles so much, at 14 months, but I don't recognize words. She says, "Ma ma" in such a sweet soft voice, but I'm not sure that she even knows that it means me.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It can be really, really hard to tell. I know what I'm listening for - my degrees are in linguistics, French, and education, and my area of interest is language development, so I've studied this in some depth - and I still missed it from time to time.

That said, the happier you get when she says a real word that you recognize, the better. If it's a close approximation, repeat it for her and reward her for it. "Caca" when pointing to the cookie jar? "You want a cookie? Here's a cookie. Good girl for using your words!" etc, etc. She's not behind - most fourteen-month-olds have maybe two or three words that they use consistently. It's just practice at this point.