12 January 2007
Baby, speak to me!
Yannick is a strange baby. From the very beginning - and I mean from week 1 - he used to make a special sound when he wanted me for comfort or milk. The sound is 'laah' and is pronounced roughly like the French word for milk, 'lait'. So most of the time when he comes out with this, I have a good idea of what to do. It's not always right, but at about 90% of all cases. Quite handy. I have no idea where this came from and I've not heard from anybody else that their baby would do this kind of thing. Sometimes, when he is playing with daddy and I enter the room, his face lights up and he says 'laah' with a smile!
Apart from that, the normal sounds he would make reminded me of the Dutch word for onion, 'ui'. A few times when he was really upset, he made talking sounds while crying. The way they came out it really made me think that he wanted to say 'it's so unfair, why don't you help me, hold me now!!!'. What he actually said was 'ummy, ummy, booboo!' and sounded soooo sweet!
We have reached the time when babies start with first proper speech experiments. Lately we have heard a lot of 'bab' or 'baba'. But this is not related to anything (yet) and just part of playing with sounds. It's so cute to listen to him when he's 'talking', I love it.
A few months back I was actually thinking about joining a baby signing class with Yannick, but somehow I never got round to that. The theory is that babies learn to sign earlier and easier than saying words and that it's a great feeling for them to sign to their parents and being understood. I try to use certain signs that I know (milk, drink, eat) with him, but I'm not sure that he's really picking them up. I've realised that I introduced my own sign for 'give me your hands, so that you can sit or stand' and he is using that every now and then when he wants exactly that. Another thing he does is to gently bump his head against parts of my body to show me that he needs a rest and wants to drink. Maybe we can join a signing class starting next week - just sent off a message to apply.
Oh, yeah, before I forget: tooth number three is out and it looks like number four won't take too long to follow.