Monthly Archives for November 2006

Multilingual

Ruby is making two interesting kinds of sounds, aside from “mama” and “papa” (the most interesting sounds of all).

1. She speaks to her stuffed animals in a quiet, extra-high singsong. This is a voice she doesn’t use with us or her other toys, but when we waggle Clyde Frog or Oksana the bear in front of her, she sings to them in the special stuffed-animal language.

2. Ruby can whistle! We have yet to capture it on video, but she does it pretty much every day. She likes to purse her lips, and when she blows in and out, there’s a whistling noise. I’m hoping she never loses the talent – it’ll save a lot of frustration learning how when she’s an older kid.

p.s. Don’t miss the photos of Ruby in the snow yesterday.

First Word Day

Although there’s still some debate about whether or not it actually “counts”, for the past few days Ruby has been saying “Mama”.  Not just babbling “ma ma ma ma ma”, which she’s been doing for a while, but a much more definite “muh-mah” that we’re calling her first word.  She says it when Kate is around, usually, although I’ve also heard it out of context.

On a related note, she also says “ba-ba” when I’m around, and we think those are her attempts to say “Papa”.

Of course we realize that we’re projecting a lot of context onto what could very well be just coincidental babbling, but you’ve got to call it at some point — and so today is Ruby’s First Word Day.

Vomit #2

Today we took Ruby over to a friend’s house for the evening.  She was playing quietly with one of our hosts when we got the report that she was throwing up.  Other than giving us a second look at her dinner, Ruby seemed perfectly fine (if a little quiet).  She went to sleep at our friend’s house on schedule and didn’t fuss during the transfer from pack ‘n play to car to crib.
Now we’re left wondering if there’s something in common between this incident and the last one.  Today’s dinner was sweet potatoes (which she eats all the time) and polenta (aka corn grits), which she hadn’t eaten before — although she has eaten corn in the form of hominy.  The common ingredient between the two suspect dinner was onions, although in very small quantities both times.

Maybe the onions are just a coincidence.  Maybe she picked up something from one of the kids at our parents’ group meeting yesterday.  Maybe she chewed on a bad nylon strap at the supermarket.  We’ll probably never know…

Communication!

Ruby is starting to make progress in two kinds of communcation recently:

1. Signing. She has been doing the sign for “milk” for maybe two months now, and tends to use it whenever she wants something or more of something. We were excited about it at first, but that subsided when she used it indiscriminately. Lately, though, she has begun to differentiate between her excited hand-grabbing movements and a more deliberate “milk” sign.

Then, just last week, we noticed her finally doing what appeared to be the sign for “more“. She doesn’t always do it, but what’s interesting is that she not only applies it to food (where we have been doing it), but also to games she likes (we haven’t been doing it in that situation). It’s exciting to watch her take that mental leap and apply “more” to all things she wants more of.

2. Speaking. She’s been babbling for a few months now, and her sounds keep getting more intricate. Now she combines several different consonant and vowel sounds in gibberish “sentences” which are fun to hear.

Just yesterday, we got the first glimmer that maybe she is learning words. Steve and I were playing with Ruby together, and noticed she made more “ma” and “muh” sounds when I was holding her, and more “pa” and “ppph” sounds when Steve was holding her. We could be imagining things, but we’re now listening more carefully.