Happiness

Audrey is a lot happier recently... much less screaming, except during the times when you'd expect it (i.e. Jared bogarting whatever she was playing with, or Jared having something she wants to bogart). I see a direct correlation between her happiness and her ability to communicate. She understands so much of what we say now - requests like "Audrey, go give Jared a kiss" are easily understood and enacted. And she is able to communicate her requests to us more clearly now too which is a relief for both of us.

She has a lot more words she can say now too - hard to understand if you're not with her a lot, but they are becoming more distinguishable. Some common ones:

• "Mine!" - I don't remember Jared emphasizing this word quite so much. Not too surprising given he was the only child at the time, I suppose. Over the weekend she came into Jared's bedroom with me to wake him up from nap, and she crawled onto his bed, laid down inbetween his two pillows, spread out her arms and said "Mine!" in a very emphatic tone of voice. I hate to encourage it, but we all laughed so hard.
• "GAH GAH!" - doggy. Almost always said in a very excited tone of voice, whenever she sees a dog, sees a picture of a dog, or sees a picture that kind of looks like a dog.
• "Geh" - Jared
• "Ba-ba" - bottle. I have been calling this 'bottle' for months and she doesn't seem to get it, but as soon as I started saying ba-ba, she immediate grasped onto the concept and knows exactly what it means and knows how to tell me that this is what she wants.
• "Mo" - More. Often combined with ba-ba. She's even drinking more milk now and I think it's because of the communication. We used to give her a bottle when we weren't really sure what she wanted, and now that she can clearly say "yo, give me a bottle" or "Yes dear mother, a bottle is indeed what I would like to have right now" so we know that she gets the bottle when she wants it, and she'll down several more ounces of it than she used to a month ago.
• Mama/dada/the basics
• "Nigh-nigh" - she seems to use this word not just for "Take me to bed" but also to describe her binky and blankie.

A few months ago I was at the end of my rope, playing ref between the two of them and nobody was ever happy... now it seems that they're both happy nearly all the time. I must burn these memories into my brain, especially the scene over the weekend when she came in to wake up Jared with me, and she crawled onto his bed and leaned over and gave him a kiss, which he enjoyed so much that he kept repeating "Audrey, give me a kiss!" to which she would gladly toddle back over to him and lean in and smooch.

Comments

[kristin]

Really? She says "the basics"? Can't think of a situation where a child would need to say "the basics". Maybe it's something like daddy's working on a complicated computer problem and Audrey pipes up with "yo pops! did you check the basics? you moron."
= )