Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Annie Begins to "Talk" More
At the moment, our office is host to a meeting from the firm's executives, which means late nights for everybody. So I haven't seen much of the kids over the course of the week, as they are generally in bed (or on their way) by the time I get home.

But last night Annie woke up around midnight. Erika went up and changed her, gave her some food (she was hungry) and then came back down to bed. But Annie stayed up. As it turned out, Annie wanted to play.

I volunteered to go and spend some time with her, ostensibly to calm her down and help her drift off to sleep. Instead it was: "Hey, it's Daddy! Time to play!"

So over the course of an hour or so we played various baby games, such as: "drop the milk bottle from the crib and then say 'uh oh'", general crawling around on the floor and the ever-popular "look at me standing in the crib, Dad".

The interesting thing is listening to Annie's beginning attempts at language. She's got "uh oh" mastered to a fine art by now, as well as "buh-bye". Erika mentioned over dinner that Annie is beginning to say "Hello", and the other day I played a new game with her as she pointed to various things in the room and said "that?" (or at least something that sounded close to it). When I was with her last night she was trying to say all sorts of things, her vocalizations sounding more and more like words. It was fun bantering with her as she proudly stood up again and again in her crib, saying the word closest to her baby-sounds. These words seem to include a fairly clear "baby", "Daddy" (woo-hoo! ;-) and possibly "Annie".

Realizing that I was drifting off to sleep even as Annie wanted to continue playing, I refilled her bottle of water and headed back downstairs to bed. Annie must have been tired under all that as she didn't complain much, and must have soon drifted off to sleep herself.

Kids are great.