Talking in '12

Happy New Year :)

I've done some reflecting back, and some looking ahead, and here's what I came up with:

2011 was the year of the walking.  I'd like 2012 to be the year of the talking. 

Talking progress, that is . . . I'm not expecting her to start speaking intelligibly.  But it sure would be nice if she got some more words, even if I'm the only one who understands them.  I'd like her to use her voice more, to give her tongue a workout and build those muscles. 

Weirdly, it's as if Maya can read my mind . . . suddenly, she's "talking" a lot.  (If you're a FB fan, you may have heard the video that I put up of her jabbering away in her crib.)  For the past 3 days, she's been a chatterbox.  It's amazing. 

From the beginning, she's been a silent quiet girl.  At the end of our first ever appointment with our first ever speech therapist, when Maya was about 10 months old, the therapist turned to me at the end of the session and asked something like "Is she typically this quiet?" and I said "Oh, yeah.  She doesn't really make noise.  Unless she's laughing.  Or crying."  That question haunted me.  I hadn't even put 2 + 2 together that she should be babbling.  I knew that words would come late, but I hadn't recognized the absence of the meaningless baby babble.

Now, we've got babble.  And word approximations.  Some old ("Ah!" for alligator has been around for a while now) and some brand new.  Like her name. 

That's right, people, she's (basically) saying Maya.

This was shot this afternoon.  Make sure your volume is on, and you'll get to hear: babbling, "me", "alligator", "Maya", "bad", and some jibberish.  It's all amazing.  She's finding her voice.


A hint: if you see a black box, click it. It should play.  If it doesn't, double click the "YouTube" box in the lower right corner and watch the video there.
She's getting noisy.  I've waited years for noisy.