Watching your child grow is already amazing as it is. But there are other amazing parts of their development that I never really thought about before, like their voice.
Everyone talks about a baby’s first words sounds and then their eventual first real word. But nobody talks about what what happens between those two milestones; about the progression from cooing to distinguishable syllables of gibberish to of course, that first word.
Granted, we are not too far along in this process, but even in the 6 weeks or so that Isabel has begun talking (and I don’t mean crying/screaming during the first weeks of life, because that is their early talking), her “vocabulary” has already changed.
As she discovers the symbiotic relationship between her mouth, lips, and breath, we can hear how she is learning to form different sounds. (The moans she makes when she is going to sleep are pretty freaking adorable.) She even has her own “phrases” that we encourage her to repeat as much for our own enjoyment as for her development.
And she has learned to scream. Not painful screams. But happy, engaged screams. Screams of a child learning her range, testing the limits of her vocal chords, and making herself hoarse in the process.
When she screams, we scream right back. When she talks, we talk right back. Pretty soon, the two/three of us are saying the exact same thing, at the exact same time; cooing, screaming, and talking together. What began as a simple “a-goo” is now “hyung-gay”, intermixed with fluid, varied, and unpredictable words that she forces out of her closed lips. Once she figures out that everything sounds better when your mouth is open, we’re in for a “treat”.
Now, the tough part will be figuring out what is just a new sound, and what is her first giggle.
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