Gift of Gab

This week Maisie has been surprising us with her new vocabulary. She woke us the other morning by loudly saying "WOO WOO WOO". Also she finally caved into Austin's "Maisie can you say Dada?!" By finally repeating it back to him. She has totally put it together that I'm mama too. She will be playing and all of the sudden she will stop, look right at me and say mama. I think she has also put it together that Austin is dada. She will go all day without saying dada until he comes home (either for his lunch break or when hes off work) and then she will belt it out all of the sudden. We are no longer Austin & Sammie. We are now officially mama & dada. We have been upgraded and it feels great!

The past few days she has started conversational babbling. She really sounds like she is having a full conversation minus the correct words, of course. She plays with her toys and chats away and even changing up her facial expressions. It's amazing how babies pick that stuff up. They learn so organically, just by watching and listening. I still can't believe it. What happened to my stationary, only cried if she needed something baby that was here just a few months ago!?

Since Maisie is so good with her hands (and now communicating) it only made sense to start signing to her. I have been doing it for last couple months and just the basic signs that would make every mom's life a little less crazy. Like milk, more, all done/finished, hungry, thirsty even please and thank you. I thought I saw her do milk once, but right now it's too hard to tell. She watches diligently and I think in no time she will be signing what she needs. Austin isn't 100% convinced, but we'll show him!

Austin is also starting to speak more German to her as well. We are ordering a bunch of board books in German that way they can have a special reading time. Hopefully in the process of him teaching her I will get a little better as well. Our goals are not for her to be necessarily fluent, but to have an ear for it and to have an understanding of the language. She loves to talk and copy cat so I am sure she will love learning the guttural sounds.

I see her growing and learning every day and it's amazing to say the least. There are some days where I stop and all of the sudden it hits me "oh my goodness this beautiful baby is mine." She is my pride and joy and sometimes if it weren't for her squirming away I could seriously kiss her all day long. She is just too cute!