Jack's Activities (and his momma's thoughts): Noises

Jack keeps making them lately. Surely to be expected, but it's interesting to see his pre-speech sounds and speech developing.

There's the "Wooo" of the fire engine he still constantly imitates, with its latest variation, "WooooMa," which apparently means, "Momma, read me my fire engine book please." Ugh. Love that he's learning, hate that he currently wants to learn about trucks, which I find infinitely boring. The "WoooMa" was repeated enough times yesterday that, amazingly, after a few hours the "Mega Rescuers" book somehow disappeared. I was seriously thinking Jack was going to lose his voice.

And there's the "Whoa, Whoa...Merr, Merr" that Jack says when he sings when he needs to wash his hands. (Clarification: He's singing "Row, row, row your boat," which we sing while Jack washes his hands to make sure he's scrubbing long enough to kill germs.)

Then there was the little gem that popped up this morning. We've started watching lots of slideshows of family pictures with Jack, one of Ben's truly brilliant ideas. Before Christmas it helped Jack learn more names of family members we don't get to see very frequently and those with slightly more complicated names. He's started saying "Stee" for Uncle Stephen, occasionally pulls out a perfectly pronounced "Tylo" for Uncle Tyler, and has gotten to "Ray-

Ray" for Aunt Rachel (which thankfully he's also able to use for Uncle Tyler's girlfriend Rachael). More often than not, it leads to Jack repeatedly insisting, "More Nonna!" He always, always wants to see more pictures of Nonna, just like he always searches "Goodnight Moon" for the door on the dollhouse. (For those of you who haven't read that classic lately, the alternating page full-color pictures of the entire room zoom in and out during the book. Since the dollhouse is in a far corner of the room, it's only in about 4 of the dozen or so pages showing the room. Every time we turn to a page that doesn't include the dollhouse, Jack says, "No. No door.")

This morning Ben was showing Jack a slideshow that included pictures of Jack's baptism and was talking about all the people who were there. Jack started parroting "Godmother Melanie" and by mid-morning had her name down so well that we had to call and tell "Ga ga Ma Ma" about it. See the video below.

As an added note, the little laugh Jack gives in the video is as close as he gets to saying, "Yes" when he's too excited to speak. I hear it many times a day, most often when I ask if he wants a snack (see the now blissfully bulging belly, with the rapidly healing umbilical hernia) or wants to read "Owl Day-dees" (one of the cutest children's books ever).

When Jack's sleeping and not making his noises (except for the occasional little snore), I've been indulging in one of the semi-guilty pleasures that got me through lots of long, lonely, new mom afternoons in London. A glass of diet coke, a piece (or two or four) of chocolate, and an episode of Desperate Housewives is my perfect recipe for an afternoon naptime break. I have about 20 hours of recorded back episodes that I'm currently going through. TiVo is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

So I run off to indulge in that (hoping I have a few minutes left!) and leave you with the picture that made me begin the last post. Jack has been talking to himself and playing in his crib a little in the mornings after (blessedly) sleeping until almost 7 a.m. One morning earlier this week we went into his room while he was chattering, expecting to see the usual debris of stuffed animals, blankets, and binkies that he always throws out of his crib in the process of waking up.

Instead, we found that Jack had lined up Waddle Waddle, More Waddle Waddle, Day-dee (Baby Andy), Teddy, and Quack Quack at the head of his bed, had covered them with blankets, and had given as many as possible binkies. Woof Woof had his usual place at the foot of Jack's bed but had a binky carefully placed near his mouth.