She's Got Skills

Annie reached the 5-month mark earlier this week, and along with this age marker, she has developed some new “tricks” and talents.

Annie working it...oh my!

1)     Chatterbox – Annie has definitely discovered that she has a voice.  The first things we hear in the morning from her crib are not cries, but squeals and squeaks and “ohhhs” and “ahhhs.”  However adorable you are imagining this to sound, multiply that by about five.  She laughs and giggles and generally entertains us as she learns what she can do with her voice.  I keep waiting for that first “mama” or “dada” to pop out (even though I know she won’t know what she’s saying).  So far, the most we’ve gotten is something that sounded very much like “hi!”  I think I may go ahead and claim this as her first word.  After all, my first words were, reportedly, “Barry Manillo” and I’m pretty sure they must have been uttered in similar fashion to Annie’s “hi.”

Pretty sure there was a squeal accompanying that smile.

2)     Little Miss Active – Simply put, holding Annie is work now.  If she’s sitting on your lap, she suddenly decides she wants to be standing.  If she’s standing, she wants to sit.  Her arms and legs are in constant motion and all that activity is making her one strong baby.  This makes changing her clothes much more of an event.  If she decides she doesn’t want to bend her elbow so it can be shoved into a shirt sleeve, well, it’s just not going to happen.  

Such a busy girl.  She's got things to do, toys to play with.

3)     Thumb Sucker – For a while now, everything Annie has touched has gone straight to her mouth, so that’s nothing new.  But recently, among the items making their way to her gums is her own thumb.  This shouldn’t surprise me, because both David and I were thumb suckers as kids.  I know people talk about this being a bad habit – and I remember having a friend growing up whose parents had such a hard time breaking her of it that they eventually paid her to stop (and I remember it being quite a pay out) – but it really is cute to see.  It doesn’t seem to be much of a habit for Annie yet, more like just something that happens when her hand gets in a certain position.  So I’ll suspend putting an orthodontist on speed dial for a little longer.

4)     A Rude Little Habit – In addition to finding her voice and her thumb, Annie has also realized that she has a tongue.  And she is not afraid to stick it out at you.  Her daycare teacher told me that sometimes kids do that when they first start to feel their teeth coming in.  I still haven’t detected any white bumps on her lower gums, but she’s sticking that tongue out every chance she gets.  So maybe it isn’t a sign of teething, but rather an indication of how she feels about us…Just so everyone can laugh at me and get an idea of how neurotic I really can be, the first time she stuck out her tongue happened to be about half an hour after I gave her her first helping of baby food – carrots, to be specific.  So, instead of thinking, “Oh how cute, she has a new ‘thing.’” I thought, “Is her tongue swelling?  Is she allergic to carrots?”  Yeah, um, she’s not allergic to carrots.  She just realizes there’s a tongue in her mouth and she can control it.  Silly Mommy.

5)     Sit Up Straight – Just this week, Annie has been sitting up unassisted.  She’s not to the sitting up straight stage yet, but she’s got that tripod thing with her arms out in front of her going like crazy.  For some reason, this – more than anything else – makes me feel like she’s growing up too fast.  I mean, what happened to the baby   who needed me to support her head all the time?  Now she’s sitting up on her own!  That’s crazy talk.

In addition to all of these new developments, I feel like Annie also knows that David and I are different from everyone else.  She is friendly and happy to see new people and is especially responsive to her daycare teachers, grandparents, and our friends whom she sees often, but she seems to know that Mama and Daddy are special.  That’s pretty cool, I must say.  And she’s really close to hugging us now – I know she doesn’t mean to, but sometimes in her general excitement she inadvertently puts her arms around my neck and presses her face against mine, and there’s really nothing like it.

 

 

Oh, this face.

Can't get enough of it!