It’s amazing, the changes and overnight growth in our baby girl. Three nights out of the past five, she wasn’t nursed to sleep and then transferred, sleeping, into her crib. Instead, she suddenly became wide awake and squirmed and cooed, so I had to place her in her crib awake and undrowsy. It was freaky, albeit ultimately pretty uneventful. She’d give a couple of wails when she saw I was leaving after putting her in the crib, but by the time I got downstairs, she’d already be playing in her crib on her own, pulling herself up, rolling around, bear-wrestling, pulling on her crib bumpers, etc. She was usually asleep within half an hour or so, altho it’s a nervous half-hour for me watching her on the babycam. I take it as a sign of growth. She was MUCH more sleepy nursing as a young baby, and less and less so now. I guess she can’t nurse to sleep forever. The good thing is that she can now eventually go to sleep on her own in her crib without parental intervention (as opposed to just going BACK to sleep on her own, which she’d been doing since 6 weeks). She also doesn’t fuss while she’s working on it, so that’s pretty great. I looked up when the last time was that she had a middle-of-the-night awakening/nursing. It was in early April.

She’s also understanding words. I noticed in the past week or two that if I were to say “clap,” she’d clap. Sometimes I’d be talking to Jayne or Mr. W and simply use “clap” in a sentence, and suddenly she’d start clapping. This is also the case with “bye.” When we leave in the mornings and when we show anyone out, we say “Bye-bye!” and open and close our hands in a wave, trying to get Allie to do the same. She usually does by following our example, but now she will open-close in a wave when she hears the word “bye.” Once, she was playing in her newly-fenced off carpeted play area, and the talking toy she was no longer interested in timed out and said, “Bye-bye!” Allie stopped what she was doing, stuck out a hand, and open-closed it a few times in a wave. Then she went back to playing.

Today, Jayne reported that she was going over colors with Allie, pointing out “red,” “yellow” and “blue.” Jayne said that each time she said “blue,” Allie would turn and point up. Finally, walking into the living room and looking up, Jayne realized what Allie had been pointing at: four mylar balloons floating against the ceiling, gifts from Muoi and Bob last weekend. For the past few days, Mr. W had been allowing Allie to bat the balloons around as I said over and over, “Balloons! Balloons!” Apparently, she’d been listening.

She’s still good at respecting “No.” She’ll stop what she’s doing if we say “no” firmly. Once Mr. W said it TOO firmly and loudly when she was struggling and fighting a diaper change, and scared Allie. Instantly she froze, a look of agony on her face. My poor baby.

Oh, we’ve also started brushing her five teeth with a baby toothbrush and water as a part of her morning and bedtime routines. She’s very cooperative. She sees the toothbrush coming and opens her mouth in a big smile. I brush her front teeth, her lower gums, her upper gums. She seems to enjoy it with her mouth open, the toothbrush squeaking against the bare gums. Then I brush her tongue, and she smiles at that, too, as if it’s tickling her. She probably won’t be that cooperative for long since this is still a novelty, but we’ll take it while we can.


(If you wanna see short video clips of her waving and clapping, see this post.)