Christmas in January

Gillian has a new tooth, on the lower left side, FINALLY!!! She has been having teething symptoms on and off for about three months. In fact, she has been cutting four teeth forever, and lately has been clingy and pitiful. The gum is all swollen on the other side on the bottom as well. The top two next to the middle ones are visible through the gums. See, our girl doesn’t do anything halfway either. None of this “cutting-one-tooth-at-a-time-to-make-it-easier-on-herself” business, she’ll wait till she doubles her tooth count to cut any more at all.

There has been a spurt in verbal abilities, which is clearly making Gillian feel quite pleased with herself. Things she consistently says (that I understand):

Cracker (cack-uh)
Cheese (teece)
Ball (bu-uh)
Bulb (Bu)
Bath (baah)
Bottle (b-buh)
Baby (bay)
Hot (ha-ha-ha)
Cold (but she says "brrrrr" instead!)
Belly (bey)
Toe (tt-tt-tuh)
Kitty ("kkkuh")
Barrette ("ba-brr")
All done ("da-doh", the little sing song way she says this gives it away; she is imitating what I say when I take her tray away after she eats)

She still mostly makes animal sounds in lieu of saying the animal name (meow, woof, quack-quack). Even more exciting, though, is her imitation abilities lately. Not only with words that she may or may not remember, but she imitates tones and sounds you sing to her. Yesterday we went through the alphabet, me saying "ba, ba, ba" and her repeating, then "da-da-da" and "ga-ga-ga" and all the way through. She successfully repeated every consonant, even "wa".

I have to capture this on video, but she is singing a little song that sounds a lot like one Nonni has been singing to her since she was born. That one is without prompting. Still no walking, and no apparent interest in walking.

There's our developmental update!