Babies are much smarter than people give them credit for. I, for one, never knew how quickly Zoe’s mind would develop or how fast she would pick up certain words/phrases/concepts. A friend and I recently had a conversation about this; I was telling her about the words and phrases that Zoe seems to understand, and it occurred to me that I should share a few here. (Q could probably share others; these were just the first to come to mind.)

-“Milk.” This is the one word (aside from her name) that we’ve used constantly since she was just a few months old. Before almost every meal, we ask, “Zoe, do you want some milk?” or simply say, “milk.” She invariably stops what she’s doing, looks up with big, wide eyes and begins shaking her arms with excitement. She’ll sometimes crawl over and try to climb on me, but that’s a relatively new thing.

-“No, no.” We’ve just started using these words on a regular basis, as Zoe has become increasingly mobile and curious. She definitely gets the concept now; she always stops what she’s doing and looks up at us when she hears the words. She typically repeats her action a few more times, but after a few “no”s she’s on to the next thing.

-“Bless you.” This is another phrase Zoe has heard a lot of – after every sneeze, that is. Lately she’s been smiling and laughing whenever she hears it – and the few times we haven’t said it right away, she looks up at us, waiting for it.

-“It’s time for a nap now.” Before every nap, we sing the same song – which begins with these words. (We also have a nighttime version, during which we sing good-night to all of Zoe’s loved ones.) Zoe recognizes this as the sleep signal; whenever she hears the first few notes of the song, she pops her thumb in her mouth and plunks her head on my chest. It works so well that I used to feel guilty about it; it felt almost Svengali-like. (I got over those guilt feelings pretty fast!)

-M

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 8:10 pm and is filed under 13.Ten to eleven months. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.