The past 11 months have just been amazing. Time has really flown by, and Caleb has gone through the different stages of cooing, vocalising, babbling, and now, saying a few comprehensible words. As first time parents, we used to listen intently at every sound that he made, wondering whether that would his first words to us. Every mamamamamamama and papapapapapapa sounded like he was calling out to his mama and papa, even though I'm quite sure he was just babbling and not specifically calling us at all. :-)
We were quite blessed that although he couldn't talk yet, Caleb picked up a few signs quite early on, such as indicating that he wanted more, and that he wanted to eat. This certainly took away some of the frustration that came with us not understanding what he wanted, for both us and for him as well. You must understand that I'm not a strong advocator of allowing your child to watch TV too early on in life (bad eyesight, future cough potato etc), but I must say that this video really helped us to learn an easy means of communication, which he is now using more and more. He would watch his favourite video (baby signing times) over and over again. I once tried to see if he would lose interest if I blocked his view. But when I stood in front of the TV, he tried to move his body left and right to see past me, and eventually when he was not successful, he climbed out of his bumbo chair and changed position so that his view was unobstructed ;-)
This last 1 week, Caleb started to say a few more things (which is what inspired this post). He initially could only say "nan nan" and sign "milk" when he wanted some milk, "mum mum" and sign "eat" when he was hungry, and say "Mmmmm", when I showed him a picture of a cow. However, over the last few days, he's surprised us with "bird"while we were driving along the road, and "dog" when we saw one while we were in the lift. Initially, I passed it off as a coincidence that the syllables he was saying sounded like those words, but then he kept pointing intently at the animals, and he wanted me to acknowledge that I knew what he was referring to. Seems like he really loves animals, doesn't it? ;-)
Our only complaint (haha!!!), between Caleb's papa and myself, is that he seems to have learnt to call all these pet animals before "papa" and "mama"! He only screams "pa" or "ma" in desperation.... :-) Oh well, I guess you can't really be picky about how your child develops, just to thank God for each tiny step that he takes, each word that he says, each breath that he takes, that God has blessed him richly with good health, a happy disposition, and a big smile on his face :-)
Caleb's mom
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