120108 - UK

Cecilie melted my heart again today and Mary Ann has found the use of her fingers.

Cecilie suddenly made me this tea cup with the words “worlds best bonus mother” and a little picture of me sleeping in my good chair. Isn’t she cute?

Mary Ann found that fingers can be used to put in your mouth. It was our first time to see her suck on her tomb. She is so much more alert now. She looks and looks at us, Cecilie and just around. Neil thought something was wrong in the night when she was still awake. But I think it’s just because she is getting older. Neil stayed up with her because she was awake. I would have tucked her up, because in the night she should sleep. I don’t want a baby that doesn’t understand that she should sleep in the night. So today I have tried to entertain her more, so she gets sleepy in the night.

Research shows that babies whose parents speak to them extensively have significantly higher IQs and bigger vocabularies when they get older than other children, so interaction is especially important right now. We try to set a solid foundation by exposing Mary Ann to a variety of words.We talk about your surroundings when we take her for a walk, and point to and identify objects. Of curse she can’t repeat these words yet, but she should be able storing all the information in her rapidly developing memory. Since our home is bilingual, we think Mary Ann will benefit from hearing both languages spoken regularly. We heard that some of her verbal skills may seem to lag a bit at first. But she will not only catch up later, but she may also excel in her general language skills. That is our hope. That’s way Neil has spoken English with her since her 5th week.