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One of the most amazing things about being a parent is being able to watch Emmie develop before my very eyes. Even after all of my language development classes, I had no idea how suddenly changes actually happen.

Today was one of the most exciting days I’ve had as a parent. Emmie started babbling.

This morning, she was vocalizing in her normal way: lots of vowels, and her favorite sound that either sounds like /f/ or an elephant trumpeting, depending on how she has her lips, but no syllables or other babble. I’ve been eagerly awaiting any sort of babble, knowing that this is about the age when it usually starts, and the fact that she had done pretty much every milestone BUT babble made me question her hearing for a short while (it’s fine). I was also mildly worried because she really hadn’t made many consonants other than that funny /f/ sound, aside from the occasional /m, b, d/ here and there (we’re talking MAYBE a couple times a week, if that). So how would she be able to put together nice CVCV syllables without any real consonants? (Consonant-vowel, for those who are not speechies or lingies).**

Well. Babies are here to prove us wrong.

After her morning nap, Emmie immediately and out of the blue began using serious syllables. Lots of them. Most were /abab/ or other bilabials (including her favorite bilabial fricative), but there was the occasional /d/ and /m/ as well. She was talking!!!

She kept it up all afternoon, and even talked for Peter a bit in the evening. I think she really wanted to keep practicing because she did not want to go to bed tonight. She was rolling and fussing in her crib as we tried everything we could think of to get her to go back down. At some point, as I was trying to bicycle her legs to get any gas out, she just started chattering away again. I guess she had more she wanted to tell us! After a bath and a little more conversation, she was finally asleep at 10 PM. It’s pretty hard to be annoyed with a non-sleeping baby when they are just babbling away so sweetly (she wasn’t crying then!).

I’ll post a video when I can. It’s too big for WordPress and I’m too tired to try to figure out another solution right now. Time for mama to get to bed too!

**Facebook followers will remember that last week, Emmie said “mama” completely out of nowhere one night as I went into her dark room to put her pacifier back in. It totally melted my heart, even though it didn’t mean “mama.” It WAS totally random and at that point was the only inkling of anything close to a syllable we’d heard until today. Still, it was very cool to hear a “word” in her sweet little voice!