Little Chatterbox

On Monday night, Todd and I went with Margot and John to my first major league baseball game: Colorado Rockies vs. Atlanta Braves. It was great! Todd dropped Evie at his parents' house for the evening, but I realized just after he left that I forgot to hug her or tell her goodbye. The whole time we were gone, part of me was hyper aware that my daughter wasn't with me and I missed her terribly.

For the past two days since, though, Evie has been super happy and chatty. It's as if she's been telling us all about what happened at Grandma's house while we were gone, and letting us know that she missed us and is happy to be with us again. She still squeaks her excited squeals like she usually does, but yesterday she laughed--really laughed--twice! She looks at us intently and chatters away, telling us all sorts of silly little-girl stories and jokes. Evie has also started screeching the same way she usually does when she's upset--except that she hasn't been upset. We've been hearing all kinds of new noises emerging from our little girl lately.

When Evie is upset, I can sometimes wheedle her out of her bad mood by mimicing her whimpers and grunts. She'll look at me all startled, and then start smiling. Yesterday morning, she started whining, and I imitated her. She grinned and then she started imitating me, and we just grunted back and forth at each other for a while, smiling the whole time. It was actually really fun.

Just an hour or so ago, we tried putting Evie down for a nap, but she wants to be up playing, so I had to go pick her up when she started fussing. I hummed to her, but instead of settling down, she started talking to herself. She was using inflections, emphases, cadences, different sounds, everything. It sounded like a real language, and if I'd only known the words, I could have talked with her. This was new for me, and was kind of exciting! She's also been discovering her toes recently. She'll kind of croon to herself while gripping them with her left hand and then look up and, when she sees me watching her, she'll crack a huge smile and start talking to me again. Granted, it sometimes sounds funny because her right hand is always in her mouth anymore. But, garbled or not, our little sweetie is definitely turning into a little chatterbox--just like her Mommy. :D