Rhymes with Diva

So we have this daughter, who's gaining personality, coordination and size by the week (day-to-day it's a little harder to notice changes, with one notable exception I'll describe later).

Eva's devotion to the lens of a camera is known to anyone familiar with our family. I got an annoying sample of it yesterday, when I was trying to get some candid photos of her attempts to crawl. Kate had left Eva on the bed and gone to do some chores, so I stayed by to keep an eye on her. Right away Eva did what she constantly does now when on her stomach: planted her hands and knees, lifted herself off the bedspread, rocked herself back and forth a few times, then rose up on her toes, only to collapse on her face with a muffled exclamation.

Babies are cute in general, of course, and as an even stricter rule, parents are hopelessly drunk with their own baby's cuteness. A parent, however responsible and law-abiding, would still find something cute even in his or her child dropping a lit match and starting a housefire. If obsession with your own baby's adorableness is nothing more than an evolutionary psychological instinct, then it's overpoweringly strong.

So of course, I dote over simple and foolish things. Like how she seems to enjoy giving up on her attempt to crawl, and launches herself onto the bed with a cry, even before her face touches the coverlet. It's becoming a game to her, I think, where she just gives up and says the baby equivalent of "Bah!" while taking a dive onto the bed. She never faceplants on the floor. Kate and I both believe this is deliberate.

I wanted to get some action photos yesterday of her, rocking back and forth, up on her toes, and facefirst on the bedspread, but Eva wouldn't let me. As soon as she saw the camera, her rear end was safely down on the bed, her hands were splayed before her and her head was raised high, what I call her boardroom pose. Then the aggravating kid would smile. She wouldn't let me take a candid photo.

If I hid the camera, waited for her to rock up onto her knees again, and then nipped the camera out and quickly took a picture, by the time the stupid digital camera had beeped and actually taken the shot, Eva was back in her pose. She was too quick for the machine. Maybe next time I'll have to hit the button while the camera's still hidden, and then bring it out only at the very last second, and take my chances that I've aimed it somewhat correctly. But that might not work either, since she can hear it, and she also gets suspicious. Once she'd seen me do the hide-and-seek routine a few times, she was much less prone to get to work crawling.

It's a little distressing sometimes to see her stalled out at the same point, for nearly a week now: up on hands and knees, or even hands and feet, but unable to make her legs move independently, and start the crawling motion. It's a big change, and I have trouble with simple motions sometimes too, as anyone who's seen me try to do a dolphin kick would know (two of my minor life's ambitions are to do a triathlon and to learn the butterfly). At times I see Eva with her legs straight together, and wonder if she doesn't have any coordination in her legs. (Run-of-the-mill paranoid parental thinking. I'm getting used to it.) She'll be crawling very soon.

But it's fascinating to see how slowly, bit by painstaking bit, babies gain abilities. From being a mostly inert bean seven months ago, Eva is now on the verge of zipping all over the condo, and turning the place upside down. I missed two months last fall while up in Alaska, but by December, Eva was able to raise her head for a few seconds at a time. Soon she had the arm and shoulder strength to heave her upper body off the floor, hold her head vertically, and survey the area--her boardroom pose. For a while, that was all she could do, but she kept gaining stamina.

And size. She started out pretty middling for a newborn--19", 6 lbs 11 oz--then lost 4 ounces (within normal loss range for the first week), and then ba-BOOM! Since early October, she's outgrown her home bouncy chair, her infant carseat, and clothing meant for 1-year-olds. She's big enough now to tip over her Bumbo seat, which you might call a modifed beanbag chair for infants. It's a kind of soft, semi-resistant foam cockpit seat which holds the baby in an upright position, but isn't rigid and hard like straight plastic. They're one of those handy little inventions that make you momentarily grateful for the sprawling commercialism of our modern world. Eva loves to lean waaayyyyy over while in the Bumbo and stretch to reach things a few feet away, and she's capsized it at least once. Not for much longer can she use the little Bumbo. She's also about to outgrow our little chest-mounted baby carrier. The straps are as loose as they'll go and still it's kind of tight around the little girl's ribcage.

Just watch. Eva will be taller than I am. And we'll probably have a midget son.

So Eva's been stuck at the verge of crawling for a little over a week now, and after five or ten minutes of trying to move, she starts to cry. But once she figures it out...and it won't be long until she does.

Communication has been similar. Eva began gooing and aaahh-ing four or five months ago, and she still makes lots of odd sounds. But now there's some articulation in the sounds, with consonants appearing with the vowels, and syllables repeated several times. At times, these syllables don't sound random: they feel articulated, more like directed remarks. She often looks the listener in the eye now when speaking, with her high, almost whisper-soft voice.

Now for that sudden change I alluded to in the opening paragraph. Last weekend we drove up to Maine to visit Kate's family. We spent a few nights, as usual, at her mother's house (where I generally come down with a serious case of satisfied drowsiness). We also visited her sister Cori's house, where the kids rule: three daughters ranging from two and a half to eight years old, and a newborn son 12 days older than Eva. Needless to say there's plenty of noise and action there, and babies like Eva and her cousin Daniel are frequently confronted with small girls a few years older, who want to manage them somehow. Sit the baby up, or lie it down, or bring it a toy, or carry it to the toy. (There's never anything quite as disruptive as an overly solicitous family member.)

Now, Daniel's used to this kind of treatment, and he takes it all pretty stoically. The kid's pretty happy, in general, and very rarely emits a cry. He's kind of the baby version of the friendly family dog that the kids can maul, and will just lie there and never seem to get upset. But Eva...well, she's a little more sensitive.

Eva is easily confused and frightened by lots of noise and action around her, and tends to start crying. Living with Kate and me--and though I have my boisterous moments, I tend to be pretty quiet most of the time--Eva's learned to live in a quiet environment, and she doesn't try to fill the silence up all that often. Surround her with lots of activity, and she's suddenly disoriented.

After that visit, we dropped by Kate's father's home, quiet like our own. And then Eva came to life. In her tiny, quiet way, but still, to her parents who know her best, the change was sudden and immense.

After an initial crying spell--she'd been drowsing in the car on the ride over--she quieted down, sat up, and began talking. Nonstop, just looking me, Kate, Kate's father and his wife Jean in the eye, repeating "da-da-da-da-da-". Eva's eyes were wide open and smiling like her mouth, and she kept talking.

This wasn't like the indistinct little howls she'd been making into space for months. She was directing a few specific sounds to people she was paying attention to.

Eva has begun to talk.

Kate expressed some playful jealousy that Eva was saying "da-da" before "ma-ma", but I'm still not sure what the word means to Eva, if anything at all. What I can say is that, when she looks at me and says "da-da", well, I fall in love with my own kid all over again.

Makes sense, I'm an orally expressive kind of guy, that this is what would get me in my own kid. And it has.

Eva hasn't reprised her hour-long stream of babble since then, but does at moments. Like today, when I loaded her into the chest carrier for a little walk outside in the mist to see the swans (but Eva was more fascinated with the passing cars). Once we got away from the road and it was quieter, she treated me to several more bursts of remarks, all kinds of sounds. But her speech has more the character of syllables now, not just floating vowels. Whatever ideas might be in her head to express, her voice is slowly gaining the ability to enunciate them.

Not long ago, this afternoon, she looked at the cat lazing on my desk and said, "doi". Jasper then looked up at me and walked away. I get the feeling I'll be referring to the cat as "doi" from now on. I'm an impressionable fool. How could I not?