Baby talk

We read a good tip in the babycentre.co.uk newsletter this week:

"Cooing is your baby's way of showing she's happy. This pre-speech exercise lets her play with sound just as she plays with her fingers and toes. You can show that you've heard her by cooing or talking in response; see if you can have an extended conversation. "

Levi has recently started making gurgles and coos, so we tried having a conversation with him last night and it was a great success. He was happily kicking around under his jungle gym, punching and grabbing at the dangling toys, trying to pull them into his mouth. We were sat down on either side of him, playing with him and recording with the camcorder. When he made a sound, I smiled at him and made a short similar sound back at him. He picked up on it instantly, locked his gaze on my face and replied with another sound. I kept up my side of the conversation, and we had a little chat between ourselves for a little while - lovely. Skye joined in from behind the camcorder, and soon the whole family were telling stories to each other. Levi seemed to enjoy joining in the conversation, and once he'd finished telling us his side of the story, he got straight back into punching and kicking those dangling toys with a renewed vigour.


He's at a really sweet age right now, just under 3 months. He smiles and coos, he can grip on to things and wave them about, he loves having nursery rhymes sung to him, and he's just on the verge of being able to roll himself over. He's a strong little man, and we're helping him work on his physique with regular sit-ups to the tune of "row row row your boat" - soon he'll be looking as toned as his old man :)

grandparents, baby development and a table

A table? Well, not just any old table. *The* table is finally finished! "What table?" you might be wondering - well, the saga stretches right back to our first week in Oz....

We picked the table up in pieces from my father-in-law when we first arrived in Oz back in Jan '05, and we personally freighted it from Queanbeyan to Brisbane in the back of The Bus all the way up the coast road. It's been patiently awaiting attention in the sheds of no less than 3 separate homes since then, sporadically enjoying a vigorous sanding when time permitted. Other priorities pushed the table further and further down the To Do list (mere insignificancies, like getting married, buying a house and having a baby....) - but once those big jobs were checked off the list, the table rose higher and higher in the priority stakes until finallly, last night, after much sanding, staining and varnishing, it was triumphantly screwed back together and positioned happily next to the kitchen with a nice view out over the garden. Lovely - a family table for our family. (now all we need are some chairs!!)



Speaking of our family, the youngest member has been meeting some of the older members. Grandparents and even a great-grandparent have had a good old coo over the cheeky young man, coming from as far away as Queanbeyan, Sydney and London. And the The Boy (as we call him) has capably taken on his responsibilities to charm 'em all.

After learning how to smile and even chuckle a bit, his very latest trick is gripping stuff and pulling it towards his face so he can maybe get a taste of whatever it is. He's also getting into having a good old sing song with his folks, who are starting to get nursery rhymes seriously stuck in their heads... We've now set a weekly timeslot with Grandma Barbie and Grandpa David to Skype, in a way it's like our own style School of the Air via Skype. Class runs every monday (9am GMT / 6pm AEST), with a strict curriculum of trans-global nursery rhymes and games for babies. We tuned into the first "class" this week, and had great fun singing along with our nephew and nieces in the UK. They can add Kookaburras to Old MacDonald's farm now that we've given them a rendition of the noise they make!

Levi's had his first couple of road trips to the coast, checking out the surf at Noosa (excellent 3 foot and glassy) and Currumbin (utterly blown out and unsurfable that day). I've yet to have my first surf as a dad (4 long months without so much as getting my feet wet!) but I'm hopeful that I'll get into the water this saturday. I scraped the old wax off my board at the weekend, crossing my fingers for a good surf forecast...

It's springtime here in Brissy, and it's just a such a lovely time of year. All the plants and flowers get into bloom, the lorikeets have all come back from wintering further north to chase away the noisy mynah birds, and the temperatures are just right for warm sunny days and mild evenings. Somehow, colours just seem more vivid at this time of year.