Byeu Byeu Gagaga

Less than an hour ago Maddie gave us her first official babble of record. She’s been mucking around a lot with sounds recently, as I think I’ve mentioned, but we got the first repeated call-and-response action out of her this evening after she sucked down her dinner.

In the midst of her ordinary babbling as she digested her meal she kept coming back to “ga ga ga.”

During a period of silence I said back to her, “Ga. Ga. Ga.”

She lit up and said, “Byeu…ga! Gagaga!”

I thought it was coincidence, another false positive no one else would ever believe.

“Ga ga,” I said.

She smiled.

“Ga ga,” she said.

I considered that confirmation enough, but by now Molli Malou had heard our exchange and realized what was happening. She ran over beside us.

“GA GA GA!” she shouted.

Her little sister was startled, then smiled a crooked smile and said, “Beeyeuhgagagaga.”

We took turns working her from there and finally, when I was sure the little devils wouldn’t humiliate me by clamming up, I called Trine over and Maddie did not disappoint.

“Ga ga,” Trine said.

Maddie smiled at her mother, the person she loves most in the world. (Molli Malou is the person that cracks her up most in the world, and I am the person that bewilders her most in the world.) For a moment I thought she was going to go mute, but suddenly she opened her mouth.

“Eeeeyurglllll…. ga ga ga!”

We all laughed and clapped.

“Ga ga ga!”

More laughter, more clapping. We got some of this on video and you can just add that to the list of things I don’t have time to put on video right now.

Gagaga indeed.

I’m not sure what the “beeyeeuh” prefix is about. Sometimes the “b” sound is very faint and it’s more of an “eeeeyeu” — it’s like she’s opening her mouth and using sense memory to try and get her jaw and tongue all lined up for the ga sound and this byeuh/eeyuh thing is just the incidental sound of her preparation.

She rolls front to back and back to front at will, clocks around a full 360 degress when lying on her back, and can no longer be left alone lying anywhere above floor level (unless barred in). She’s utterly incapable of sitting upright by herself, though — not even interested in assisted sitting. She just wants to stand all the time. Always. She’s pretty good at holding herself erect, and if she’s got something to lean on you can even pull your hands away for a second or two and she’ll keep herself standing. But gravity always wins in the end. Always.

And yet I wouldn’t be surprised if she was pulling herself up to a standing position in her crib and playpen before she figures out how to sit up.

She’s eating tvebakker at the table with us, gumming the stale bread-like biscuits into pasty mush. She also enjoys gumming carrots and cucumbers.

But mainly I just logged in to say that she says ga ga ga.