Let's Talk Turkey

At 2 months, Astrid's vocalizations are becoming more frequent and varied. At first it was the occasional cooing, gurgling and those delightful sighs of contentment. But now she's drooling a lot more and forming bubbles and moving her mouth and lips to make all sorts of new sounds. I try to encourage this by echoing the sounds she makes back to her. Sometimes she smiles and laughs and keeps going and other times she stops and gives me the "You're crazy mom" look.

She even squeals now when she's really happy.

According to research the cooing and gurgling will turn into real words such as "mama" and "dada" as early as 4 to 5 months (although they still may not know what the words mean).

Here's an excerpt from babycenter.com regarding early language development:

"Recent research links higher intelligence to how many words a child hears in the first year of life, so verbal stimulation is especially important right now. Set a sound foundation by exposing your baby to a variety of words and sounds. Talk about your surroundings when you take him for a walk, and point to and identify objects as you roam the grocery store aisles. Your baby can't repeat these words yet, but he's storing all the information in his rapidly developing memory. If your home is bilingual, your baby will benefit from hearing both languages spoken regularly. If you'd like him to learn more than one language, try to repeat each phrase in both languages, or have each parent speak to him in a different language."

Uwe and I are trying to raise Astrid bilingual (English and German). I speak to her in English and Uwe speaks to her in German. (I need to brush up on my German as well.) I also think it would be a good idea to buy some German children's CD's that I can play for her. I can't wait for the day when I hear Astrid say the words "I love you Mommy" and "Ich liebe dich Papa."