Wailing, Shaking, and Dancing

Recently Anna has started wailing “mama” with some regularity. I’m not sure if she thinks of mama as my name, but I think she’s started to figure out that it gets a response. The other night when I left Anna with my sister for a few hours, and when she realized that she wasn’t at home and Mom wasn’t around, Jamie told me that Anna started to whine “mama.” Of course I’m looking to the day when “mama” sounds like a happy noise, but I pretty tickled that she says it so often right now. She also says dada, but not quite as often. It’s usually a happy sound when she says it though.

She’s also started to connect shaking her head with a negative meaning. She shakes her head when she doesn’t want me to blow her noise or give her more food but she also shakes her head when she’s not happy with me. Usually it’s when I try to pick her up or put her down. She’ll arch her back, throw her head back, and shake it.

My favorite thing Anna does these days is dance. She’s not walking yet, so she can’t really boogie, but she’s pretty good at shaking her body while kneeling. Sometimes her head will start to bob when I turn on music and then sometimes she’ll move her shoulders back and forth while her head bobs. The other day in the car when she heard her music (Sharon, Lois, and Bram), she lifted up her arms and started to shake them since it’s pretty hard to rock out when your body is strapped to a chair.

She's not actually dancing in this picture, but this is how she likes to kneel when she gets her boogie on.