Today, I am home with Joy. Mom is working. I’m not sure I can work on copyediting projects, but I am blogging today. Joy is on my lap.
As mentioned in last week’s post, Joy is enrolled in a WashU study called “A Longitudinal MRI Study Characterizing Very Early Brain Development in Infants with Down Syndrome.” Part of the study involves testing on the same day as the MRI. Researchers put Joy through a bunch of tests, including ability to roll over, tracking objects by sight, crawling, hand-eye coordination, grasping a toy and moving it to the opposite hand, holding head up while on tummy, et cetera.
One researcher asked me how many words Joy knows. “Typically, by age six months, a baby will know from two to four words,” she said.
“Hmm,” I said. “She gets excited when I say ‘ba-ba,’ and she smiles when I say ‘ma-ma.’ She can say ‘Ahhhhh!’ very loudly. She knows her name, I think. She can say the words ‘a-goo’ and ‘eh.’” (Joy also gets excited when I kiss her fingers and tickle her toes, but that was not the question.)
A few days ago, Joy picked up a new word, and it is my favorite. “Da-da-da-da-da,” she said quite clearly. She said it over and over, all day long. Every time she said it, I got up and went to her. So I got up a lot.
We are working on new words all the time, and she hears words from her sisters and aunts, Booshie, everyone. Mom and Dad have words. We have the best words. She hears the words love you, Mary, Amanda (or Andi), Kat (or Kay-kay), Emiree, time to go to shreep, diapey, bay-bee dot com, poopie, poo-poo, po-po, poopie-dopoulos, Booshie, Dooshie, Aunt Ashrey, biiggg gorl, soooo biggg, beddy-bye, formura, oh-my-gooodness, the most beau-tee-ful one… You get the idea.
Joy wants a ba-ba now. Bye-bye.
Joy Elizabeth 