Year: 2006

They didn’t take any footprints of Leilani at the hospital, so we bought a non-toxic ink-pad to do it ourselves. We tried in the first weeks, but her feet move too much to make prints, even in her sleep. We tried again last month, and I just scanned them. It was a total coincidence that the multi-colored ink-pad matches the blog colors.

This was made on February 17th while she was sleeping, but they weren’t much bigger than the first ones we tried to make. This is NOT actual size, you will probably see them much larger than in reality, depending on your screen resolution:

We had quite a surprise on Wednesday after I fixed the videos in the original post. We were both at our computers, and Leilani was in the office with us, in her bouncy chair away from the computers. I asked S to test a video and when the video played, Leilani could hear herself through the speakers.

What happened next seems incredible to us as new parents: after a few seconds, Leilani looked up and started talking to her recorded voice! She used the same sounds, almost in exactly the same order as in the video. After all the times we try to make ohhh and ahhh sounds that she rarely reacts to, it seems like she was saying: “That’s exactly what I was saying before, finally someone who can understand me.”

We played the video a few times and she practiced the sounds with herself for about 5 minutes again. We tried playing it the following days, but she wasn’t in the same mood and repeated only one or two sounds.

So not only is Leilani trying or practicing to speak, she also understands (not just hears) voices, her own in particular.

We are very happy that Leilani has slept through the night for the first time – March 8th 11:30pm until March 9th 6am (we are not so happy with her choosen bedtime though)

Wir sind begeistert, dass Leilani die Nacht von gestern auf heute durchgeschlafen hat. 23:30 bis 6:00 (weniger gluecklich sind wir mit der von ihr gewaehlten Schlafenszeit)

She has been making more and more cooing and “arreuh” sounds this past month, but around dinner-time tonight Leilani really started practicing for speaking. For about 10 minutes, she just sat in her swing making two or three distinct “aah” and “ooh” sounds and using her mouth and tongue to modify the sound.

We recorded it with the video camera, and much later tonight I figured out how to download the video from the camera and upload it to this website. In order to see the video in this blog (I hope), I uploaded it to the YouTube service. Click the play button in either video (it may stop and start, just wait for it to finish and then replay the movie):

Short Excerpt:

Full Movie:

If you can’t see the movies, try downloading them by right-clicking one of the following and choosing “Save Target As:”LeilaniSpeaks_ex.mpg (3.5 MB excerpt) LeilaniSpeaks.mpg (28 MB full movie). These are large files, and I hope they work on Macs. My apologies to people with dial-up connections, but I’m guessing that grandparents might want to upgrade…

Leilani had her 3-month check-up today and Dr. Ancharski measured her:

• Weight: 13 lbs 6 oz (6,070 kg)
• Length: 25 inches (63.5 cm)

So she is tall, but otherwise normal and healthy.