Day: March 10, 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.