Harry says "Ma!" And Eats Finger Food!

Harry trying finger foods (cheese) for the first time
Originally uploaded by brownorama.

I notice that a lot of the posts I make to the blog have exclamation points after them.....but I guess that is just the nature of motherhood. Everything your child does seems worthy of an exclamation point. :-) Anyway....on to the news! :-) Yesterday (Feb 22nd) Harry said "Ma." Now he didn't say Ma-Ma. (We can work on that. :-) ) However, he did say a clearly discernible "ma." So we are on our way! Yay! Can't tell you how excited it made me. The "ma" sound is much harder than "ba" or "da" since it involves a lot more lip action and actual vocalization and no, I know it wasn't "context appropriate." (In other words, he wasn't looking at me and saying "ma" and referring to me. He was just saying it.) But the fact that he said it means that it will eventually be context appropriate! Can't tell you how much I needed a ray of hope yesterday. It was a tough day. Harry has been struggling with constipation AND teething of late and it is a double whammy that makes him grisly, touchy and difficult. It also means he doesn't sleep much. Oh yay! :-) So his "ma" vocalization was cause for MUCH excitement. :-) I love him so much and it always makes me feel so awful when we have difficult days like that. One has this view of motherhood that somehow one has failed if one has days where one doesn't get along. But I guess it is natural that even babies have good days and bad days. So I know I shouldn't take it personally and as a reflection on me. But at the same time, it is difficult not to when one's "job" is to make sure one's baby is healthy and more importantly happy.

In other news, Harry also had his first try of finger foods! Given the constipation we decided to start with cheese - namely Monterrey Jack cheese. I cut it up and since we were at our friend's Kevin's house, we held it out in our hand and offered it to him. At first he didn't get that he was supposed to put it in his mouth. So he picked it up in his fingers, squished it - great pincer grasp developing there, by the way - and promptly dropped it on the floor. (I tried to keep track of the cheese but I hope that poor Kevin doesn't have little bits of Jack cheese on his floor today. Sorry Kevin! :-) ) But then we put it in his mouth and the light bulb went off. He didn't eat a lot of it. However, he did put some in his mouth and mash it around. It was very cute to see. We will attempt to capture it on video because it is cute to see - one of those really adult looking things that is a constant reminder of how our baby is slowly growing up.