First Contact

Getting to know your baby is an experience that's hard to put into words.

You come home from the hospital with a little stranger in your arms. You don't know this baby at all. You don't know her preferences, temperament, or language. You're basically making first contact with an alien.

As the baby gets older, she naturally picks up language (which is SO. COOL), but here's what I didn't realize:

We did too.

As Elle was learning English, we were learning Elle.

We've learned when her little "ha" means "help" versus "hot" versus "hat."

We've learned when her rolly hands mean "Sing 'Wheels on the Bus'" and when they mean "Sing 'Stirring My Brew.'" We've learned when her flashy hands mean "All Done" and when they mean "Wipers on the Bus." We've learned that when she plants her hands on the ground with her booty in the air and does a passé, she wants us to sing "Mr. Stand-on-One-Leg."

We can sense when her thrashes and whines at sleep time turn from "I am PROTESTING" to "I am about to PASS OUT."

We've learned the difference between her "I'm hurt" cry and her "I'm angry" cry and her "I'm tired" cry.

We've learned that the eyebrows-raised-and-corner-of-mouth-turned-down face means "Do the squirrel sound."

We've learned that the fist tipping + gushing sound is her miming using a watering can.

We've learned that she actually likes both warm and cold milk and you have to ask which one she's in the mood for.

We've learned that her O-mouth shocked face means she wants to read In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming and her saying "WHO?!" means she wants to read Listen Buddy by Helen Lester.

We've learned that she wants to stroke a piece of our sheets as she's going to sleep.

We've learned that bugs with long legs and touching spider webs make her shudder and do a heebie-jeebies face (and it's the cutest thing in the world).

All these little communications are more art than science, impossible to teach or anticipate. It's something I know all parents experience, but it never occurred to me how magical it would feel. I never understood how people who spoke different languages could ever learn to communicate without someone else having come first to put together a dictionary or a grammar book—and that still blows my mind—but for the first time I'm seeing a glimmer that it is possible.

What an honor to be the first people to decode this delightful, new little human.

~Stephanie