Babies talk a lot – with their eyes and bodies.
And, because food and babies go hand-in-hand their stomachs dictate some of the first non-verbal conversations. At 3 months, our youngest grandson, Elijah began joining his dad and mom – my daughter – at the table for meals. Sometimes she held him, sometimes she propped him in an infant seat with toys.
About his fifth month, she noticed him watching them intensely as they ate. He couldn’t point, but “he would grunt, lean forward and look at the food, look at me, my mouth and my eyes. He watched us take the food from our plates to our mouths,” she recalls.
A couple weeks shy of the official “no solids before six months” she realized, he wanted to eat with them.
She prepared his first tiny bowl of rice cereal. The child ate it all up – and he hasn’t stopped since. I’ve never seen a baby who enjoys eating so much. With his lack of teeth, he reminds me of a little old man as he gums finger food to pieces.
During a recent visit, my daughter bought a candy bar to share with her dad and I. Her son saw it, leaned way over my arm, reaching with both hands and eyes for that candy. If Mom had something to eat, he wanted some, too, his body language screamed.
Mothers innately tune into body language – especially when their babies reflect maternal body movements.
“Sometimes when I play peek-a-boo,” my daughter told me, “I don’t say ‘boo,’ I just open my eyes large. And Eli responds by opening his. Sometimes I look under my eyebrows. He will look under his and smile mischievously. I am playing a game with him and he knows it.”
Being attuned to baby talk helps a lot these days as my daughter baby-sits 3-month-old, Jude. When she first met him at 6-weeks old she bent over and cooed.
They made eye contact. “There was this flash of acknowledgment that came over his face,” she said. “He smiled. All over his face you could see ‘oh someone is looking at me’ – even his body smiled as his legs and arms twitched in response to that eye contact.”
A couple weeks ago, Elijah and – month-old Jase – whom she also supervises – sat beside each other for lunch.
In their baby world of random movements, “they kind of reached out, touched and held hands,” she told me amused. Still holding hands, they looked at each other with surprise. While she quickly grabbed a camera, they held hands – connecting with touch and delighted eyes at the discovery of experiencing each other in a new way.
All the babies had a new experience last week – she invited their mothers to dress them in costumes for Halloween.
Her 23-month-old nephew Oaken showed up in a Samurai costume – including the head covering. Elijah wore an aviator’s costume with hat. The cousins stared at each other’s hats.
Then Jase arrived dressed as a lion with a mane and ears.
“Sitting together for pictures, they looked at each other, smiling, pointing and touching each other’s costume. They all had a look of Wow!” she told me.
Oaken pointed, “Jase a lion? Jase a lion?”
After she finished taking pictures, the costumes came off. She placed the Samurai outfit on the table with a bit hanging over the edge. Elijah grabbed at it.
“Can he wear your costume?” she asked her nephew. His eyes said he didn’t like that idea.
“Can Jase wear your costume?” she suggested with a grin. He said ‘yes’ with his eyes. When he saw Jase wearing his costume, his eyes and body danced in laughter and excitement as he pointed and said, “Jase is Oaken.”
“It was way too big for him, but it was really funny,” she said.
Part of the fun, of course, came from understanding the baby talk and providing words that day – and for the not too distant future when the children open their mouths and speak for themselves.