Daddy's Girl

Over the past few weeks, I've seen something really neat happening. Back in October, we reached the point where our baby girl would have grown enough to recognize different voices, even from the womb. I thought that was cool, but I always wondered - how in the world could people tell that? Are doctors just guessing based on the level of brain and auditory development?

And then it started happening. I promise, it DID. Our little tiny girl started responding to her daddy's voice in a way that she responds to nobody else. I guess she hears me talk all day, so I probably sound pretty boring to her, but it amazes me that of all the other people she hears talk during the day, she knows James! He isn't even around as much as some of the other people in her life, since he has to work all the time. (He's currently in a stretch of 3 weeks with no days off.)

I'm 25 weeks along now, and when I got to about 18 weeks or so, I started to realize that every time James starts to talk around the baby, she kicks. HARD. It's like she's excited that her daddy is here, and she's trying to get her his attention. It's amazing...she sleeps a lot and will lie still for hours, but as soon as James comes home, suddenly she can't sit still.

And now, she's doing something else! As she gets bigger, her kicks have started to hurt more. I guess her feet are bigger, and she wants more room. So when James comes home and she gets excited, I know that my belly is about to get really uncomfortable. Well, a couple of weeks ago, James started trying to calm her down. He put his face right against my belly, put his hands around her, and started whispering to her that she needed to calm down and stop kicking her mama.

AND SHE DID.

I'm not kidding.

I thought it was a coincidence, but it seems to work every time now. It's so cool to get to know this little personality, even before she is born. Of course, James seems to be the one with all the influence, but he's so good with little kids that it's not much of a surprise.

Isn't that cool?