The Baby Chronicles

For the last couple of years (okay for the last few years), Babs and I have been working on a newsletter about children's first year of life. We have a free sample of the newsletter that focuses on the first week of development. Future installments will be 8 pages long and available for a small fee. We'll focus on language, social interaction, brain and cognitive development, motor skills, vision and hearing month by month. We'll let you know as we start to post them to the site. Read the sample and let us know what you think.

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What's in a name?

Today the list of most popular baby names was released. The top girl's name was Emma and the top boy's name for 2008 was Jacob. I was really tickled because my mother's name is Emma. Her mother and my cousin are named Emma. No one in the next generation is named Emma, but maybe the one after-- we'll see. Naming a new baby is an important ritual. Sometimes parents name their children after a parent, or after an ancestor. Other parents want to deliberately not repeat a name in the family. Still others look for the unusual.

In naming Powerful Babble, we thought about what the content of this blog would be and what we wanted it to convey. Babies babble. But, how do they get from the sounds they make as newborns: goos, coos, burbs, cries to babbling? What about from babbling to words and then word combinations? In this blog we will be discussing news about babies and current research that helps us understand how development unfolds. I believe that the process of organization of babies motor skills, hearing, cognition, and social skills go into babbling and then shape these babbles into words. This is powerful stuff!

What about your baby? Why did you name him or her and why?