Monkey Screeching

Luke has been a pretty noisy, grunty baby.  Since Day One he's been that way.  However he's taken it to an all new level.  He screams and screeches all day long now.  And even in the night when he wakes up.

He does it when he's happily playing.  He does it when he wants our attention.  He does it when he's pissed.  He does it for absolutely no reason at all.  And it is driving us insane.

I'm sure Adelia, too.  And Huge and Rachel when they are home at the same time.  And for sure Callan, although I did hear him make an attempt at a screech the other day.  Not close to ear-piercing like Luke's, but a mini version.

I've done some major research on the subject (Google, of course) and it seems this is quite normal.  I've read that some babies just do this when they find their voices and it can last months.  Are you kidding me?  Sure, we've tried everything - saying "no" firmly (sometimes it results in a boo-boo face and crying), ignoring it when he's playing nicely, distracting him, covering his mouth, shushing him....all of it.  Nothing works.  Of course it doesn't - he's 7 months old.

On the positive side, he's pretty prominently babbling "mamamamamama" and "dadadadadada" and that just melts my heart.

Anyway, in my research this afternoon I came across a post where the mama said her baby went from monkey screeching to blowing explosive sounding raspberries after 6 weeks.  I cracked up because that is exactly what he sounds like - one of those little monkeys you see in a zoo that screeches like crazy and makes you want to claw your ears off.  Oh God I hope it does not take 6 weeks.  Or longer.

He kind of looks like this when he's doing it:

He's just too cute to send back for screeching.  I love my boy and I know that one day "this too shall pass".

Anyway, just a little update on what our Luke is doing.  We are all on the mend finally.  I will get some more pictures up soon - we haven't quite been in the picture or video taking mood lately.