Waving Bye-Bye

It's official! Karina made a leap into the world of communication...she waves "bye-bye!" Today when Opa waved at her she definitely waved back. For about a week now, she's been doing something that resembled a wave (we practice waving at her Gymboree class), but to be honest looked more like she was spastically patting an imaginary dog on the head, and usually involved both arms and the movement of much of her upper body. That movement had been witnessed by Mommy, Daddy, Gammy, Aunt Beth, Uncle Quentin and Aunt Lisa, but to this point I still wasn't 100% sure it was really a wave. Today, with Opa, it was just a little bit less spastic and involved mostly one arm only...in other words, it really looked like a wave! Amazingly, later I think she initiated a wave herself to Daddy across the room, but I'm not sure.

Also, it seems we may be seeing an example of some of the genetic material shared by Karina and Elsa. Elsa reportedly does quite a bit of aimless pointing (see http://schmettyblog.blogspot.com/), and it seems that Karina's wave frequently also involves a pointed finger. I'm not sure if she's combining the two actions on purpose or if her hand just ends up in that position when she's concentrating on waving. Actually, now that I think about it a bit more, the wave-point (i.e. waving then stopping waving to point at someone) is a very political type wave. Just think about all of those politicians we see on the news...they give a general wave and smile to the crowd, then they point, nod their head and smile at someone they (allegedly) recognize...if you ask me they probably don't recognize a single person but it's much better PR if they appear to have close friends everywhere they go. Now that I say this, I must follow by saying that I hope Karina doesn't become a politician because they have to be such slimey two-faced liers in order to compete. But I digress...the wave-point from Karina is adorable and without any malice. We can't wait for her to wave at each of you!