The next few months flew by. Anna was smiling now. She was such a giggly baby, you just had to pick her up and she would laugh and spit in your face. She loved the game peek-a-boo but at first she got frightened. I covered her face with my hands and said,
"Where's Anna?" in that soft voice you use with babies.
She started screaming and crying, but I quickly took away my hands from her face and shouted,
"There she is!"
Anna stopped in mid wail, and started giggling. From then on she loved the game.
The nights were long and tiring. Especially as in the first few days then Anna wouldn't sleep. I got really worried but eventually we settled into a routine. Anna still woke up in the middle of the night, crying for milk. I just calmly scooped her up and fed her while I read aloud.
The midwife told me that I should talk to Anna as much as possible. Babies start to talk earlier if you speak to them regularly. Plus it was good for Anna's social skills if speech was used around her lots.
The midwife told me a good way to boost your baby's talking skills is to read to them. So I drove to the mall and bought a couple of baby books, and mom dropped some old ones off at the house.
Before I put Anna to sleep, I picked up one of the books and started. There was only ten pages and about 5 words per page.
"The yellow duck..." I began.
Anna stared up at me with her large blue eyes and halfway through the book I suddenly stopped reading.
"To hell with these baby books," I muttered and in the morning I put them all in the trash.
That night I turned towards my bedside table, with Anna still wide awake in my arms. On the table lay 'An Imperial Affliction.' I hadn't read it since Augustus' death.
I took a deep breath, then reached out to grab it. I turned the cover to the titles page.
"It's time for you to hear some proper literature Anna," I smiled at her.
After all this was the book she was named after. So I took a deep breath and began reading an adult book to a 4 month old baby.
This chapter is really short, just because in the next chapter I want to have Anna sitting up and grabbing stuff, but I wanted to give you some information on Anna first. It's really hard to write about her when she doesn't do much!
This story is unedited so sorry for any mistakes.
Please keep reading it's going to get a lot more exiting soon(: