J and I took Claire to visit some friends over the weekend, and when we were all saying our respective goodbyes, Claire started waving bye too!

Immediately J and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. We hadn’t been trying to teach her how to wave, so we thought it might just be some coincidental arm motions.

But long after we had returned home, Claire continued to wave bye whenever we asked her to, and we knew that this had to something she had picked up just from observing the world around her.

I finally managed to take a short video of it today. I stupidly aimed the Flip too high to get her first waves in the frame, but you can catch her doing it at about the 10 second mark. (And, as usual, Comang interrupts the recording.)

Even now, when I re-played the video on my laptop, she saw what was going on and started waving bye in response!

My mother and I think it’s hilarious how Claire’s face gets all scrunched up whenever she waves bye. It’s like she’s using all her concentration and might to get her arm to do what she wants, and even then it still doesn’t look natural.

Claire will be turning 9 months old this Thursday. Whenever I think about how old she is, I can’t help but be amazed at how I managed to keep an actual human being alive and well for 9 whole months. (I know — morbid much?)