Baby Talk

Mr. C has started talking quite a bit now. It still shocks me when he speaks: after all that time of having a gurgling, cooing alien in my home, having him say something nearly intelligent is almost like having your faithful lab look at you one morning and spontaneously bust out a bad-ass rendition of the Gettysburg Address.

 “I want . . . to eat . . . meat,” Mr. C will eventually get out, and Bee and I will look at each other proudly.

“He wants meat. Did you hear that? Get that boy some meat!” And we scramble to comply.

“I want a popsicle!” the toddler continues, and Bee and I screech to a halt for a conference on the merits of popsicles before breakfast. Sensing our hesitation, Mr. C switches tactics.

“Cookie?” he smiles sweetly.

“Cookie!” Bee and I admonish, laughing, and Mr. C laughs, too. He knows it's a long shot, but he does his best to look adorable, and sometimes (well, maybe more than sometimes) we give in.

“After all,” I reason, “there's flour and dairy in cookies; it's practically the same as having whole wheat toast and eggs. Plus, I want to reward him for trying to speak.” Although, really, it's that I wanted a cookie, too . . .

He's not such a clear speaker, though, that everyone can understand him. In fact, half the time I don't understand him, and have to sound it out-loud to guess at what he's trying to say.

“I wan . . . go lie-ry . . . wan samp,” he says with difficulty.

It takes me a minute to translate. “Oooh,” I finally say, “you want to go to the library to get a stamp, like after Storytime?”

“Yep,” he says with relish. And I'm so damn proud of his awesome reasoning skills, it breaks my heart to have to explain that Storytime is a week away. Luckily, my son is easily distracted, so he's off on a new request within minutes. “Sucker?” he tries, and I feel so guilty about the library that I give in. Was he requesting a sucker in the first place, or pointing out that I am one?

It's probably a good thing not everyone can understand him, as he's getting close to the point of saying embarrassing things. For some reason, as an example, he finds the phrase “Mommy's boobies” to be hilarious, and has been known to call it out in public. It's made worse by the fact that he insists on mispronouncing it “Mommy's poopies”. When I get ready to shower, he happily shouts “Mommy's naked!”, and has become fascinated with the idea of nakedness, to the point where anyone in the park without a shirt on must be classified with great and repeated conviction as being naked. And, although we've tried to remain cooly blasé about the difference between boys and girls, he has several times pointed in the general area of “Mommy's pee-pee” when we're at the playground.

Yes, I realize similarities can be drawn between his observations and my lack of clothing.

I'm going to have to start watching what I say around him. And I will. Soon. But right now it's kind of funny to hear the things he repeats.

“Say 'bullshit',” I coo to him.

“Bo-shi!” he smiles back, and we share a laugh.

“Oh, God, you're not really teaching him to swear, are you?” Bee asks.

“Well, if I teach him to say it now, it won't be one of those things he repeats later because it's novel and we react to it,” I reason sweetly.

“Maybe you shouldn't do it, though,” Bee worries.

“Tell Daddy he's chicken-shit,” I whisper to the baby.

“'Chen-shi”, he dutifully replies, and we roll on the floor. Even Bee joins in.

S.B., like a good brother, researched language development exercises on-line, via a home video on YouTube. As a result, he was able to re-create the F-dash-dash-dash word by having Mr. C attempt to say 'truck'.

Mr. C went through a phase where he said “Whoa, damy” anytime he dropped something. We finally figured out he meant “damn it”.

“Did he get that from you?” I asked Bee.

Bee only looked a little ashamed. “I guess so,” he admitted. “I have been known to say that.”

“Well, you'd better watch your tongue,” I replied with superiority. I conveniently omitted the fact that my swear word of choice is quite a bit stronger, and I tend to use it fairly liberally.

Yeah, yeah; I know I'm evil.

But at least I'm fun.