Look Who's Talking...

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly I had my first official conversation with Marie, but I was taken aback a few weeks ago when I stopped in the middle of a dinner conversation with my wonderful husband to hear my beloved two year old, who would usually be making annoying noises by this point in the meal, trying to butt in with her own account of what happened during her day. Her mastery of language has been a gradual process, of course, but recently her proficiency seemed to just blossom overnight. As a language major, I considered myself to have somewhat of an affinity for language…though I admit, I found the whole concept of language development slightly less enthralling when taking my mandatory linguistics course five years ago. Yet these days it’s been more entertaining than I could have imagined to have a front row seat in the evolution of toddler speak.

For instance, the endearing error of Marie's mix-and-match of the first and third person: “Marie wants to brush my teeth and get her hairbrush too.”

Or the concept of time. “Marie, what did you do today?” “I read a book last weekend.” Hmmm. “Marie, do you want to go sit on the potty?” “Not today, in a while. Tomorrow.” Ok, tomorrow it is then.

Then there’s her tendency to form a question using whatever verb she expects you to answer with. Rather than always saying, “Mommy, what are you doing?” she will substitute “doing” with the word “going,” “having,” or “taking.”
Q: “Mommy, what are you having?”
A: “Cereal.”
Q: “Daddy what are you going?”
A: “To work.”
Q: “Mommy, what are you taking?”
A: “A shower.”

Pronunciation has been a continuing effort, as cute as that little toddler lisp is…like when she says “yike” instead of “like” or “Ewik!” instead of "Erik" (which is quite an improvement from her ever-entertaining original pronunciation of ‘ookie’—which we absolutely WILL tell his first date)! She’s getting better at saying “spoon” as opposed to “foon,” but for some reason is ignoring our insistence that she try to pronounce the ‘l’ more clearly in the word “clock.” She’s also somehow mixed up some of her constantans so that “dog” has become “gog” and “truck” has become “cuck.”

There are also those instances where no matter how grammatically correct she is, we can’t help but shake our heads or laugh. Or both. The other night at dinner she was intent on asking everyone repeatedly, “How was your first day, Mommy? How was your first day, Daddy?” First day of what, I’m not sure. Suffice it to say that we each had a great first day. Multiple times.

She also caught on quickly to the concept that batteries make the world go 'round, and if there are dying/no batteries, a broken toy results. Like the Glow Worm that she can’t sleep without. Hence the travesty when Glow Worm started singing his swan song and we couldn't find new batteries in the house. But it was ok, because according to Marie, Daddy was going to fix it when he got home. “Daddy will go to the store and get clean batteries,” she announced. My hero.

Tonight her application of her newfound language skills was to try and reason her way out of going to bed. “I don’t want to go night night!” she whined. “Well what do you want to do instead?” we asked. “Go to Walmart,” she answered without hesitation. Of course. Because that’s what we all do when we don’t want to go to bed yet.

And finally, every so often there’s that gem of a phrase that captures my heart and makes me melt…like the times she calls out, completely unprompted, “Thank you for cooking!” and best of all, “I love you, Mommy! You’re the best Mommy!”

And the smile that accompanies it is priceless.