Lost in Translation

It's 8:35 p.m. I'm in my jammies. So is Baby C, although she was much less excited about putting them on. She's settled down with the six pacifiers she sleeps with, and I've got a glass of wine in hand. Bedtime, at last. Now that I have a moment to catch up here, I can't think of what, exactly, we've been doing to make me so tired.

Baby C's talking. A lot. And it takes every ounce of concentration to figure her out. Comprehension was easy at first, because her vocabulary was completely in our control. We'd point out a train, and she would sweetly lisp, "twain!" back to us. Now, however, anything she hears any where is fair game--including things that aren't actually words.

"Ooooh, ooooh!" = Fire engine or police car, of course. It took us a couple of days to figure that one out. When she hears laughter (even two rows over in the grocery store), Baby C says "hahaha." She forces the chuckle out with vigor, and people think they're being mocked until they realize the person emitting the sound is tucked into the little grocery cart seat and simply proud of herself for recognizing human emotion. Unfortunately, tears have a similar effect. When Baby C hears babies crying, she wails in solidarity.

She’s mastered the passive voice in the face of a potentially negative reaction. "It fell," she tells us solemnly, after she throws her spoon to the floor. But she is eager to claim achievements: "I did it! Did it!" after a successful run down the kiddie slide at the park. Actually, she will muse "did it! did it!" all the way home from the park, if she was truly impressed with herself.

"Die, die" had me not a little concerned for a while, until I realized it was her word for "drive." "Babewy", sadly enough, means Blackberry (as in Daddy's ever-present email machine). "Bear" which she had mastered, has turned into "ppffftt." We were concerned that she was losing words until the fragment of a kiddie song popped into my head. I think she's actually quoting a (horribly annoying) Wiggles song, in which they sing, "ssh, ssh, ssh, bear's fast asleep." Greg's not entirely convinced, but I think it's worth banning the Wiggles to see whether I stop hearing their lyrics in my head. Er, I mean, to see if her speech improves. Either way, I think it would make life easier.