Word Up!

The Little Warrior, who is fast approaching the 14 month mark, has recently started getting a handle on language. Sure, he's been able to say Momma for months. Bye Bye. The usual, go to baby words. Nothing cuter than Wyatt saying Momma, but let's be honest, Momma is pretty easy. It is also a word he uses for many things, like food for instance. A word with many meanings.

What interests me about word usage is when it clicks for them, on their own. Unaided. When they get it. Put it together. It truly is amazing. Watching them go through the coo and screech stage. On to the da da da stage. Then the simple parrot stage. Then, probably my favorite, the (not sure what the real term for this is, thus my stuism) tower of babel stage. This is the stage when they appear to be talking to you, you can see in their eyes, that they are carrying on a conversation but it's complete gibberish. In fact, it sounds like they are speaking in a foreign language.

I always thought it would be ha-ha funny to call up a Chinese restaurant for take-out and let the Boy order in this crazy talk. See what sort of items we'd end up getting. Hard to get them to talk like this on cue though, I guess I'd have to record it, which sounds to complicated, but I digress - not even the point of this BLOG. The point.

Tower of babel stage leads to where we are at now with Wyatt. The first words used in context stage. Wyatt's first word to me in this mode was shoe. He can't say it very well. Sounds sort of like shhhhhhhhhhhoe. To much sh not enough oo. But, more important than his pronunciation is the fact that he gets it. He knows that he is saying shoe, and that it is a shoe, that's what you call it. That it is the word for it.

He said it to me the other morning, out of the blue. We were doing our standard early morning (I need to get the Boy a paper route, he wakes up at 5:30am pretty much every day!) Dad and Lad thing. He was walking around the front room, and he turned and looked at me and said, "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhoe." I took a drink of my coffee, to give myself time to deduce what he was saying, I replied, "Shoe?" He smiled at me, and said, "SHHHHHHHHHHOE!" To prove his point, he walked/ran over to where we keep the Boy(s) shoes in the front room (on top of a stereo speaker for those keeping score at home) and grabbed one of his shoes and held it up, and said, "Shhhhhhhhhoe." I smiled and said, "Shoe" which totally excited him so much that he trotted over and handed me his shoe and then in unison we both said, "Shoe - Shhhhhhhhhhhhoe" and smiled at each other.

I'm not sure who was more proud, me of him, or Wyatt of himself. Either way, it was one of those silly but sweet life moments - that you long remember.

Until I BLOG again...shoe.