Furry Communications

The ability to communicate is, fundamentally, a two way street—you may, for example, speak impeccable English, but if you fail to get your point across to your fellow human, or to your dog, than you have failed at communication. Thus it is with the 19 month old.

“Lauren,” I said the other day as I was strapping her into her car seat, “you’ve scratched your face again.”

“Cut!” she said, holding out her finger to be inspected. For this particular child, “cut” doesn’t mean “I cut my finger” or “I cut my face with my finger.” It means “you need to cut my fingernails.”

“Okay,” I said, “I can cut your nails when we get home. But why did you scratch your face?”

“Bunny!” she said. Sometimes it is entirely unclear what your toddler is talking about.

“Bunny?” I asked. “Where is the bunny?”

“Face!” she said. When confronted with absolute non sequiturs, close the car door and keep going. It will all become clear in time. And it did.

A little while later when we got home, I mentioned to my husband that Lauren had managed to scratch her face again. I didn’t know she was within earshot, but from the living room I heard her exclaim, once again, “bunny!”

This time I can’t ignore it, so I go into the living room and I say, “What is bunny? You said that before. What do you mean by bunny?”

Ever the helpful little child, she runs past me, goes into the bathroom, points upwards towards the shelf at a box and says clearly, “bunny!”

She’s pointing at bandaids. She wants a bandaid for the scratch on her face and her nails cut so she doesn’t do it again. Obviously.

NooNoo & NydNee

Because she is second we have been quietly confident that Lauren would progress from the babbling baby to the talking toddler, but that doesn't make the journey any less significant.  The sudden leaps and strides Lauren makes in vocabulary are coupled with the creative way she uses the words and syllables she posesses, which means she says alot by saying very little, or rather, saying a little over and over and over again.  Witness:

"Lauren, please don't push the buttons on the dishwasher."
"My!"
"No, mommy's."
"Mommy!"
"Yes."
"nnnDaddy?"
"Yes, Daddy too."
"Nnn...NydNee?"
"Well, sometimes Sydney can too."
"Mommy."
"Yes, it is mommy's button."

Some words are brave approximations of the actual word in question.  Where Sydney called both olives and avocado (both favorites at the time, adding to some confusion) "a-a", Lauren spit out something the other day with way more syllables than necessary, ending with something like "avoficiandocco."  Since we unfairly named her with advanced letters of pronunciation in both the L and the R of her actual name, she has gone ahead and re-named herself "NooNoo."  Other words, on the other hand, take on some attribute of the item in question.  "Dog" has become "Bow-wow,"  and the phone has logically become a "Hi."

These malapropisms are endearing and fleeting, as we have learned (I will always miss Sydney's version of "because" which instead came out as "kapuz".  I knew I would miss it and therefore I tried to find occasions for her to use the word as often as possible--possibly hastening its demise.)  Our favorite Laurenism to date, though, is her willingness to play along with our "Happy Song."  The object is to get Lauren to say the word "happy" at the right time:

"I like to be.."
"Happy!"
"I want to be.."
"Happy!"
"Daddy is..."
"Happy!"
"Lauren is.."
"Happy!.."
"Mommy is..."
"Happy!"
"Hoolio is..."
"...CAT!!"

Well, it's true.  Hoolio IS the cat.