Da!

Now that Lauren has mastered the elaborate art of walking (at nine months, 17 days…. But who’s counting?), she can take the time to do other things, such as point out in the correct order Mommy, Daddy, Sydney and Lauren in the family photo we have hanging on the wall—except when she doesn’t want to do that and will point to random things when you try to play this game to indicate her boredom: “Lauren, which one is Mommy?” points at the light switch. “No no… .Mommy!” points at the ceiling. “No, Lauren, which one in the picture is Mommy?” Points at Daddy in the picture and then tries to poke Mommy in the eye.

“Da!” she’ll say, delightedly.

“Da!” is the catch all for most everything, and can mean anything from “What’s that?” to “Look at that!” to “Give me that!!” to “Hey Mom look! No hands!!” as she climbs up onto some unstable structure and grins at me manaically.

“Da-da!” she’ll say, indicating that she wants to play the “say ‘ma-ma’” game, even though I know her palate hasn’t formed enough to make the necessary sounds.

“Say ma-ma!”

“Da-da!” she’ll grin.

“Ma-ma!”

“Da-da-da!!” with an uplifting screech, and then she’ll segue into her version of conversation. “a-baba ba ba ba, baba BA BA ba!!”

Sometimes she’ll seem genuinely interested in the name of a particular thing, which she will point at, again and again and again. If the thing is, say, the ceiling, we can be relatively confident that that is the object she wants to know the name of, but if she points at the crowded book case we have to do quick calculations to decide what she actually wants to know. Sometimes the finger will move slightly. Is she moving it because she wants to know the name of that particular book? Or because her spacial perception hasn’t matured yet and she can’t point in the same exact location twice in a row? I worried about this with her sister, too, but I shouldn’t have, since her sister can speak full coherent sentences and doesn’t seem to get “book” and “bookcase” mixed up. Although she does often call me “dad” by accident.

Even though we seemed to be paying attention to every little milestone her big sister reached, it seems to me that we missed this whole pre-verbal communication stage and are only just now realizing how much is really going on in that little head of hers. Whether it’s the big open-mouth on my nose when I ask for a kiss or the successful retrieval of a ball halfway across the room, we are definitely on our way to having two big talkers in the house. The more noise the merrier. Right? Right??