Monday, June 4, 2007

Toddler Translator Needed

I frequently joke that J is the toddler that all the other mom's compare their kids to in order to make themselves feel better (or superior). I have also frequently said that I have awesome friends so none of them, surely, would be comparing their little darlings to Jack, developmentally, would they? Oh, I sure the heck am. Here's what I've come up with: Jack is the last to do everything.

Osi chalks it up to the fact that he was premature and also that, by nature, J seems like to sit back and take things in. While he is the last to start everything (crawling, walking) it takes him very little time to actually master it.

I'm not particularly worried about J being the last in his group of little buddies to talk, but it sure would be nice to have an affirmative answer when MY peer group's mothers ask "so is he saying anything yet?" I actually purchased him a t-shirt reading "I heard Einstein was a late talker" in order to get the theoretical last word in.

Right now, the nonsensical word "bup" seems to be the key to his universe. It started out meaning "up." I was thrilled that we seemed to finally have a word. Nope. It means everything now. It means up, down, open, close, dog, Cheezits and bink. Frustrating to us both. It reminds me of the Romanian acrobats at the circus. The ones that, to cue their partners to begin a stunt, shout "BUP" at one another. Bup is a constant in our home and I am sent scrambling, not unlike a Romanian acrobat, trying ti figure out what the heck it means.

1 comment:

naomic3 said...

Hah--don't be too sure J doesn't know EXACTLY what's going on. I too bought into that "starting to speak at 12-18 months" nonsense but neither of my kids was anything near coherent until after 20 months. And Nicholas still lapses into gutteral syllables reminiscent of a choking German. Alls you gotta ask yourself is: does HE understand ME? If yes, then communication is HIS problem. 'Cause soon enough you won't be able to pretend you didn't understand the demand for "Cookie! Now!" :-)