Noah's Words

For the past month and a half, Joy and I have watched Noah's language begin a slow burn. He picks up a new word every day, chants it at length, and then moves on to the next one. At this point we might as well give him a dictionary to chew on.

What is most adorable about his language learning is that he still speaks in that early toddler drawl. He doesn't quite get what middle and especially ending consonants are for, so we get "baaaa" for ball and for bath and only those attuned to his slight vowel fluctuations can understand him.

That basically means me and Joy.

But I never stopped to consider the downside of Noah learning to speak until last night. In the middle of the night I heard him saying "Mama...mama...mama " over and over again. Worried that something was wrong, I got out of bed and trudged over to his room only to find him sacked out in his crib. That's right, Noah has inherited Joy's tendency to talk in her sleep. It never meant much before now - he just would babble in his sleep. But with words he now wakes me up. So my new plan is to get him saying "Sam" so that his brother will come and take care of him in the middle of the night and I can get some sleep.