More Talkin' 'Bout

Today Meg was officially dismissed from the Montgomery County Infants and Toddlers Speech Program. Her teacher, Sandra, came today, and we did Meg's six-month review. Meg has attained or surpassed all of the goals we set six months ago. Dave and I are so pleased with where she is and how far she's come. So we decided to "end service"--the truly excellent service that we have received from this government-sponsored program.

It's a little sad, because Meg has loved her time with Sandra. This morning she kept asking, just to make sure: "Sa-sa coming? Sa-sa coming?" Well, Sa-sa's not coming any more, Little Love. You're such a good talker now that you don't need her anymore. Sometimes growth is bittersweet, isn't it?

Fortunately, our girl is still just a two-year old. She's made tons of progress, but she's not so grown-up that she's no longer cute when she talks. In fact, she keeps Dave and me constantly amused by her ongoing advances and discoveries. So I am trying to capture some of the unique and/or funny and/or revealing things she says before they disappear into yesterday.

There are a couple of phrases in Meg's vocabulary that have mystified Dave and me for some time. For example, to Meg, lions are always "wy-cubs". Not just lions, but lion cubs. It doesn't matter if Mommy and Daddy tell her that it's a grown-up lion. It doesn't matter if it has a mane. It's always a wy-cub. Another puzzle is the way she says "snap". If she wants her onesie fastened or her coat buttoned, she always says, "See-saps." See-saps?

This week I finally discovered that those expressions both come from the same source. We have this little board book called Polly Pelican.

As you can see, the book has a hinged, plastic piece at the top--the top half of Polly's beak. On every page of the book, the phrase "snip-snap" is supposed to cue the reader to "snap" Polly's beak along with the story. It's really pretty cute.

The other day, as I listened to Meg "read" the book to herself, I noticed that every time she snapped Polly's beak, she said, "See-saps." Ah, snip-snap! Now I get it! We've been reading this book since she was tiny, right? So her first association with the word "snap" was that it came paired with "snip", and thus they are still paired in her mind. It all makes sense now.

Likewise, in the course of Polly Pelican, the title character saves two lion cubs from a fire. So it must have been that this book, her first exposure to lions of any sort, cemented the pairing of the words "lion" and "cub". Hence, all lions are wy-cubs. It's funny to think of the verbal connections forged in babies' minds before they can even talk. Makes me want to be very careful about what I say.

Yesterday Meg uttered what I believe to be her longest sentence to date. "Daddy uh Mama uh Dees uh me ahhhhhhhhhh cah." In translation: "Daddy and Mama and Matthew and me are all in the car." Which happened to be true.

This morning, Dave posed one of his favorite questions to our girl: "Meg, who loves you?" Usually Meg's answer is either Dave, me, both of us, or maybe Nana or Cubby. But today there was a new twist. "Meg who loves you?"

"Me uh Daddy uh Mama uh Dees."

Yup, that's just about right, girlie. Especially that first person you mentioned.

This last one is my favorite. This afternoon I was putting Matthew down for a nap. Meg was in his room with me, and when I lay her brother down in his crib, she came over to us. As she put her hand through the crib bars and stroked the baby's head, she said softly, "Ah do, Mah. Keessees." ("I love you, Matthew. Kisses.")

Now that, my precious daughter, is something worth saying.

Laughing Together

Last night Dave and I experienced what was, to date, one of the sweetest moments in our lives as parents. We were sitting at the dinner table. Meg had finished eating her pasta entree and was working on her cucumber pieces. She was also attempting to use a grown-up fork (well, a dessert fork, at least) for the very first time.

Dave had been coaching her throughout the meal. "Careful, girlie, don't stab yourself... Try holding the fork here, in the middle of the handle... You can use your fork to spear the food instead of just scooping it up like you would with a spoon, like this..." and so on. Overall, Meg was doing pretty well--fingers were still in active use, but the fork was seeing some action too.

So there was this piece of cucumber in the middle of Meg's blue plastic plate. She went to stab it with her fork. The fork tines pierced it, but as she brought it toward her mouth, it wobbled and then fell of the fork. Splat, back on the plate. She hadn't really pushed the fork deeply into the food. We chuckled and tried to explain what had gone wrong. She tried again. Stab. Wobble. Splat. The same thing happened again. And then again.

Finally, brilliant and helpful parents that we are, we tried to help her load the fork. It was harder than it looked. Peeled cucumbers are slippery, and maneuvering the fork that was still gripped tightly in Meg's grimy little hand was awkward. When we thought we had the cucumber secured on the fork properly, Meg once again lifted it to her mouth. Wobble. Wobble. Wobble... splat! Dave and I both burst out laughing and, amazingly, Meg did too.

It was the first time that we have ever laughed together--not us laughing at her and her giggling because she made Mommy and Daddy laugh; not her laughing at something silly we did for her amusement. All three of us laughed spontaneously, at the same time, just because each found the situation funny. Dave and I looked at each other in the midst of our laughter, and I could see him enjoying the significance of it just as I was. It was a marvelous moment, simple and profound. There is something very right about parents and their children laughing together, enjoying one another. Isn't that part of what God created families to do?

In our culture, the prevailing attitude seems to be: cherish your kids while they're small but dread their growing up. (Or just don't cherish kids at all.) I have, however, heard some godly parents say the opposite, to the effect that it only gets better as your kids get older. Now as a mom who adores little ones for their very littleness, that can be pretty hard to believe. But last night gave me a taste--a small but appealing taste--of how true it can be. By God's grace, Dave and I look forward to sharing more and more laughter with our children as they grow.

Update on Gran

Thanks so much for your prayers for my grandmother. Gran came home from the hospital yesterday without having had further surgery. My dad talked to Grandpop last night and reported that he "sounded like a very happy man" to have his wife home--and that's saying something for my rather stoic Grandpop! We are so grateful to God!

Talkin' 'Bout

Both of my kiddos are sick with yucky colds today. Poor sweet babies. Thank God for Puffs With Lotion (my husband's preferred brand) and bulb syringes. (Speaking of which, am I the only mom who has about 30 of those things? I've never bought a single one, and yet they keep accumulating in the kids' medicine cabinet. Most of them are the traditional blue with the long, narrow tip, but another is a great example of poor product design. It doesn't have a long, narrow tip--it has a... a gaping cavity. A kid would have to have nostrils the size of man-hole covers for this thing to work.)

I wanted to post about some of the things that Meggy says these days. She does talk quite a bit and is starting to have some trademark phrases. We like how she always says, "Okay?" after she falls down. This is not, as you might guess, to ask herself whether or not she is okay. It is to prompt Mommy and Daddy to ask if she is okay. Which she always is, if she's asking the question. But still, parents have the duty to inquire, as Meg is quick to remind us.

We love her current name for Matthew, which is "Diss" (This). Dave thinks it comes from the two of us always asking, " Meg, who's this?" as we point at her little brother. Well, now we know who "This" is. This is This.

One of her signature expressions is in this post's title: "talkin' 'bout". When Matthew first began to coo, Dave and I would look at Meg and say, "Matthew's talking, Meg!" Pretty soon Meg started to say it all by herself whenever Matthew made a sound: "Talkin'!" Then a few weeks ago, when Meg and Matthew were both hanging out with their Daddy, Meg made her usual observation about her brother: "Talkin'!".

And Dave replied, "Yes, Meg, he's talking! What's he talking about?" Well, Meg didn't have an answer for the question, but ever since then, if Matthew coos, she always says, "Talkin' 'bout?".

Our favorite invented expression of Meg's is "kissygawa". Kissygawa is a sort of game she plays, usually at the dinner table. "Kissygawa," she will say quickly, looking at Dave; then she whips her head around to look at me. "Kissygawa," she repeats. Then she whips her head back to Dave and blows him a quick kiss; then she whips her head back to me and blows me a kiss. The whole thing takes two seconds, if that. "Kissygawa! Kissygawa! (Kiss, kiss.)" (She says "kissygawa" so fast that you wouldn't be able to understand her if you weren't steeped in Megisms.)

Meg's also begun counting to ten. She doesn't fully understand what numbers and counting are, but she can say all ten numbers in sequence. We were shocked the first time she did it. Dave was changing her diaper before bed one night, and Meg was repeatedly counting to three, which she had started to do just a few days before this. Then one time she got to three and didn't stop! Mommy and Daddy were (and are) duly impressed by this achievement. Although I have to say that recently, she often skips the first five numbers. Six, seven, eight, nine and ten seem to be her favorites. Or to put it as she would: "Seeex, seh-wen, eet, nyyy, ten!"

Most exciting to me is the fact that Meg has memorized her first Bible verse, Colossians 3:20. (It could be argued that her first verse was really Psalms 63:5, "My mouth will praise you with joyful lips." But she has never actually spoken those words; she learned them before she could speak with hand signs that I made up.)

Anyway, Colossians 3:20 says, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." I started teaching this verse to her several weeks ago, thinking that it would be months before she would be able to repeat the words back to me (since few of them are in her normal vocabulary). But nope! The other day she surprised me by saying the whole thing by herself. "Children..." I said, prompting her. And Meg said, "Chinr, mmbay uh peh-tis ehhhh-eeee, iss pease Luh."

Yeah. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.