Month 21: Chatty Charlie

Miles is turning into quite the talker. When he wakes up in the mornings, we’ll hear him over the monitor practicing his words: “Mama, Dada, car, doggie, Mamie, Pop, firetruck, car, train, Gram, Grandpa … out, out, OUT!!” When we open his door, he either responds with an enthusiastic “Hi!!” or, “Morning, Mama/Dada.” This is quickly followed by “Milk? Milk? Milk!!”

He also needs constant affirmation that he’s chosen the correct word. He will keep repeating a word until you say, “Yes, that is Mama’s coffee. You’re right!” Or, “Yes, I see you spilled your milk. Yes, you did make a mess.”

Of course, not all his words are recognizable, even to me. One time he stood next to the computer for 10 minutes saying, “amo woor” and growing increasingly frustrated before I figured out that he was asking me to pull up the Elmo’s World web site. And “boo-fie” and “cappup” might elude me if he weren’t pointing to the butterfly on his highchair or the ketchup bottle.

Miles’ verbal skills are somewhat of a surprise to me. See, I didn’t talk to him much when he was a tiny baby. I always felt stupid saying things like, “Look, Miles. Now Mama is putting the newspaper in the recycling bin. Now I’m loading the dishwasher.” Even reading him children’s books seemed silly. I mean, a 3-month-old can barely recognize his own foot! Is he really going to appreciate Sandra Boynton’s whimsical rhymes?

Anyway, somewhere along the line he picked up some speech. He has always loved reading. I do find it pretty amazing that he went from calling any object he encountered a “ba” (ball? bird? bye-bye?) to saying, “Happy day to you, Mama.” (I think he got that from the Sesame Street episode about Oscar’s birthday.)

Just because he knows a lot of words doesn’t mean he understands them, though. For instance, there were those couple of weeks when he mixed up “open” and “oatmeal.” And he has taken to drinking handfuls of bathwater and saying it’s “coffee.” When you ask him what color anything is, he says “blue.” We’ve been working on manners for ages; now he says “thank you” right before snatching another kid's toy, and “wampum” when I prompt him to “say thank you, Miles.” (No, *I* say “you’re welcome!”)

Sometimes his verbal aptitude is embarrassing. Like when another kid is just mastering sign language for “bird” and Miles walks up and says, “Owl. Whoo-whoo!” Show-off. Or when his pronunciation is questionable. For instance, around Christmas he became obsessed with the Grinch. Unfortunately, when Miles says it, “Grinch” sounds more like the word for a female dog. His poor sitter was so perplexed when Miles pointed at the neighbor’s inflatable Christmas decorations and shouted, “Bitch! Bitch!”

Now he’s in the parrot stage. He repeats EVERYTHING. Including the colorful phrases that slip out when his dad and I are driving. “Uh, no, sweetie, Dada said ‘shirt.’ He likes that man’s shirt.”

In church the other day Miles started shouting out “Christ! Christ!” I guess it’s the one word in the sermon that stood out? Hey, better that than shouting about the Grinch, right?

READ O’ THE WEEK: A book my Mom gave Miles might have something to do with his growing vocabulary: My Little Picture Dictionary It’s one of the few books that he will sit and “read” by himself. He also adores the Richard Scarry books.