Saturday, January 8, 2011

It's 3am and I hear babies babbling

It's 3 am. I can't sleep, and I'm listening to Kiki talking to herself in her sleep. And it occurs to me that I should document some of her alien language. It's fascinating how her brain works. Her brain knows the words...sort of...but her words are still mushy and malleable, like she's tailoring them as she goes.

"THIS THING"
"This thing!" has become her new empowerment phrase, thankfully replacing the "MINE!!!", which had been HER word since she could first talk. (Mine actually meant "more"--we know this because she'd do the sign language gesture for "more" at the same time--but morphed into a definite "MINE!!!" over time. It was her word for: get me this, pick me up, take me there, what's this curious thing?

"DASHA"
For the longest time, I didn't understand what she meant by this. She kept pointing to something and said "Dasha?". Eventually, I realized it meant "What's this thing?" Tonight, after 6 months of hearing her say this word, at 3am on January something-or-other, as I hear her mumbling in her sleep, I finally what it really means. It's "That's a..." In other words, she's pointing to something and saying "that's a......_________". She's been playing a fill in the blank game with us.

"SHUB-BOPPLE"

Scott is convinced Kiki is remembering a past life as a Persian princess or something, because he thinks this is a Persian (or Arabic?) word. Plus, it just sprang out of nowhere from her lips with such conviction and certainty that it was hard to believe it wasn't really a word. In her world, shubbopple means something like "now would you would at that, isn't that just amazing?".

I'm torn between eagerly anticipating her language development, so I can really start talking to her about what's in her head. At the same time, this period of time when language is a mysterious puzzle from outer space is so much fun. And I have to say, I get a secret thrill from being the person that can decipher her squishy words the best.

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