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Sunday, April 15, 2007
Language Explosion
*Pictures to come later this week. I promise.**

I'm not sure what it is, but all of a sudden Patrick seems to have experienced a language explosion. He still chatters in nonsense most of the time, but he's trying more and more often to make his sounds into something that sound like real words. And when a word really stands out to him, he will try to imitate it.

It started last week when we left the house every day. As we would walk to the car, I would ask if he wanted to go bye-bye. About the third trip, he repeated "ba-ba" when I asked. Then Friday I decided to carry him with me to get the mail. When we approached the front door and he realized we were leaving the house, he volunteered "ba-ba" all on his own. He definitely understands what "bye-bye" means. Of course, he only thinks it applies to when he leaves, and he won't say it to others when they leave without him. Baby steps, right?

Then today he was acting like a garbage disposal during dinner, as usual, and Matt and I were on the search for more food to fill him up. We eventually turned to one of his favorite foods from a few weeks ago that we had forgotten about recently: a slice of cheese. He can recognize the sound of the cheese being plucked out of the refrigerator all the way across the house, and he gets excited immediately. Tonight, Matt decided to bribe him into saying the word "cheese." It worked. Before each bite of cheese, he would repeat "chiz" after his daddy so that he could eat another bite. Even when the cheese was obviously gone, he would keep saying "chiz" every so often, maybe to see if we would give him more cheese as a reward. Smart kid.

But the cheese story isn't the funniest. I noticed the other day that Patrick was starting to repeat one sound over and over and over. It sounds kind of like "oss, oss, oss." Anyone ever seen Meet the Fockers? If so, you know where I'm going with this. The way he keeps repeating the sound, he must think he's saying some word. But the only word we can think of that closely resembles the sound is not one that he has heard, at least as far as we know. (Anyone need to tell us something about now? Anyone?) Matt and I have struggled not to react to the sound at all so that Patrick won't figure out that there is anything unusual about it. That will only encourage him to say it more and louder. That would be great at church when we start going again (hopefully next Sunday). By the way, does anybody have any suggestions what he might think he's saying? Remember the only words he has said so far are words that he finds extremely important, like "mama," "dada," "chiz," "ba-ba," and "kitty." What word that sounds kind of like "oss" could be one with such relevance to him?

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3 Comments:

Blogger Lynanne said...

I always love the stories of words that sound like swear words but really aren't. A former coworker had a grandson that had difficulty with "fire truck." It came out "fruck" and sometimes lost the 'r.' when he got really excited about seing one. Someone else told me her ex got upset when her toddler seemed to call him a "dumb a$$." Apparently the kid was saying "Thomas," as in Thomas the Tank engine. Ooops! Hopefully you will figure out what an "oss" is soon! :)

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe it is his "horse". I called his zebra horse while we were there, seemed easier to say than "zebra"?

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's hard to say what he's thinking. Maybe it's the southern accent and the beginning of ice cream -- taking after his daddy. :)

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