my son is a chatty little guy

At 22 months old, my son has developed quite a vocabulary, and despite Vegas oddsmakers’ predictions to the contrary, none of those words is a curse word — yet.

It’s odd how many words he is saying lately. Saturday, while driving with my family to a birthday party, I asked my wife, “How many words does E say?”

We both thought around 30 to 40. Then we started counting.

We named nearly 90 words and phrases that we remember him saying on a semi-regular basis. That number is impressive to me given that it wasn’t too long ago that he couldn’t say much more than his first word, ball.

The weird thing is how sometimes, he’ll blurt out an entire sequence of words out of the blue, an actual sentence!

The first time he did this was when he woke up in the middle of the night and said, “I don’t wanna sleep” or something to that effect. This was before we’d heard him use any of those words, let alone a whole lot of others.

A lot of times he will look at me and ramble off a long string of gibberish, peppered with an actual word here or there, usually at the end of the sentence.

“Mow, gabble roff tin mooph blar belba bekkahbenton kferlop keppa banna boppbell polla ball.”

Which roughly translates to “cat blah blah blah blah ball.” He could be talking about the cat and a ball. Or he just as likely could be talking an episode of Meet The Press.

I wonder if he is substituting words, each of them with some meaning to him, and he is trying to tell us something or if he is just mimicking conversation he sees and hears and just shoots off random syllables.

For instance, he will do the rambling thing and then say, “mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy” in the middle of all the nonsense words.

Is he actually meaning to say mommy and daddy? Is he telling a story which involves mommy and daddy or perhaps telling the story to us and addressing us?

The morning routine

He is most chatty when he wakes up each morning. He starts off his mornings not with a greeting of mommy or daddy, but rather, “Cars?”, wanting to watch his favorite movie.

He then walks around the living room taking an inventory of everything, pointing at things and saying their names. Ball, mow (short for meow in E-speak, which means one of our two cats). Oftentimes, he’ll point at something he’d seen one of us using, such as a cup or book, and he’ll say, “mommy” or “daddy”.

The best conversation I ever had

A few weeks ago, E was falling asleep in my arms at bedtime. Suddenly, he looked up at me and started talking. He was half drowsy, and it was mostly gibberish, but he was so focused on the words he was saying, and looking me in the eye as if he were imparting some great wisdom or outpouring of emotions.

It was so sweet, I actually cried a bit.

Anyway, here’s a video of E waking up from his nap Sunday. Notice his use of the words, Cars, Elmo, baby and at the end of the video, he says, cheese, attempting to grab the camera.

Note: right after he said Elmo, he launched into a brief rendition of the “la,la,la,la,la,la, Elmo’s world” song.

And as if this post were not indulgent enough, here’s a list of the words that E can say

The List

Ball (his first word, originally pronounced baaaawl)
Mommy
Daddy
Baby
Ummm
Nana (for banana or grandma)
Yo’s (short fo4 Cheerios, his favorite food, particularly the fruity ones)
Baba (short for bottle)
Pass (short for pacifier)
Mow (short for meow, short for cat)
Moo (for cow)
Moon (for spoon and fork)
Moon (short for balloon)
Woof (short for dog)
‘Ack (short for Jack of Jack’s Big Music Show)
Please
Peas
No
Yeah
Yes
Nigh nigh (short for night night)
Bubbles
Book
Pooh
Igger (short for Tigger)
‘Or (short for Eeyore)
Apple (short for pineapple, and also for pears, it seems)
Wawer (short for water)
Cheese
Cracker
Elmo
Bath
Hat
Play
You
Mine
Cars
Up
Down
Eat
Cookie (pronounced kee-kee)
Juice
Blanket
Rinin (short for raisin)
Ice
Help
Iglet (short for Piglet)
Pants
Irt (short for shirt)
Sock
Shoe
Bear
Hair
Tees (short for teeth)
Nose (which he says after he sneezes)
Ear
Mow (for mouth)
Knee
Toes
Bir (for bird, also for Big Bird)
Bee
Baa (for sheep)
Rain
Car
Color (his word for crayons)
Blue
Blue’s Clues
Pane (short for airplane)
‘Onter (short for monster, as in Cookie Monster)
P (short for Snoopy)
Poo poo
Nope
Hewwo (as in hello)
Out
Ot (short for hot)
Ligh (short for light)
Sit
Ankow (short for thank you)
Hat
Cup
Eeww (which he says whenever one of the Cars in the movie, Cars, sticks their tongue out)
Good job
Hold you
Up, Up
Here Go
Here’s the Blues Clues
It’s raining
Good job
Wow
Come ‘ere

If you haven’t had your fill of saccharine sweet, check out Sean Platt’s tribute to his son.

As always, thanks for reading,
David Wright

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