I think most parents of toddlers speak their child’s “language” better than other people.  Certainly with Anya, there have been words or phrases that we understood, though anyone else would most likely have no idea what she was saying.  “Uh-duh-mo” was one of my favorites - that meant “up and down” (She now says it correctly).

For the most part, Anya’s speech is pretty intelligible these days.  She’s got a couple of creative pronunciations (”ephalent” instead of “elephant” and “mazavine” instead of “magazine” are some examples) but we can usually figure out what she’s trying to say pretty quickly.  That’s what makes it so frustrating for all of us when she’s telling us something and we just cannot understand what she means.

I had a Rosetta Stone moment this week, though!  For a long time, when Anya wanted to take something with her, she’d say, “Ernie dus!  Baby dus!  Milk dus!”  I couldn’t figure out what word she was trying to say, though her meaning ultimately became clear - I’m taking that with me, lady!  I thought maybe she was saying “does” although I didn’t get why she would say that.  At last this week she started differentiating the sounds a little bit more than she had in the past, and I FINALLY understood:  “Ernie with us!  Baby with us!  Milk with us!”  I felt like I had broken the code to some language of the past.  It’s probably silly to take that much joy in something so insignificant, but hey, that’s parenthood, right?