The Convergence of Baby Talk and English

[mightymulhern]

"The Convergence of Baby Talk and English" - Now doesn't that just sound like some kind of a scientific paper that should have some schematics and footnotes?

Lately Sydney's baby talk has been sounding more and more like English. Often it's as if she's talking to you with several marbles in her mouth (including with facial expressions, inflections, and some hand gestures). I'm convinced that she knows the words and that her mouth just isn't cooperating. ...and that this has been the case for months.

Back on Nov 9th, I reported Sydney saying "I don't know" after I asked her why she was pulling on her fingers. Unless we missed on at home, that was her first sentence.

This past Sunday morning, Sydney was doing a lot of coughing and had been coughing a lot the previous night. Sitting in the high chair while I was fixing breakfast, she looked at me and said, "I don't feel good". That's only the 2nd 100% clear sentence that I've been able to make out.

She has said other things that sound like phrases you might expect her to say, but some of that could be wishful and creating thinking on our part. I know she's got to be frustrated because she says something and then looks at you waiting for a response. We just can't understand her.

As for individual words, she went through a phase for a few days where she would go back and forth with you saying "no". You'd say "no", and she'd repeat it. Normally it sounded like "uh no". Very funny.

More recently she's started pointing to things and saying "this". She also said "down" once the other day when she wanted down.

On the non-verbal side, Meghan washed Sydney's tag blanket (little blanket with tags that she sleeps with) on Sunday, and Sydney was very concerned that Meghan was taking it to the basement. She pointed to the blanket and then to herself as if saying, "Hey! That's mine."

[mightymulhern]

And just like that, we have yet another sentence.

While playing with a toy my mom got her (song playing piano/microphone type thing), Sydney looked Meghan in the eye, pointed to the toy, and said "I like this!"

[Meghan]

Today she repeated, "I like this!" while playing with the remote control.

Also today, she threw some blocks and I firmly told her, "No!" She picked up the blocks, threw them again, pointed at them and said, "No!" using the same inflection I had used. I don't think this baby understands what "No" means.