A quick baby story from this morning that I just have to share. I was sitting on the couch with Loyette in my lap, reading her a story, while Becky was holding a hungry Loyacita. (For the uninitiated, “Loyette” and “Loyacita” are the “blog nicknames” of my 19-month-old daughter and my 4-week-old daughter, respectively.) Becky wanted to grab breakfast before feeding Loyacita, so she briefly put her down in her bouncer seat. Loyacita promptly started to cry.
Loyette immediately became distracted from our story, and glanced over at the baby’s seat, clearly concerned about why her sister was upset. But I regained her attention and we finished the story, after which I put Loyette down on the floor. She walked toward Loyacita, looked at her for a few moments, then started walking briskly toward Becky in the kitchen and said, quite clearly: “Mommy? Baby. Wah wah wah.”
I think this qualifies as Loyette’s most complex verbally-expressed thought ever. You could almost say that it’s a sentence, with “Mommy” as an interjection, “Baby” as the subject, and “Wah wah wah” as the verb. In any case, it contains three distinct concepts: first, “Mommy,” to get her audience’s attention; second, “Baby,” to indicate who she’s talking about; and third, “Wah wah wah,” to communicate her concern: Mommy, the baby is crying! Awww.