He walks! He talks!

Simon has joined the illustrious ranks of the world’s bipeds. I love the new walker’s toddle, stumbling around with stiff bowed legs and arms held up and open, ready for the inevitable crash. He’s quite good at it now, having gone from his first tentative steps a couple of weeks ago to being able to cross the room and navigate corners and clutter with ease.

I watch him careen off the furniture and plop uncerimoniously onto his butt, and think how much that would hurt if it were me landing with that much force on my ass-end, even with all the padding I’m carrying around these days. Kids are impressively durable! It’s the bounce that makes me cringe. I wish I could bounce with impunity, but I fear I would end up with my tailbone somewhere between my ears if I fell on my tucus as often and with as much aplomb as Simon does.

He talks now, too. He’s mastered “up”, “nite nite”, “dog” and “ball”. No mama, no dada, but a reasonable stab at “Tistn”, which shows me my place in the family heirarchy. He also babbles ferociously, and I would really like to have use of a Babel Fish for just a day or so to know what it is he is going on about. He’s probably complaining about my cooking.

A friend of mine who has studied linguistics or anthropology or childhood development or something like that (hey, I can’t remember everything) told me that babies are born with the capability to make all the sounds in all human languages, and it is around the age of one year that they begin to whittle out all the sounds they won’t need to speak in their mother tongue. Kind of like undifferentiated linguistic stem cells, I think. I guess that’s why some days I swear he’s spouting off a Wagnerian libretto in gutteral German, other days he sounds like he’s being raised in Chinatown and still other days it sounds like he is speaking in that throat-clicking language of the Inuit.

I want to say this is one of my favourite stages of babyness, but then I said that about the age of 4 to 6 months, when they first start to beam at strangers and sit up for themselves, and about the tiny newborn stage when their cries sound more like angry cats than hungry babies. And I love the next stage, where growing vocabularies intersect with a burgeoning awareness of the world.

What is/was your favourite baby stage?

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Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

5 thoughts on “He walks! He talks!”

  1. Welcome to the upright world Simon!
    OH and Dani…did you know that hitchhiker’s guide to the glaxcy THE MOVIE is coming out soon?
    My favorite baby stage…That’s a tough one. I love something about everything. Although I think the one that melts my tough Mommy heart is sitting and cuddling a baby who is just starting to smile and goo. OMG HOLD ME BACK! I love that!
    Congrats on the biped Dani!

  2. I like the 9-month-old or so stage; something about a baby’s burgeoning personality and expanding abilities at that stage really strikes a chord in me. Newborns, although adorable in their tiny, mewling way, don’t hold as much appeal for me.

  3. Walking? Oh my, that baby is becoming such a real boy; I can’t wait to witness this!
    Well, as extensive as my experience is…I would have to say 4 weeks and 4 days old. She started to smile for real and coo at her bears and squeal at the toys hanging from that baby gym you bought her. She also slept for two 4 and half hour streches that night.
    Since then we have entered into a crying and whining stage that seems to know no end. Maybe it’s a certain day of the week? She’ll be 5 weeks and 4 days tomorrow, so wish me luck!

  4. Oh easy! When theyfirst smile, no wait, roll over, nope, sit on their own, nope crawl – wait…stand? Hmm…that arms stretched out walking and butt plopping (as you so eloquently described) hmm…the running….the laughing their heads off…the jumping…the talking….hmmm….yup, love ’em all.

  5. It’s the sheer strength that it must take for those little legs to hold up that girth that is amazing to me.
    I like all the stages for different reasons but am also enjoying the ‘noball’ (for the cat snowball) stage…he has all of 20 words but kitty and ball are right up there. Wait Dani, there is some value in them NOT saying mommy yet. That way in the middle of the night there is a smattering of hope that you can convince Beloved that it is HIM they are calling….

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