Whuds, whuds, whuds

In the morning, Pynchon retrieves Munchkin from her sodden and pee-peed bedding, strips off the wet pyjamas, and wrangles her into a new diaper and the navy blue Roots tracksuit we've come to call her 'morning outfit.' I slowly come to consciousness from my soft, downy nest across the hall and listen to them chat to each other. The next part is the very best: Pynchon brings her into our room, and she shouts "Wake up! Wake up!" and "Mommy! Mommy!" as all 30-some pounds of her drop onto my chest, a big warm toddler snuggle.

We like to roll around in bed all together these mornings. She snuggles her teddy bear and her doudou, and, if we're lucky, her parents. Recently, she has demanded to hold and admire the book I'm reading: The Lynne Truss Treasury is an 800 page monster, three novels and a slew of newspaper columns collected into one very heavy book. There is very little decoration on the cover. It's just a white paperback, with the title in plain text (albeit red foil plain text), and the tiniest, most abstract little doodle of a cat at the bottom. Well, this cat is the apple of Munchkin's eye. "Cat! Cat! Cat! Meow! Hug!" She hugs the book. She wants to look at the illustration on the front and then on the (quite substantial) spine. She hefts that book around on the bed like it was nothing. She has started to riffle through the pages, assuming, in her toddler ego-centrism, that all books are her books. She is puzzled by the utter lack of illustrations, if thrilled by the wind created as she pulls all the pages across her thumb and they whirr in the air.

"Munchkin," I tell her, "There's just words. It's Mama's book. Just words, words, words. Look at the cat on the front!"

Every morning she opens the book, thumbs the pages. "Wuhds, wuhds, wuhds," she repeats sagely, to herself. "Whuds, whuds, whuds," and then, more cheerfully, "Meow!"

Her capacity to learn wuhds-wuhds-wuhds has just exploded again, and Way the Hell Up North, retired elementary and special-needs teacher Gramma maxed out Munchkin's learning curve, with nursery rhymes they chime out in turns.

London Bridge is falling? DOWN!
Falling? DOWN!
Falling? DOWN!
London Bridge is falling? DOWN!
My fair? LADY!

She knows the second verse, too. And all the end-rhymes on Wee Willy Winky and Rub-a-dub-dub.

At home, she has started to answer some questions with more than a simple yes or no or grunt. Who did you play with at daycare, Munchkin? Nathan! What did you have for lunch? Cheese! Would you like to play or go in the tub? Tub! What song would you like me to sing? Roo-lf! [Rudolph!]

Tonight, it transpires that she can chime out all the line-ends and half-lines from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She chimes in with Reindeer! Nose! Saw it! Glows! Reindeer! Names! Rudolph! Games! Eve! Say! Bright! [To]night! Him! Glee! Reindeer! [His]story! It seems to me like an awful lot of words for an eighteen-month old to sing out in the right order and at the right time--her little leaps and changes, though, always astonish me.

She now knows, in fact, so many words that her father and I no longer understand what she's saying half the time. When her lexicon was more limited, we learned some of her quirkier pronunciations ("Abba!" for a while meant "On your bum!", "Tee-poo" means toothpaste and "Hanto" means elephant). But now she makes conversation in a language foreign to us, but obviously meaningful to her. And suddenly, three days later, we get it.

Wuhds, wuhds, wuhds. I really love this stage. I can teach her language; I can enunciate, I can make rhymes and listen to her, and explain things, and let her explain things to me. What a wonderful time this is turning out to be!



"Cheers, Gramma!" Woe betide you if, returned home, you mistake "Cheers!" for "Cheese!" because, believe me, cheese isn't a word to be deployed lightly around here. That took a couple of days ...