Day 617 - And Now a Word From Our Daughter...

Over the past month, Emma has been increasing her vocabulary. In the beginning, she could only say simple words like "mama," "papa," and "douche." She is now at the point where she can repeat almost any one syllable word and can intentionally say certain words like "self," "book," and "youembarrassmedada."

It's quite amazing and surreal for me to see this little baby who did nothing but poop, cry, and sleep turn into this wonderful little person who poops, cries, sleeps, and says one syllable words. Human development. Amazing!

As for Andrew, he has always been about a month behind Emma in the communication department. His repertoire of spoken words is much smaller than Emma, but he understands just as much as her. Andrew's two new favorite words are "more" and "car"; I'm hoping we can parlay this into the word "mocha."

Tonight, Lisa told me a funny story about Emma while feeding her dinner. After giving the kids their usual dinner of foie gras, baby bok choy, and a nice port wine, Lisa gave them their sippy cups to wash the meal down. After a few sips, Emma put her cup down and then coyly said, "...coo-kie..."

Lisa was taken by surprise, so she repeated to Emma, "What do you want, Emma?"

"...coo-kie..." Emma repeated.

So Lisa went into our stash of baby food and pulled out a box of toddler animal cracker cookies. She gave each of the kids two cookies which were immediately devoured by them.

Emma looked at Lisa with her mouth full and again said, "...cooooo-kieeee..."

"No more cookies, Emma," said Lisa.

"More!" Emma demanded. "More!"

"Emma. No more cookies."

"Coo-kie! Coo-kie!" Emma shouted as if doing a really poor impersonation of a Muppet.

Lisa was adamant about not giving Emma another cookie, so she thought of a compromise. "How about if I give you some cereal?"

Emma thought about it and then said, "No no no no no!"

Lisa never gave into Emma's food request, but in the middle of the night we heard rustling in the kitchen and found Emma eating an entire roll of Toll House cookie dough in front of the fridge. It's quite strange to have a pseudo-conversation with a 20 month year old child about anything, much less cookies, but it's the first step towards years of wonderful exchanges such as "I love you, Daddy," "I hit a home run, Daddy," "You don't understand me, Daddy," "I hate you, Daddy," and the ever endearing "F*(& you, assh*(0! I can't wait to leave this s*(&hole of a house and live on my own, Daddy!"