Having been a mom now for 14 months, and seeing my daughter interact with other babies/toddlers, I’ve determined a few things.

1. The “gibberish” that baby’s speak is really their own secret language.
2. Even though none of us know what they are saying, they can all understand each other.
3. I’m also pretty sure that it’s a combination of Chinese and German.

I have 2 stories to back this up too:

1. Famous Footwear

One Saturday afternoon in August, CJ and I went shoe shopping and brought Munchkin with us. He needed new volleyball shoes and I needed both vb and running shoes. He tried his on first while I entertained Munch. Then we switched. While I was wandering the aisles, Munchkin suddenly  yelled out some gibberish. Another toddler in the store, that was a couple of aisles away, answered her! We laughed and the other girl’s dad even came over and said, “Wow, they’re talking to each other – and I think they know what they’re saying!”

My guess –

Munchkin: “Hey! Let’s ditch these parental units and go get some booze.”
Other Girl: “Right on! I’ll create a diversion and then we both run!”

2. Cousins

My sister has 3 kids – a girl and 2 boys. The youngest boy, Ben, is just 7 months older than Munchkin. On Thanksgiving, they were really getting in to playing with each other. They jibber-jabbered all day and no one thought much of it. Then towards the end of the day, as we were cleaning up, Munchkin wandered in to the kids’ play room at my mom/dad’s house and grabbed a book. She brought it out and placed it on the bench in the  kitchen. Ben took an immediate interest in it and they started looking at it together.

As they were flipping pages, they were “chatting”. We laughed at how much they were talking to each other and wondered if they understand what was being said. Just then, the book got knocked over behind the bench. Ben pointed to it and said something along the lines of, “Moosh eak ah suh tay!” Munchkin replied with, “ook” and immediately walked around to the back of the bench and tried to get the book! It was like he had just commanded her to do something in Baby-ease and she did it!

So there you go. My theory has been proven. Babies talk to each other in Chi-man and are plotting to take over the world, one mommy and daddy at a time.

Now that Munchkin is talking, we have to be careful what we say. She hasn’t repeated any bad words yet that she hears from us because we’ve been pretty careful. However, there are a few words that she says which, if heard wrong, could be bad.

She loves her rubber duckies. Whenever she sees one she yells out “duck!” But…sometimes the “d” is lost and the “u” sounds more like an “o”, if you catch my drift. She also is in to animal noises and she knows that ducks say “quack, quack”. But again, the “q” sounds more like a “c” and the “ua” come out with an “o” sound. 😐

Yesterday, because it was Daylight Savings Time, she saw us resetting all the clocks and wanted to know what we were doing. So we pointed to each one and said “clock!” which she immediately repeated back, only without the “l”.

This means that there are numerous instances when our precious little one is running around the house yelling “c–k!”  It’s funny right now but I’m sure I’ll be mortified when it happens out in public.