Sunday and I had
been having an on-going discussion about whether Jonah had reached the cusp of
his linguistic potential. We disagreed
on whether he was actually saying words, and if he understood those words that
he may or may not be saying. Sunday,
the ever-hopeful one, had not only heard words emanating from his mouth, she
understood them. I, on the other hand, was
much more technical about such things, although I do consider the sections of
the New Testament that discuss “interpretation of tongues” whenever I attempted
to determine whether he was speaking a heavenly utterance or not.
I remembered when
my nephew Tyler started “talking.” My
younger brother, Luke, told us that Tyler was talking up a storm. When we visited them a week or so later, I
discovered that Tyler’s “talking” only included his mother, Faith. It didn’t include smiling, friendly uncles,
nice Nanas, or even Dad. It took a full
year after Tyler started “talking up a storm” before I heard a word other than
please, thank you, and school bus.
I hoped Jonah
progressed as quickly as Tyler. At this
rate, Jonah isn’t even talking well enough for his own mother to understand
him.
Here are a couple
times when Sunday or I have heard him “say” something.
Situation #1: We
were in church, with a small group gathered around Jonah, making faces and
funny noises, in the hopes of getting him to smile. Since Jonah smiles in order to exist, they
didn’t have to try very hard. (He’s kind
of like The Joker, who has a perpetual-smile).
Anyway, as they mercifully began leaving the area, they all screwed up
their faces in grotesque smiles—all of them looked like they had been getting a
contact high from all that cheery goodwill—and they waved too enthusiastically
yelling, “Good bye! Good bye! Good bye!”
They were having so much fun, I wanted to vomit.
So Jonah did
something I had been wanting to do all night:
He laughed at them. Then, Jonah
said, “Buh, Bye”
By the reaction he
got, you would have thought Jonah had fired a shotgun after them. They arrested their excited salutations and
came screaming back to us, yelling, “He talked!
He talked!”
In response, Jonah
said, “WaAAAHHHH!!!! WAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!”
His yelling made
them go away, much to my good pleasure.
Situation #2: Jonah
and I spend most mornings together as we interrupt each other’s work. I work by reading or writing. Jonah works by rolling trucks across the
living room floor or throwing small teething rings at my head. Either way, we converge on the floor about
once an hour, to play or check on one another’s progress in the day’s
work.
One morning, Sunday
came home to find us not working at all, but crawling around on the floor
playing. She joined in our games,
talking to Jonah and getting the information on our day.
She asked, “Jonah,
what did you do today.”
“Heehee. OoOHH.
Bababababa,” was his response.
“OH! That sounds
very fun. What else did you do?”
“ahhadiosajkdfd”
was his reply.
There, in our
apartment, we stopped cold. He had just
said “adios”. He said adios! While we would have loved to have a child who
speaks English, a child who knows multiple languages is even better—provided
that he eventually learns English. We
translated Adios, which means “see you later” in Spanish, but it also means “we
crawled around on the floor vomiting and eating bits of dust” in Croatian. Since the Croatian came closest to making
sense, we have come to the conclusion that Jonah has decided to speak Croatian
before he speaks Spanish. We really
don’t know when he’ll fit in English, but with this progress, I don’t think
it’ll matter much.
Either way, he’s
been “adiosing” all day long.
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