Baby Talk

Every blogging mommy I know does it at one time or another: the obligatory 'oh no, my baby is losing his/her baby words' post. Here's mine:

Oh no, my baby is losing his baby words! Wah! I already miss them!

The one that brought this on was "fire engine." Every day, on the way to and from daycare/work, we pass the local fire house, and every day, on the way to and from daycare/work, N talks about the fire engines. Except, until yesterday, he called them "fie-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nins." (The number of nin-nin-nins that followed the fie always varied.) It never failed to elicit a smile from me. But yesterday, out of nowhere, came, "Look Mommy! The fieya engine is out of the gawage!" Pause. "Mommy! I say fieya engine like you!" Sad that the nin-nin-nin-nin-nin was gone; sadder still that he was the one who pointed it out to me.

I was also sad when he stopped calling his best friend Dada (a true honorific if ever there was one, both a sign of the fact that he couldn't say William, and a symbol of the high esteem in which he's held William since they were infants). I was sad when he stopped referring to himself as Nahnoo. (I always had a flash of Robin Williams as Mork when he did that.) I was really sad when he stopped saying his last name was Kookoo. (Sorry, my paranoia is too deep to say what the real name should be, but suffice it to say, our last name is NOT Kookoo.) And he doesn't always call the kitchen "the chicken" any more. Why do they have to grow up? What fun is life when a kitchen is just a kitchen?

I remember how much I loved Em's Emisms, and how much I mourned their passing. (Among my favorites: butcept for except, mick-yous for music, in a couple whiles for in a little while.) But N's my last baby, and it hurts more than it did with Em.

Oh well. At least we'll have really good material to tease him with when he's a vulnerable and easily embarrassed teenager...