It's so much easier now...

Edith just woke up crying.

Don't leave me now, because I'm not going to whine about it.  Seriously!

I was just going to say how nice it is that she's talking now.

When I went up to see what was wrong with her, I picked her up and gave her a cuddle.  Then I asked her if she was ready to go back to sleep.

She pointed to my bedroom and said "wreent."

I know it sounds like total gibberish to everyone else, but luckily for me I am (almost) completely fluent in Edithese.

She wanted a drink.  She was pointing to my bedroom because I keep a Nalgene bottle full of water on my bedside table.

One of the most exciting developmental milestones (so far) in my childrens' lives has been the ability to speak.  Oh, language is a real gift.

Newborns are easy.  If they are crying, chances are they either want to be fed or need the mess from their last feed cleaned off their backsides.  Now obviously you have the occasional "other" problems, like over-stimulated, over-tired, teething, etc.  But let's be honest here--I breast-fed my babies until they were quite ridiculously old and if there was something else wrong with them, a little "momma milk" sorted it out anyway.

But somewhere in between the baby stage and the toddler stage is that awkward, annoying and difficult stage when there is no reasoning with them and no comforting them.

Wow, I hate that stage.

They know what they want, but they are unable to tell you what it is.  You want to help them and give them what they want, but you just CAN'T UNDERSTAND! 

Dylan was always a great communicator.  He was slow to start talking, but once he started--well, I haven't been able to get him to shut up since.  He had a few words that were difficult to understand, like "ottaker" instead of "helecopter" and "issinge" instead of orange, but he always spoke so clearly.  Perfect strangers never had any trouble understanding him, even from just two years old.

Edith has been a bit more difficult.  She was a slow starter as well, in a lot of different areas.  And now, well, she's turning into a little chatterbox as well.  But she speaks her own little toddler language that only Martin, Dylan and I understand.

She is completely unable to make a "k" sound, so when she means "pink," what she actually says is "peen-t."
Instead of saying "thank you," she goes "ahh-ahh."

I really love that she has her own little language, but I love it even more that I understand it.

It really is so much easier whan that child learns how to talk.

It's even better when they begin to learn to reason. 

Logic is so very underrated.