aka: the interpreter

J is almost 15 months and I feel like I've entered a new realm of parenthood.  He's been babbling for a while and now he's starting to form words; more than we realize.  Every once in a while he'll blurt out a word, out of nowhere, and out of context.  And when we hear it, we stop and wonder if we heard him correctly.  So we sit, and wait for him to say it again.  But he never does. 

But there are some words that J knows, and he understands more than we think he does.  We'll be reading a story and I'll ask him to point to a certain animal or Sesame Street character, and he knows them all.  I'm actually amazed that he does and has known them for a while.  He started showing us he knows them since he was 13 months.  His memory is growing every day and I'm constantly wondering what he'll remember tomorrow.  It also makes me check my attitude when I'm around him because if I've had a bad day at all, he'll pick up on that.  I only get to spend about 2 hours a day (weekday) with him, and that's stretching it. 

So on weekends my husband and I like to spend as much time with our little guy as possible.  It's during these days that we learn more about J and realize he does actually have developed more words and phrases than we knew he had a week ago. 
"I see you", "Peek A Boo", "Winnie the Pooh" are just to name a few phrases and for some reason my husband and I are the only ones that can understand anything he says.

Prior to being a Mum, I used to see other parents interpret their kids babble talk to others who didn't have the same ears as they did.  But now, we've become those people who have to interpret to our family what J's saying.  We've actually had discussions over whether or not he was actually saying the words.  It's like they have more experience on our son than they do.  We've only been living with him every day since he was born. 

I'm proud to be an interpreter for my son.  Of course there are days when I don't understand him and he gets so frustrated with me.  His reaction falls into a temper tantrum but I've grown to have patience for these small episodes (for now) as I can clearly understand his frustrations and see that he's frustrated because he can't communicate properly.  So we work on it with him, and sometimes I repeat what I think he wants to say, and other times I repeat the babble back to him.  He thinks that's silly though and giggles at me.