I’ve got one kid who is an absolute motormouth, and one – just about 16m – who can say about 5 fully-formed words and maybe 15 half-formed words. Baby, who is heads above where her older sister was in the vocal department, is probably on the cusp of talking for real. Unlike her sister, she’ll probably be saying phrases long before she turns two (actually, she can already say, “hi daddy” … but I mean many phrases).
In the meantime, it’s a real guessing game as to what she’s saying. You know what I feel like we’re doing all day long?
Playing baby charades.
If the guy in the middle was Baby, this would be us … alllll day long.
Am I right?! When she’s not using one of her very few words, she makes a grunt or “ooh! ooh!” noise while pointing in the general direction of what she wants.
“Do you want to go upstairs?”
“Do you want that duckie?”
“Are you looking for Anna?”
“Do you want to go look for the doggie next door?”
“What? What?! What?!”
Sometimes we narrow it down … and sometimes we don’t. At that point we just distract her and try not to cry about our defeat.
(I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty terrible at charades, baby or otherwise.)
Somehow Toddler is extremely confident about what her little sister wants, even when I know she’s completely wrong. Such as when Baby is pointing to the bathroom and Toddler says, “She wants to pee in the toilet!” Well, she might be right, but I think Baby really just wants to go unroll the toilet paper or try to break into our baby-proofed cabinets – or who knows what. But it’s highly amusing to hear Toddler’s attempt to win charades! (She would lose first, I’m pretty sure.)
Thank goodness this phase only lasts so long. I’m no good at this game. Give me baby word interpreting any day over charades! Three more months of this? (*crossing fingers*)
How do you fare at playing baby charades?
When my son was first born, I had no idea what he wanted: bottle, rock, diaper change, I was so frustrated. By a few weeks I could distinct his cries, from I’m mad, bottle, diaper, or hold me! Now at 4, I still don’t know what he wants sometimes, I love when I’m driving and I ask him a question and he shakes his head, I’m like son I can’t hear your rocks rattling in your head, lol.
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Oh gosh! As they get older it’s just a harder kind of interpretation.
Thanks for stopping by!
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That’s basically what I do for a living, so at this point I am pretty confident in my baby charade skills LOL!
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Possibly my favorite toddler story ever: When Unpredictable was one and a half, her word “gaga” meant both “cracker” and “jacket,” and her word “jeesh” meant both “shoes” and “cheese.” So if she toddled up to me and said, “Gaga, jeesh,” I had no idea if she was hungry (and wanted to make her cheese and crackers) or if she wanted to go outside (and wanted me to help her into her jacket and shoes)! Both of my kids love telling this story to other people. If nothing else, your baby will have charades to talk about when she achieves fluency 🙂
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That’s so funny!!!! You’d have to see where she was pointing, I guess – to the door or the kitchen!!! They really are enigmas when it comes to clear speaking for awhile, aren’t they?!
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Oh I also tried baby sign language it did help some
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Good job! I’ve heard people have some success with that. I was a bit too lazy both times … and also stubborn enough that I figured, “Oh, this phase will pass soon enough.” Thing is, it’s a long phase!
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Yep long long phase lol! Baby sign is easy to learn if you watch the DVDs with them
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We are at the stage where Noah points at the ceiling and babbles and I have no idea what he’s talking about. Then I try to distract him with food, which usually works.
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hilarious! We are at the point that if I can’t interpret what my two-year old son is trying to say I’ll ask my motor-mouth four year old to translate…and I will say, she is usually spot on! lol
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Fantastic! An in-house translator … so lucky she’s accurate!
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Ha! I feel your pain. When Baby Girl was about a year and a half, she’d always ask for “Go Go.” At first it was to watch the “Let It Go” song, but later it was applied to some of the other “Frozen” songs and we’d have to figure out which one she wanted depending on the emphasis she used.
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Ah, the nuances of baby babbles, yes … when tone and inflection mean a great deal. That’s actually quite a skill to have the same words mean different things just by changing how it’s pronounced!
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