All Done

Some of Julia’s most adorable baby-isms are already starting to fade. It’s so sad! I love it when she says “mo-mo” for rainbow, “dip-dip” for ketchup, and “mee-mu” for penguin. It will be a sad day when she actually says “penguin.” I mean: “mee-mu”? How adorable is that? Who knows what neuron-spark turned “penguin” into “mee-mu” in her little baby brain? I don’t know, but it sure is cute. And “dip-dip”! It mimics both the sound of the word “ketchup” and also refers to the action of dunking your french fry! I am letting out a little sigh of pre-nostalgia just thinking about never hearing “dip-dip” again.

Today, for the first time ever, when she finished eating her snack Julia said, “All done,” clear as a bell, instead of her months-old “All dee!” It sounded so adult, and so strange, coming out of her mouth. We’re so used to “all dee” that we practically use it ourselves. (Can’t you just see it? Christopher and me finishing off a nice dinner together, throwing down our cloth napkins, turning to each other, and saying, “Whew, I’m all dee. Sure was good pasta, though—I ate way too much”?)

And then there’s “ya-ya.” This coinage has been Julia’s word for singing or music of any sort for at least six months. No one else ever knows what it means, but we do. “Mama ya-ya!” she whispers to me, crawling into my lap and wanting me to sing to her. “Ya-ya?” she asks, the second she gets into her carseat, awaiting her favorite Justin Roberts CD on the car stereo. But a few weeks ago, perched in her highchair near the kitchen radio, Julia said urgently, “Moo-git!” and I didn’t know what she meant. “Moo-git, honey? What’s ‘moo-git’?” I asked her. Julia got more and more frustrated as she repeated her new word and I failed to understand her. Finally, with an air of exasperation that seemed to ominously foretell her teenage years, she shouted, “YA-YA!”, and it finally dawned on me. She was, at last, saying “music,” rather than her own nonsense baby word. I was torn between feeling pride over her latest verbal accomplishment and wistfulness at another vestige of babyhood bidding me goodbye.

Thankfully, since that day, Julia has gone back and forth between saying “ya-ya” and “moo-git.” So this mama hasn’t had to go cold turkey with that baby-ism yet.