Luke can talk now. It's amazing -- and yet we hardly take the time to notice. He's gone from an utterly baffling, bawling baby to a small person who can usually articulate his wants and needs, even if his speech, particularly the syntax, is still a bit like a space alien's. If that alien learned to speak English in Britain. He's got a strangely British accent at this point -- an exaggeratedly cheery intonation and careful, crisp enunciation. The best part: every "er" comes out "ah." As in "See you lat-ah!" I keep expecting him to ask for "bangers and mash" for his "tea." Along with "oh, plums" some of his favourite exclamations right now are "Oh butter fingers!" and "Oh my goodness, me."
But sometimes, when he is particularly hungry or tired or bored or frustrated (or when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter's aligned with Mars), Luke chooses to speak the language of Squeak instead of English. Like the !Ora language of Africa, which includes click sounds not heard in many other languages, Squeak uses sounds not generally found in English. They're not whimpers. They're not moans. They're not quite whines. They are short, sharp, high-pitched squeaks. Sometimes he deigns to throw in a little body language to help me along, such as pointing, jerking his head, or making some exaggerated facial expression that usually involves bulging eyes and a downward turn of the mouth. I've gone from frantically trying to interpret each squeak to pretending I'm a real xenophobe. "I don't speak Squeak," I tell him. "And I have no interest in learning. I'm still trying to learn French and that's bad enough."
It takes me right back to the days (and endless nights) when Luke was still a baby who communicated only through shrieking cries. And Priscilla Dunstan, that woman who claims to be able to teach you to translate specific baby sounds into specific baby needs, hadn't been on Oprah yet.
According to Dunstan, "Owh" means "I'm sleepy". "Heh" means "Change me." "Neh" means "I'm so hungry." "Eh" means "Burp me." And "Eairh" means "I have wind." I'm pretty sure Luke, whose usual cry sounded nothing like any of those and more like a cross between an air raid warning and a dying buffalo, was saying, "#@%# you! You don't have a #@%#ing clue, do you? Somebody #@%#ing get me a #@%#ing mother who #@%#ing knows what she's doing!"
Hmm. Maybe that's what he's been saying in Squeak all weekend. It's been a long one.
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