Binary Speak

As Toby’s language continues to develop, so does his overall perception of adult speech. He often tries to casually throw into conversation words and phrases that we say. Things like “What the heck!” or “What in the WORLD is going ON?” come up frequently (although often not entirely appropriately)

Where he is not quite so successful is in figuring out why adults insist on S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G certain things. ESPECIALLY around Christmas time.

It took us a while to figure out what he was doing but over the past week Toby has begun to announce a random array of numbers and consonants and then ask US what he is talking about. Needless to say, very SELDOMLY does his random array of misplaced digits make ANY sense to us.

In fact, his most common combination is that of ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE TWO ZERO which reminds me somewhat eerily of a computer geek speaking in binary code to his friends. For all I know my sarcastic smirks to Rob and patronizing answers to his questions could be in futile irony; knowing Toby he is probably announcing some brilliant computer programming invention and all we keep saying is, “Use more letters, Toby! That doesn’t make any sense!”