Advances in Language Development

The way I remember it, Toby was a very advanced in his speech and language development.  Even though it sounds like I’m bragging, don’t worry, it will soon be mitigated by the self-depricating reality; it was all a maternal mirage of first-born-bias. Toby DOES have a great vocabulary, but lets just say it wasn’t EXACTLY as we had remembered it.

Sometime after Mia was born, Rob and I were looking back on videos of Toby and reminiscing.  We came across one in which I knew the punch line before we had even pressed play.  Although it had been years since I’d taken the video,  I CLEARLY remembered what it was about.  Toby was about 15 months old and he LOVED blue berries.  In fact, he loved them SO MUCH that he would ask for them by name; a skill I thought was nothing short of genius at the time.  This video was taken in his highchair as he awaited his next blue berry.  His quiet shyness merely serves to accentuate the suspense towards his brilliant linguistic triumph that comes at the end of the video.

As we watched the video together I forewarned Rob about the ending so he didn't fall off his chair in astoundement by his near-perfect-and light-years-before-it-was-expected-developmentally pronunciation of the word “BLUE BERRY.”

Here’s the video.  You can see for yourself the fatal crash and burn effect it had on my ego.

After that preamble, I am now going to share with you the first of MANY videos we will likely take detailing the brilliant milestones that Mia will achieve on her own path of language development.  In this video, however, you can CLEARLY see which parent has learned from past experience…

For the record, I still think it sounds more like "Da-da"...