Savoring the Sound of Silence

We have hit the age, I think, where our days of silence are numbered. Not that Riley has really been "silent" ever - he has babbled incoherently, used various sounds for words before he knew how to call things the right thing, used shortened versions of the words that he knew, and then finally progressed into pronouncing things he knew well (mommy, daddy, doggie, moon, Wrigley, Winston, ball, Krispies (the little guy loves him some Rice Krispies)...). But just in the past few days I have noticed a change in his speech. When he is using words, I am fairly confident that even a stranger would be able to understand the word he is saying (where as before he would say something that Casey and I could recognize but which we would have to translate to other people). When he isn't saying words, instead of being silent, he just babbles non-stop in a way that makes me think he thinks he is talking (in other words, I think he thinks we're having a conversation, but I just can't make out what he's trying to say). The most significant change, however, is that since last Friday (so just shy of 21 months) our little guy has started to string together two words to form "sentences". "Mommy jacket" was the first thing I remember him saying as I left the room to go put on my jacket which was on a chair in the dining room.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the sound of his little voice. And I love that he is really learning how to talk and communicate with us and with others. But part of me knows that soon two things are going to happen: (1) he is going to ask me questions to which I do not know the answer and (2) he is going to learn to talk back. I already catch glimpses of the latter - his favorite response to any question right now is "no" ("Riley, do you want to help feed the doggies?" "No." (Incidentally, he LOVES to feed the dogs and insists on taking the top off their food container, scooping out the dog food with the cup, pouring the food into the bowl, and placing the lid back on each food container for each meal for each dog - a process that is so insanely cute, but that also requires quite a bit of time and a fair amount of spilling.) Our favorite question, "Riley, do you want a million dollars?" Response: "No.")

More disturbing to me than the talking back is the matter of him asking questions to which I do not know the answer. It is bad enough that I do not know most of the answers to the questions on that dreadful show "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader", but truly it'll be more than I can take when I'm not even smarter than a two-year-old. Big sigh.