"Dad, you're babbling."

Abbie is now babbling. This important milestone has developed over the past week. Before, her entire means of vocal communication was “ahh,” which she usually said while screaming. Now, she has a whole list of words to express herself, words like “ahzibah,” “guhbahzi,” “aygumayguh,” and, most puzzlingly, “stopplayingthatwretchedsesamestreetmusic.”

She doesn’t babble all the time, or even often, yet. A favorite babbling time is mealtime. Between bites of chicken and squash, sometimes she’ll cut loose with a string of babbling, running as many as ten or more nonsensical syllables together into some imaginary word, like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.* She may be trying to communicate in her infantile way that she’s pleased by the meal, or maybe she’s still sleepy from her nap, or maybe she’s humiliated by my insistence on her wearing a bib and strapping her into a chair. I’m not sure Abbie quite grasps the relationship between words and whatever object, action, or concept they represent, so her babbling may just be the end result of her body’s desire to interact with the world in the only way it knows how. Ellie behaves in much the same way by watching VH1* to unwind after work; it doesn’t make much sense, but you got to do something.

I generally encourage her (Abbie, not Ellie) babbling by babbling right back at her. She’ll babble, and then I’ll try to repeat it. Then she may babble more, and I’ll continue to repeat. Then she stops, possibly because I’ve said something insulting in baby-ese. But what could insult a baby? You don’t know naptime from bedtime? Your daddy doesn’t know how to dress you? Ahzhigumaybabah?

* Fun fact: This word is in Microsoft Word’s spell-check
** Fun fact: This word is also in Microsoft Word’s spell-check