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lil' sailor

there are two things that i have always looked forward to in parenting. even since i was a little kid, i never did the doll baby caretaking sort of thing, but these two tiny random slices of parenting i always looked forward to. the napping toddler in arms, and the secret language.
i specifically remember leaving a braves game one time and seeing a 3 or 4 year old kid just passed out in his dad's arms. i remember thinking that is so cool that the kid is so very comfortable with his dad that he can just splop all over him and find perfect rest. no matter the noise, no matter the movement. 100% of his little person depending entirely on someone's arms. and the bigger the kid, the better, because obviously a newborn could be held by stalin or whitney houston and still feel secure. but the older we get the more likely we are to distrust or worry that something bad will happen or that we'll be dropped. judah definitely distrusts some people and situations. so that makes this even better for me: note his arm, which could be limp, hugging me instead. MELT!
and the second thing about parenting that i always was excited about was how a parent is sometimes the only one who can decipher the weird toddler babble that flows free at this stage.
judah's vocab has skyrocketed in these past few months. i would say he has about 200-300 words now and he understands almost 100% of what we say to him. it's becoming insane. and SO flipping fun. this kids slays us. we are screaming laughing on the floor at least 3 times a day over something he has said or tried to say.
even stock vocab like "tractor" comes out kind of whack from the untrained mouth of an 18 month old ("GACK" in judah's case). when i would babysit kids this age and they would say something like "shmor buggin flizzhen bloop," with total confidence, i would just stare at them like they were having an absent seizure. then the mom would come up behind me and say, "oh, he want you to put his blankie on your head and spin around." DUH!
but i thought that was so neat that the mom and dad have the inside edge to this totally unique language. only they can understand him. they turn tiny babbling ozzy osborne into an utterly intelligible silver-tongued bob costas (my gold standard of oration).
we have an example of this as well. a terrifying example of jesse learning one of judah's new vocab words. in fact, jesse didn't figure it out until later that night when judah grabbed his thomas and friends train and said it again. it was "murdoch" he was saying, the name of one of the trains. he had dropped his train on the floorboard and was asking for it back.
you will note that this sounds NOTHING like the english pronunciation of murdoch, and instead sounds very much so like something that he should NOT be saying over and over again and that i promise you he hasnt heard from us (me).
the thomas website describes murdoch thusly:
"Murdoch is a mighty engine with 10 wheels. He was brought to the island to help with the heavy workload and pull freight on the mainline. As shy as he is strong, Murdoch can often be found seeking peace and quiet." evidently judah doesn't like the strong silent type
at 1:59 PM