Bunny and Okra are 10 months old. They hear Cantonese majority of the day with me and my mom being their primary caregivers. I read and sing to them in English but tag on descriptions of the pictures in Cantonese. Cantonese nursery rhymes are also occasionally part of the repertoire. Recently they have shown signs of understanding our words. The first word that Bunny clearly showed understanding of was “giraffe” in Cantonese, which is a term consisting of three characters. One day I asked her in Cantonese “Where is the giraffe?” She turned around and looked at the location of the correct animal. I thought it was a fluke and asked again. Her correct rate came out to be about 75%. She DOES know. From then on it has been an exciting new world of discovering the babies’ new receptive language skills. Bunny understands when I asked where Baba (daddy in Cantonese) is or where the car is. She looks out the window for both (since the babies often stand by the window with their faces pressing on the glass watching Bob’s car pull in the driveway). She also recognizes the word “PoPo” for grandma. At first when I asked Okra the same things he had no reaction. About a week later he suddenly turned his head to look at the elephant and the giraffe on the wall when the question was asked. Looks like he’s catching up with his sister.
Both babies have been babbling a lot. The babbles are all the generic dada, mama, baba, wawa, and a bunch of vowels all mixed together. I do think that Bunny has her “words”, or strings of sounds to which she has assigned meanings. Whenever she is hungry, she says “Mehhhhh” in desperation. She says the same consonant and vowel combination when she sees us eat and wants some of our food. The other day she looked at Bob’s water cup and said “Waaaaa”. Both kids actually call out “Mamama” or just “Maaaaaaa” in desperation especially in the middle of the night when they wake up and only want me. I don’t know if I’d count those as a real “mama” as I don’t know if they were just yelling in desperation or truly did know the sounds meant me, their mom.
Until one day. I was swiffering while speaking on the phone. Bunny was standing in her baby jail holding onto the bars and staring at my actions intently. I continued talking while cleaning the floor. Suddenly, she looked me in my eyes, said “Mama”, and then gave me the biggest beaming smile ever. She called me “Mama”! Intentionally! For the first time! I was in shock and immediately told the person on the other line, my close friend and former coworker who is also a speech language pathologist, how amazing it was that Bunny all of a sudden called me while not being desperate for something.
This exciting new development makes my heart sing. The babies clearly know who their mother is and are attached to me. But to hear my own child call me “mama” for the first time for real is out of this world amazing. It doesn’t erase all the pains from the long infertility struggles but it does help me to focus on my blessings especially during those recent crazy, tiring, sleepless, teething nights when both babies cry for their mama.
I can’t wait for them to talk!