Attack of the Giraffes

The twins turned 1 1/2 a couple of days back. They are slow to talk, especially compared to how verbal Owen was at this age, but I feel they are, at last, on the verge of a verbal-explosion.

While Hayden already sports a massive vocabulary consisting of "mama, dada, duck and boo (the latter having gotten quite a workout in the recent Halloween-season), both Hayden and Cooper currently communicate primarily through baby sign language and by grunting and pointing. The pointing by Hayden is often accompanied by quite a bit of animation and urgency, along with a series of plaintive little "ah, ah, ah" sounds. Sort of like Lassie, but instead of trying to alert us to trouble down at the old mill, it usually turns out to be something much more mundane - most commonly that Cooper has swiped something from him.

Cooper meanwhile, has, in recent weeks, taken a stab at making animal noises. Hopefully a precursor to actual words and a ritual I would guess has been enjoyed by toddlers for the last 6000 years or so. Apparently channeling those cave-dwelling ancestors, Cooper makes the same drawn out monotone grunt for every single animal. It actually sounds an awful lot like Phil Hartman doing Frankenstein on those old Saturday Night Live skits. Probably for that reason, I find it endlessly amusing to sit with him and go through a book featuring different animals. After I turn each page, he gazes at the new animal with a serious little face, points at it and goes "aaaaaaaagggg." So, although giraffes don't actually have voiceboxes (or so my smart wife claims - sounds like crazy-talk to me), I like to imagine a pack of them lumbering along stiff-legged, making their ominous Frankenstein-sounds as they bear down on an unsuspecting Village while Lassie attempts in vain to wake the local Sheriff.