Noise Makers

Ronnie’s been a complete pain in the ass the last couple weeks. She’s super hard to put to bed at night. She wakes up the second you lay her in her crib and stares up at you in dismay and then starts to wah. She’s been clingy and whiny for her father during the day. When I get home from work she demands my attention non-stop. I spend more time sitting on the floor than on the furniture. She doesn’t necessarily even need me to pay attention to her, just be down there so that she can throw herself at me in-between menacing. She rips toys off the white shelf in the corner and flings them everywhere. She pulls books out of the tv consol drawer and destroys them. She climbs up on the couch and throws all the pillows off. She tears great hunks of fur off the cats. She is a total menace.

But she’s also frickin’ smart and has been cataloguing everything in that little developing brain of hers. She points and says, “This” nearly constantly. Half the time I don’t know which this she even means. I’ve taken to keeping a running commentary while I’m holding her so that whichever this she’s interested in will hopefully be covered. I remember Kirk asking, “What’s that” while pointing so I guess it’s a pretty common phase for babies to go through.

Ronnie’s got another noise that she makes when she’s not asking, “This.” I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like a Spanish rolled r but it’s a th sound instead. It’s pretty hard to duplicate. I don’t know of any language that actually uses that phoneme. It took me a while to realize which sound was being trilled. I experimented with tongue placement at the back of teeth, top of palate, and front of palate before I figured it out. It doesn’t sound quite the same way when I do it as when she does but I think it’s because I have more and larger teeth. Hers sounds more like the brrrrr you make when you make the motor boat noise with your lips – only no vocalization, air flow only. Kirk had a repeat noise, too, but his was definitely a vocalization. I guess I’d transliterate it as “nngink!” and he repeated it frequently enough that we still remember it. Interesting that both of their noises incorporated sounds not found in English.