Timothy is now one and a half years old, and growing up. You would think that by now we would be used to kids growing up. But even Timothy keeps amazing us, melting our hearts, and drives us up a wall at times.
Timothy is starting to understand things, and you can tell by his behavior. Like I would tell him we would go pick up Keona and Samuel from school. He would walk into the hallway and get his shoes. For a while he was doing small things like that, mostly rituals. For example: when we would bring Keona and Samuel to bed, after that he would go downstairs with us. So after tucking them in, he would walk towards the steps and wait for us to open the gate.
Just now he was climbing on Samuel’s chair. Pointed at a placemat and said “papa”. So Samuel came and told him that he’s not daddy. But Timothy kept insisting. Turns out he wanted a placemat. Once he had that he said a word that sounded like “dinkuh”. Similar to the Dutch word for wanting to drink: “drinken”. When I asked him if he wanted a drink, he vigorously started nodding.
Timothy’s face was worth a picture. As he sat on Samuels chair at the big table, with his placemat and his drink.
Now as I am writing this, he sits next to me. His cookie is done and boy can he shout. Pointing, adding sounds together that clearly mean something for him, but not for us. Being the third child he clearly doesn’t need to talk yet. He just has to shout and point and big sister and brother come running. In the mean time, mom and dad try to ignore his pointing, and try to coax him into using understandable words. Understandable for grown ups that is. Samuel and Keona don’t seem to be hindered by his lack of vocabulary.
So beside “papa” and “mama” today he said “dinkuh”. Close enough to “drinken” for me to want to make this new skill known to the world.
Dordrecht – 7 november 2007