The sounds of yesteryear

Watching Monroe grow before my eyes is usually too fun to allow much time for wistful reminiscing, but recently Eben and I were recalling some of the many little sounds we used to hear from her before she got so great at speaking and it made me a bit nostalgic for the early days of her speech. Here are just a few of the sounds I miss:

• From 6-14 months, she signaled both hunger and thirst with this very pathetic little sniffing sound, as if she were literally sniffing around for some food. Now she's old enough to say "I want some apple" or "water please" and while I greatly appreciate the clarity for logistical purposes, I miss the little sniff. It conveyed a much less civilized sense of need, but in a very babyish way.
  
  
• Around March, she was really into the work "bakawa" which she said in exactly the same way to mean either basketball, bicycle, or backwards. You had to work it out by context. I just loved the way the word sounded (like this) and I also loved that she routinely used the word "backwards," which seemed fairly conceptual for an 18-month old.
  
  
• In her very early days of learning to communicate, when she was just 13-16 months old, she was at the height of her doggy obsession. (She still likes dogs along with all other animals, but she's developed a particular preference for Belle and Baxter and is less generally enthusiastic about all dogs everywhere.) She used to make this noise every time she saw a dog--it was a forceful double-blast of air, a sound something like "Ruff Ruff" or "Vo Ro." It took me a while to realize that she was applying this invented word very consistently to dogs, and then I realized it was kind of like a little bark. She got so good at making it sound bark-like that even strangers would know what she meant when she pointed at their dogs and barked. Now she says "It's a big doggy, mama" and stuff like that. I kind of miss the "RoRo" phase.
  

Just the other day, Monroe said "hold me" when she wanted to be held. That felt like the end of an era too, because she's always held up her arms and said "holdju"--clearly confused about what the verb in the phrase actually is. Now that she's figuring it out, I'll have another sound to miss.