"Jack can talk Thai....

... Jack talked Thai real well." ~ Greg Focker, Meet the Parents.

Save for one or two words, Jack ( 16 months) doesn't speak yet. In some ways it troubles me. I mean, what parent wants their child to be 'behind' other kids their age? And I do hear a lot of 16 month olds with already budding vocabularies. At the same time I know he will talk, but not until he's good and ready. For now he goes off in long babbling rants, expressing himself through facial expressions and hand gestures.

Today he was pointing to a bottle of water on the table and proclaimed, "Da ma-en gu ba wa!"

I asked him, "You want some water, Jack?" and handed him the water bottle. He drank happily and walked away. Alice said very matter of factly, "Mommy... Jack can't talk. How do you know that's what he wanted?"

Remembering a line from the movie Meet the Parents I turned to Alice and said, "Ooh, Jack talks Alice. Jack can talk Thai. Jack can talk Thai real well." and giggled.

She looked at me long and hard with a bit of a blank stare. She has no clue what exactly I said or where it came from, but is now walking around saying, "Jack can talk Thai. Jack can talk Thai real well." I'm just waiting for the moment when we are out in public and she proclaims that to a stranger.

I love the endless entertainment of motherhood!