Nolan’s first semblance of a word was “nana.”
Next came “dada” and finally I heard the sweet word – “mama.” For the next few weeks, everything was mama but that soon changed. He just stopped saying it.
I thought by now he’d know to call me mamma, but for whatever reason, it didn’t stick. Now I’m “yaya.”
I was OK with that, until we had a playtime this week.
We have a monkey puppet that we’ve started using to interact with Nolan, and he loves it.
The “game” we made up starts with me taking a plastic cookie from his kitchen set, and having the money “eat” it. While he’s eating, he spits it out. Nolan howls with laughter when this happens.
I then wave a finger and tell the monkey that’s “not nice,” which is then copied by my little monkey of a son. He too waves a finger and says “na, na” to the monkey – his version of not nice.
Next, since the monkey was being “not nice,” I decided to put him into a time-out. Nolan thought this was even better.
Now he grabs the monkey from my hand and wants to put it into time-out himself.
That’s just great. While other little kids are having tea parties with their stuffed animals, my son’s learning about corporal punishment.
Anyway, back to my point.
I was talking to him about the monkey soon after, when he uttered the word “mama.” He was, of course, referring to the monkey, not me.
Even if his mom is a bit of a monkey now and then, I can’t help but chuckle that he’s given the title of mama to a stuffed animal.