Day 617: One tiny word, one giant pain in the...

I know what you’re thinking, I do. I spent months worrying and whining about the fact that Maddie was stubbornly refusing to talk and now that she finally is starting to say a bit more I complain about that too! What can I say? You just can’t win with me sometimes. Just ask my husband, he’ll tell you.

So yes, it’s true that she’s progressed leaps and bounds in terms of language development in the past month or so. I still wouldn’t say that we’ve hit the mythical language “explosion,” but I think we could safely call it a spurt. Of course many of her words come from her primary educator – Dora the Explorer. Dora is Maddie’s new best friend and I have to say I couldn’t be happier about the relationship. She’s comes from a good family (I met them in the Christmas dvd, and they really seem like salt of the earth people), she’s relatively well-behaved but for a few misadventures along the way, and she’s bilingual to boot. Not only is she a-dora-ble (ha!) but she’s really done wonders with Maddie’s vocabulary, teaching her essentials like “map,” “backpack,” and of course “Boots,” her trusty primate sidekick. There is one word, though, that I could do without. One word that little Dora is fond of that Mads fell in love with immediately: NO!

No! No! No! All day long, that is all we hear. It is delivered with various inflections and intonations, at different volumes. Sometimes it’s dragged out, “Noooooo!” and sometimes it comes at us in rapid succession, like gunfire: “No no no no no!” Even the treasured nap time doesn’t protect us from the onslaught, as she now sits in her crib saying “NO! No Mommy! No! Nooo!” until she eventually wears herself out and falls asleep.

Santa even noticed it during our trip to the mall the other weekend as I was trying to cajole her onto his lap and was being met with a steady stream of No’s. “No, no, Dear,” he told me, apparently feeling the need to correct my parenting techniques. Since when does that service come with the $5 donation? “We don’t ask, we tell,” he said. Then he called Maddie over: “Okay Madeline, we’re going to sit and take a nice picture with Santa now. Ho, ho, ho!” She stared at him, said “NO!,” turned around and left. I admit I laughed. Nice try, Santa.