As my little girl, Polly approached her second year, the hubby and I hunted for milestones. According to the books and websites about toddlers and speech, Polly should've been saying words like 'banana', 'asparagus', 'baby', 'mommy', 'bottle', and 'daddy'. None of the articles, sites, or books noted the words: "Lloyd", "Degga-Degga", "Tithtie", or "Oidle"--the only words my kid has uttered. For a while, we'd convinced ourselves that Lloyd Oidle was the exceedingly creative name for Polly's imaginary playmate. This categorized her as advanced, since, as per the experts, imaginary friends don't appear until your baby is four years old.

Between fifteen and twenty months this mommy and daddy sweated the dichotomy of what Polly was supposed to be doing versus her actual portrayal of a learning impaired child. She was on time with the other general developmental goals, like eating and sleeping and walking. Not early, not late. But wasn't vocabulary the best indicator of a toddler's comprehension and motor skills? I began to picture Polly, as a teen, working at Burger King--in the back with the fry machine.

We wavered between guilt, concern and disassociation. We thought we were doing enough; we read all the stupid books with her. Jemima Puddle duck was one of her first. I wouldn't say 'reading' was the best characterization of the session. It was more like: "Page one: Jemima Puddle-Duck was very"--(POLLY FLIPS TO PAGE 21)--"Then ALL the animals on the farm would get A"--(POLLY CLOSES, THEN TURNS BOOK UPSIDE DOWN) "Lawson's Discount Books--three dollars and ninety-nine cents. The End."

We made a point to narrate the world around her: "See, Polly: Daddy is about to use Mommy's last steak knife to saw that patio chair in half, instead of just throwing it away..." "Polly, your Mommy is a stupid cow, she doesn't know that I can use this plastic piping to carry my big pencils."

We engaged her in conversations from her earliest days, "You know Aunt Nancy's little boy looks like lipless Muppet, Polly!" "Poopie, which bra should Mommy wear today?" "Do you see all that stuff wound around the drum-brush of the vacuum-cleaner? That's Daddy's dental floss!" "Should we pick-up the phone today, my little monkey?"

We exposed her to other kids at the park and at Denny's Restaurant (the only eatery that accommodates all wretched screaming children). Other kids Polly's age were saying, "Hi, Mommy!" "I love you, Daddy!" "I have shoes." "Come here, Mommy!"

You can say that a website is full of generalizations, that books are married to the theories of the doctors who promote them, but you can't say someone else's little boy is a freaking little bastard because he can say 'hockey' and use it in a sentence to describe a recent personal experience.

We worried about her hearing. It was possible, you could stand behind Polly and call her name and she wouldn't turn around or even flinch. Then again, Barney or a Kool Aid commercial might be on. We were worried. Should we just keep doing what we're doing or close our eyes and run into traffic? Polly wasn't saying much of anything, unless you count Arabic and French, which all depends on how much sugar Polly had that day. She appears to be fluent in the romance languages and picking up a bit of the Germanic vocabulary too. It's not her problem that I'm monolingual. I took her to the pediatrician who gave me that "Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was five years old pitch," lovingly rolling it in a punch line: "So then Albert says, 'But, Momma, I just haven't had anything important to say!'" Every time someone says, "I wouldn't worry about it, really" all I could hear was, "You're lucky she doesn't drool too, it could be much worse."

We contented ourselves with thinking of our daughter as a babbling super-genius who would choose to speak English when we were saying something worth responding to. We were asking the wrong questions, obviously.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that we were despondent at times. My husband and I hopelessly parked our butts on the living room floor and stared at our gorgeous kid, taking the heartbreaking risk of reaching out to her, "Polly? Can you say, 'Mommy'?" All we ever got was a sweet smile and a big, "DOI?" in return.

"She's retarded, isn't she?" my dejected spouse would offer. There was no other solid explanation.

At least we knew she loved kitties and cats. That is, if you call love, "mounting them with the intent to suffocate, and/or dislocate the cat's tail-bone." We'd hear Polly attempt the word, 'kitty' by pointing vigorously and saying 'thithty!', 'the-thy', or 'dat!'. It was a start. When we finally take her to the Preschool for Developmentally Retarded Children we can list those among definite expressions of language on the admissions form. All hope seemed lost as the conclusion became either, "She's totally average" or "She's retarded." We knew it wasn't her hearing.

We turned to friends and relatives. "Oh, stop worrying." my mom would say, "remember your brother didn't start talking 'til he was three." Then I recalled that it took my brother four years to pay off his New Jersey traffic citations and get his license back. That he'd been in more unknown bloody fistfights than ones he was caught and convicted for. My mother followed with an equally unconvincing, "He just didn't feel like talking, then one day you couldn't shut him up."

Friends with verbal babies or multiple kids would drift into that blasé braggadocio, "Oh, be glad she's not saying anything. Once she starts talking, you'll wish she'd never started. My baby just never shuts up, it's incredible. You just have to say a word once and it's "can-opener this," "hockey that..."

By the time her last round of vaccinations came, she'd stopped even implying words like, 'kitty', 'daddy', 'momma', etc., and her babble had taken on a kind of "inspired by Satan" form of Latin. I'd almost given up on trying as we strolled the aisles of Toys R Us. She'd had three shots and I wanted to buy her something to reward her for not freaking out. I was soon to be shown that Polly understood a lot more than she was letting on.

I grabbed a talking Blue the Puppy Doll, from her favourite program, Blue's Clues. Within an hour of getting home, the $25 toy was lost. I scoured the mounds of discarded stuffed friends. As a stay at home mom, I was accustomed to talking to myself, and I said aloud, "Where is Blue? Where did we lose Blue?" I turned around to see Polly run to the far corner of the mountain of toys and retrieve Blue and bring him to me. She held out Blue and perfectly imitated Blue's borky bark. She couldn't be a mental patient; she understood me!

We tried this request system from that point on. "Get this, get that, where's this, where's that, etc." Our excitement was tempered by inconsistencies in her performance. My husband said I was treating her like a trained seal and to let her be, then he turned to Polly and said, "Say 'hockey?' honey!"

Polly evolved into a one trick pony. She would randomly offer the perfect enunciation of gems like, 'knife', 'nice', 'momma', 'that', 'boobie'. I'll swear on my deathbed she also said: 'elephant', 'matrix', 'centipede', 'elevator', 'seriously', 'Nostrodamus', 'epiphany', and 'creative'. My ears were trained to hear every utterance, and much as I pounded and cajoled her into repeating these magic words, the best follow-up I got from her was 'doi', or 'flum'. I knew we were on our way, if I could just avoid being around all other kids her age Polly wouldn't have to feel so 'behind', or as Polly would say, 'deshrintz'.

One day, that magical moment arrived. Polly wanted to be nursed. I hung on to my pediatrician's approval as Polly sidled up to my breasts and pointed. Most every other parent I knew thought I was retarded for nursing her at eighteen months. My answer was always, "I'm waiting for her to tell me she's ready to stop." Of course, at this rate, I could be suckling her during handwriting practice in Kindergarten. I looked at my kid and said, "Do you want boobie? Boobie?" Polly stiffened, scrutinized me and replied, 'buhb'? I sprung to my feet- boobies flopping away and said, "YES, BOOBY! YOU WANT BOOBY! BOOBY! SAY IT: SAY BOO-BEE!" All she could do was say, 'buhb'? I went momma-a-mano with her and animated my face like a Disney geek: 'BOOOOO'-'BEEEEEE'. She laughed in my face and opened her mouth like jaws and dove towards my unprotected and very loose flesh.

Then another magical moment. Polly began to connect these joyous outbursts of mine with successful speech! She asked for 'buhb' and then as I melted with a long 'YEEEEEES, BOOBEE', she smiled and said, 'mumma'. Talk about eye popping. I still do the Mumma Dance, which doesn't end until I've said 'momma' at least eight more times than she does, and have bashed my most vulnerable toes on something sharp and immovable.

Then the opposing battle cry of: 'daddiedaddiedaddiedaddiedaddie'! joined our world-tour of new words.

One of my girlfriends confirmed for me, "Once they start talking, it's a new word every day." It's been more like a new word every month. She doesn't say 'bye bye' or 'I love you' yet, but she does make a big entrance with a huge "HI!"--big as Ethel Merman or Joanne Worley.

I lost count of how many 'maybe words', 'almost right words' Polly was uttering. I stopped trying to tally them because one day she very clearly said her first 'sentence'. She used it every minute of the day and drove it home with all it's proper meaning: "Oh, nooooo. NOOOO, OH, NO!" But we haven't left it at that. We face off with her and say, "Do you like hockey?" She set us straight on that and we're banning hockey from the house until she uses it in a sentence.

Copyright © 2000 Viki Reed All Rights Reserved

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