learning to talk

i've been a part of a "birth board" since learning i was pregnant with Gagey way back in May of '07. It's fun sometimes to hear of other little ones hitting different milestones & seeing how all these babies, born in such a small time frame, have all grown & developed at different rates. Recently, one mom wrote about her daughter's incredible verbal skills. It's probably Gagey's weakest area, so i was really interested to hear what some of the other little babies were capable of.
Afterwards, i was telling Cairo what they could do & she *insisted* that we needed to work with G on his numbers. We placed 3 pens in front of him & pointing to the first one said, "ONE." He smiled at us, seeing a game beginning & parroted, "ONE!" Clapping his fat little hands & giggling when we clapped & cheered for him. Cairo immediately took the success as a sign to think big, so she pointed to the next two pens and exclaimed slowly, "T W O, T H R E E!!!" Gagey pointed at the pens and said, "DOS, TRES!"
Cairo, stunned, looked at me & said, "He's speaking Spanish!!" (Have i mentioned that Gage is Cai's sun, moon and stars? Funny, loyal girlie.)
We laughed & repeated the numbers again & again for him.
Finally, we figured it was time to count something else. Cai went & got three little cars for him out of the toybox. Immediately, all interest in verbalizing beyond "broooooomm brooooom" was gone. Cai decided it was time to teach him how to *say* car, so she held up one little car, looked him right in his bright blue eyes & said oh. so. slowly....
"C A R, Gagey, can you say C A R??!"
He stopped playing for just a moment, held up a car and repeated in the exact same slooooowww voice that she used, "D O G".
These sure are funny, sweet moments - learning to talk...
He's only 18months, i'm in no rush for my strong, silent boy to become a proficient talker - & besides, i'm realising that there is a lot of marrow to be sucked from these sweet learning moments of toddlerhood. So, i'll just enjoy this phase, knowing that soon he'll be talking like the rest of this little brood & maybe i'll forget the way he used his chubby hands to communicate, & maybe one day i'll forget the sound of Mollen's fading lisp or the way my little ones mispronounced the words "pancake" or "container" or made up lyrics to songs that made sense to only them...
One day i'm sure, they'll all communicate better than i do...
& when that day comes, i'll be the proud momma telling my Gagey baby how he could count in Spanish when he was only 18 months old.