He can talk! He can talk!

I had been warned by the community nurse that if EggEgg doesn't speak more than 50 words in 2 months time, he'd need to see a speech therapist.

Well, EggEgg is almost 2, we kept on repeating sounds to him, yet he could only manage the basic mama, baba, and as far as nana, yeh-yeh (Grandpa), che-che (car) recently. That's just a total of 5 words in his talking vocabulary! Each time we want him to repeat a word after us, he would just smile, shake his head and refuse to say any more.

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One hot summer day, I decided to make jelly. I showed EggEgg the colorful packet and told him that this is called jeh-lay (Jelly). When I returned to the kitchen later, I caught him staring at the packet of jelly. He was totally mesmerised, repeating to himself like one of those cursed zombies: "...jeh...lay... jeh...lay... jeh...lay...".

I roared with laughter, and ask him to repeat it again on tape. Nah, he shook his head and skipped out of the kitchen.

Another day, he wanted to watch DVD as I feed Cola.

I asked, "Would you like to watch the regular Thomas the Tank Engine or the new Tom & Jerry (a.k.a. Cat & Mouse)?".

His response was, "Uh uh uh uh uh uh ah ah ah ah ah mao-mao"

Voila! He manage to utter the word Cat!! (I wonder if those preceding "Uh uh uh uh ah ah ah" actually meant something? i.e "I want to watch the new DVD of (cat)." We shall never know.)

One afternoon, EggEgg pointed to the Wii, indicating that he wants to play.

I asked, "So you want to dar-gay? Can you say the word dar-gay?"

EggEgg shied away as usual, and so I kept encouraging him, "Come on, if you don't say it, you are not allowed to play."

"Here, whisper it softly to me. Just for my ears only."

"Come on, say dar-gay. Daaaaar-gaaaaay..."

I was waiting anxiously for his response. EggEgg thought about it for a little while, then took a small step forward, and said into my ears, "baba!"

Duh!!

On the week preceding his birthday, I asked EggEgg what type of cake he would like for his party. "Would you like a mong-gor (mango) cake, or jap-gor (fruit) cake?"

EggEgg blinked, processed the information in his brain for sometime, and responded with another classic, "Uh uh uh uh uh uh ah ah ah ah ah mor-gor"

I didn't expect him to be able to say Mango!

When I told Tonton that EggEgg has made a choice about the birthday cake, Tonton insisted that I had fudged the results. He retested EggEgg with a new question, "Would you like a mong-gor (mango) cake, or lut-ji (chestnut) cake?" Sly Tonton is trying to trick EggEgg into ordering his own favourite chestnut cake instead!