I learned early on that it was best if I didn’t try talking before I sucked down a coffee. Because otherwise everything comes out snarly. That’s gotten better as we’ve gotten more sleep.

The kids are slowly working their way through the consonant alphabet. Mamamama arrived shortly after the Dadadadas followed by bababa and nanana (which I’m sure is working itself into a beautiful “nonono” before this is all over). But I’m certain I’ve convinced the children that blowing raspberries is a legitimate form of communication. Which it is, but they may need to be told the context in which it should be used. At the moment, I get a Bronx cheer whenever I try to tell my boy that I am not “Dada” but “Mama.” Thhhhbbbt!

The funniest thing is that since the communication has started to lean more towards words it’s become harder to tell who is saying what. Give me a full-blown bawl and I could tell you which one was doing with a 75-percent accuracy of what was wrong (diaper vs. hair pulling vs. hungry) from another room. But now that they are doing the adorable baby-babble I have to learn a whole new way of telling who is saying what.

In the meantime, we’ll read to them (In between “Goodnight Moon,” “A Light in the Attic” and “The Velveteen Rabbit,” we’ve been giving them doses of “In Defense of Food,” “The Hobbit” and “Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy”), joke with them, and wait for that time when they say something and mean it.