Riley has started talking. Even when she’s not actually saying words (at least not ones that I can understand) she babbles. Today she sang along to ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. I nearly died from the cuteness of it alone. She has been starting to say words and mimic words for awhile. But I have really seen it explode over the last week. She was slow to talk, at first. Probably because she didn’t need to.

Mostly she says single words like ‘shoes’, ‘shorts’, ‘help’ (finally! It’s a welcome change from the grunting), ‘Josh’, ‘Grug’, ‘no’ (of course – actually it’s more like NO!), ‘shower’, ‘bath’, you get the idea. And she’ll mimic the sounds of counting to four or five on her fingers. Sometimes she’ll even put two words together. She’s starting to say ‘Mummy’ with more regularity. Which is a real heart-melter.

Before she was born I was adamant that she would call me Zoey and not Mummy. Because, you know, I’m a whole person, not someone solely defined as Mother. But now, I like that she calles me Mummy. It’s strange because she doesn’t really call Josh ‘Dad’. It’s always Josh. It sounds more like ‘De-osh’. Maybe she hears me call Josh by name more often, or maybe it’s just an easy name to say. The distinction between calling me by my first name and calling me ‘Mummy’ seems kind of silly at her age, when she only barely sees me as a separate from herself.

But today she said my new favourite word. To understand why it’s my favourite word, you have to understand my deep and abiding love for my doona. I sleep with a doona even in sweltering summer heat. Not necessarily over me, but at the very least next to me. I don’t know where it comes from. As a child I was far more obsessed with my pillow. But to me, the doona is the ultimate in safety and comfort.

And today, Riley said ‘Noo-Noo’. I made her say it ten times at least.