Imagine waking up from a sound sleep to discover that somehow you had been transported to a strange and mysterious land. You are surrounded by strangers who seem friendly enough, but who don't know how to communicate with you. You find yourself helpless and weak, barely able to move your head. It is in every way unnerving, frightening, and frustrating.

That's what I think it must be like for babies. They have wants. They have needs. But they have no good way of telling us what those wants and needs are. We just have to do our best to guess.

And that's why, I think, my one-and-a-half year-old is so overjoyed with her newfound communication skills these days. She has finally amassed enough words--or at least sounds that fill in for real words--that I can understand what she wants almost all the time.

Drink? Cracker? Book? Shoes? Banana? Blankie? Bear? Beth and Lucy? She's got words for all of them. Words that may not be intelligible to the outside world, but here on her home planet we get what she's saying.

And, oh, the joy this brings her! At least a dozen times a day she patters up to me, catches my eye, and says something along the lines of, "Dee? Fweeeeez?" To which I reply, "You want a drink, please?"

When I correctly interpret her request, she does an enormous, exaggerated head bob, a nod so big her full body is involved, all the while grinning so wide that her eyes are squinched nearly all the way shut. It is absolutely, ridiculously adorable. She is clearly thinking, "YES! YES! you understand me! I have made contact! We are communicating here!"


Of course, the opposite is true too. When she asks for something and I tell her no, she is shockingly good at the pouty-lipped, arms-crossed, death-to-you-now glare.

But we're focusing on the positive here, and for now I'll just say that this age--not quite a kid but definitely not a baby--is a major relief. Not just for the poor little traveler who is finally making some headway in learning the foreign language that all the locals speak here, but for the bewildered hosts who are finally able to understand what it is that their tempestuous little guest wants out of them.