More. Juice.

Over the past few weeks, Gabe has been making some attempts at putting a few words together, which is a fantastic linguistic step and one we've been waiting on for quite some time. He's not doing it with enough regularity for it to be common, yet, and, frankly, he's not very good at it.

The words seem to come from different places in his brain. Or something. It actually reminds me of how video games will sometimes drop a name into a sentence in an attempt to make that sentence relevant to the situation without requiring the voice actor to record the same sentence over and over again for each possible situation. Specifically, it reminded me of the Madden football games (from about five or six years ago, when I played two of them--so they've likely improved things somewhat since then).

In these games, the commentators--at the time, usually Pat Summerall--would make some supposedly astute observation about a play. Then, a name (or a jersey number if the player was custom made or wasn't playing yet when the game was made) would be inserted wherever it was necessary, to give it a personal touch. " made a great play there!" Or something to that effect.

The problem was, the name never quite fit. There was an unnatural pause between the name and the rest of the sentence, and the tones were different, since the names hadn't actually been spoken as part of a sentence, but as stand alone words. Thus, "RANDY BOTTOMS made a great play there" always sounded entirely unnatural (Randy Bottoms wasn't an actual player, but that was usually the name that I chose as the coach or owner for any teams I created in the Franchise mode, but he SHOULD have been an actual player because that name is awesome. It would be even better for Center, though, since it would suggest an entirely unfootbally relationship going on between the center and the quarterback before each snap).

The point is, the name never sounded like it belonged with the rest of the sentence, and, often, that's exactly how Gabe's word groupings sound.

This morning, as we ate breakfast, it was VERY pronounced. He was saying "More. Juice." to encourage me to pour a little bit more into the cup he was drinking from (because I only give him a few sips at a time out of an open cup. He can't be trusted with more because, once he's had a drink, the rest of it will invariably go on tray, down the front of his shirt, or into his food bowl or plate). Each word sounded like it was part of two entirely different sentences, with inflections and tones to match whatever their original communication use the words had been gleaned from.

Of course, once I got the video camera to try and document it, he wouldn't repeat it quite the same way. MAYBE you can see what I mean from this video, though.