Toddler speak: repeatedly saying the same thing twice again over and over

Parenting a toddler is no easy chore, and now that words have started to come out of little Meryl's mouth, I find myself somehow devolving into a monosyllabic caveman whose vocabulary bank has been robbed. Yesterday I dropped my wife off at the airport and the conversation in the car on the ride home with Meryl went something like this:

Mama?

Mama's going out of town?

Mama?

Mom's getting on her plane, Sweetie.

Dada?

Dad's driving.

Mama?

Mama's going to Washington D.C.

Shoes?

Yep, you've got your shoes on.

Mama?

Going out of town.

Dada?

Driving.

Pizza?

No pizza today.

Mama?

Plane.

Dada?

Dad's in the car.

Car?

Car.

Mama?

Plane.

We went on like this for roughly twenty miles. We made a brief detour into Little Five Points to eat lunch and walk around, partially so Meryl could stretch her legs after being in a car seat for so long but mainly because I needed to break the monotony before being driven insane.

We parked in a meter that thankfully still had time left from the previous parker who was obviously either more paranoid of being towed than I usually am or at least less cheap. I almost never put money in parking meters. For one thing, I don't carry change and secondly I'm a scofflaw.

I learned the trick years ago from my driving instructor who came from the Taggart Driving School. He said that in the event I got a parking ticket I shouldn't pay it because it would only be $1o and if the city of Atlanta had to ever track me down to get their money it would only increase to $25 and they weren't likely to go that route. The only parking ticket I ever got was in Belgium so I don't know if the instructor's theory was correct or not. Incidentally I didn't pay the ticket I got in Belgium either.

As I open the back car door, Meryl says to me, "Car?" And thus the conversation continued:
Yes, Dad's getting you out of the car.

Shoes? Yep, you've still got both shoes on.

Mama?

Mom's out of town now. We're going to eat lunch.

[Meryl makes a smacking sound to show me she understands lunch] Pizza?

No, we had pizza yesterday.

Pizza. No.

That's right. No pizza.

Mama?

No, mom is not here. It's just you and Dad.

Little Five Points, one of Atlanta's more esoteric and nouveau hippy neighborhoods, was just opening up about the time we pulled in. Meryl and I tooled around and found ourselves hanging out among some heavily inked longhairs, one of whom had apparently just been to Starbucks. The coffee drinker just looked so hypocritically dichotomous to me. Who comes to a neighborhood as avant garde as Little Five Points so they can order something so suburbanly vanilla as Starbucks? Oh well. Who am I to judge?

Cup?

Yes, he's got a cup.

Hot?

[At this point the local chimed in.] Yeh, it's hot.

Shoes?

Yep, he's got shoes on.

[Again the guy humors Meryl with a response.] Yeh, they're flip-flops.

Someone with a key showed up and unlocked the door to a tattoo parlor slash tchotchke boutique and all the longhairs went in. Even with all the tattoos they had between them, it hadn't occurred to me that they were artists themselves. Come to think of it, it hadn't occurred to me any of them even had jobs. I'm judgmental that way. Sue me.

Meryl and I walked around some more, ate lunch at a corner tavern where she subjected fellow diners to volume ten screams and happy squeals before moving to a secluded corner table in a back room. There she littered the floor with hummus, roasted asparagas, and goat cheese pita wrap.

Yes, I'm one of those parents who isn't afraid to take his kid into a place that doesn't generally cater to children, but I try and always leave extra generous gratuity to make up for the extra work a good server is willing to do. Besides, if the restaurant has highchairs (and this one did), I take it to mean a baby's welcome.

On the drive from Little Five Points home Meryl's mood started to dwindle. Her talking turned into whining and eventually that tearless cry that denotes extreme discontent. As loud as it was, it was somewhat of a relief not to have to carry on a conversation about Mom being out of town, me driving and Meryl having both shoes on.

Just when I was about to carry her into her room and lay her in her crib she said, "Pot." We are toilet training and this means she has to go to the potty.

You wanna go sit on the potty?

Pot?

OK, Dad'll put you on the potty.

Mama?

Mom's at work. Out of town. In Washington. Dad can put you on the potty.

Pot?

Yep, here we go.

She successfully uses the potty and then looks at me with her arms up in the air.

Up?

You want up?

Up.

OK, Dad'll get you up.

Another successful bathroom visit. As we flush she looks into the swirling water and waves.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.