Thursday, September 18, 2008

Ta-Ta

While there is no official definition of the word ta-ta that I could find, I will tell you what it means or meant in our house. Ta-ta meant to "give it to momma" or whoever was saying ta-ta. For as long as I can remember that is what my family would say when a baby had something they weren't supposed to or was playing and requesting the item the baby held.

If Meredith had a remote and I wanted it I would say "Ta-ta Meredith" and she would know to give me the remote and did. Or on the other hand if when Meredith was a baby and I had a cookie and Meredith wanted it she would say "ta-ta" and I would give her the cookie. Basically it is a word we used to facilitate communication in our family. And it worked, very well....well at least with Meredith.

Meredith has long out grown the use of the word ta-ta. In fact she is pretty good at "Mom I want a snack, Momma I want ice cream, I WANT ICE CREAM!" Yeah we haven't used ta-ta in a good while.......until recently. Meredith noticed Noah would take toys and she would yell "Give it back to Mizzie!" Or when I would encourage her to share she would give Noah something and then say "give it back to Mizzie, No-wee!" Well you can imagine that Noah wasn't in to giving the object back which only lead to my 2 year old's frustration, so she pulled the famous word ta-ta out of her repertoire for words. For a few weeks whenever Noah touched anything she would get down on his level with her hand in his face and say....
"ta-ta"

"ta-ta No-wee"

"TA-TA NOAH!"

"Noah, Mizzie says TA-TA --- TAAAAAA-TAAAA!"

Then she would promptly grab the item out of his hands and leave me with a screaming 9 month old. Yes, Meredith teaching Noah what the word ta-ta meant was working like a dream and giving me a headache.

For weeks she went around yelling "ta-ta" at my poor son and he would just look up at her like she was crazy and then shoot her a devilishly, handsome grin and army crawl in the other direction with the toy she wanted so badly. Ta-ta was not as effective with Noah as it was with Meredith. But eventually he caught on, he had no choice. Meredith was yelling ta-ta in his face all day, he was probably thinking "what the hell if she wants to be called ta-ta so bad, fine with me."

Now whenever Meredith comes into Noah's line of vision he starts saying "Ta..Ta" "Ta....Ta..."

When we wake up in the morning and go into Meredith's room to wake her up, he starts jumping out of my arms saying "Ta.... Ta...." "Ta.... Ta...."

When we pick her up from school on Tuesdays he looks over at her car seat and says "Ta.... Ta...." "Ta... Ta..."

When she hands him a toy and she wants it back and yells TA-TA in his face, he grins and says "Ta.... Ta...." "Ta... Ta...."

I am pretty sure she will be known as Ta-Ta for a while. Afterall she asked for it.

5 comments:

jennlagdavis said...

that's so cute!! we use ta ta in our house too - however people here in florida have never heard of it - must be a new orleans thing.

Anonymous said...

LOL!!

Lindsey said...

hahaha thats so funny and too cute! i miss them!

Blair said...

oh I love it!
We use ta ta too. It doesn't work that well, but I still say it!

The Wilsons said...

Precious