As mentioned in our last post (see Labour Day’s Outing), we made an amazing discovery about Darius while we were leaving Chinese Garden.

Darius was seated in his stroller and while we were walking along the pavement in the garden, he started became very vocal and was blabbering a lot. Besides the usual ‘Ah Choo’, ‘Ah Ba’ kind of sound that we have already heard from him before, we noticed a new string of sounds coming out of his mouth.

What made this string of sounds interesting was that it came out in a rather periodic manner. He would be making the noises in identical intervals. Catherine was commenting how this blabbering of his reminded her of those croaking sounds made by the toads during rainy nights. ^^|

We thought his blabbering was interesting and decided to take down video clips of him doing so, while being careful not to let him notice that we were filming him, as he would be distracted.

Upon returning home and after Darius slept, Catherine and I went through the photos and videos we took that day. As we watched and listened through the videos, somehow we noticed that one of the videos sounded different from the others.

In his other blabbering videos, he was making noises like ‘Aiyah’, ‘Ah Woo’ etc, which we dismissed them as random sounds he were making (they probably meant something, but we couldn’t make out what he was trying to say).

However in this particular video, we could make out what he was blabbering about:

So, did you manage to realise what he was saying too?

Here’s a hint: Link ^^|

Wanting to confirm what we believed was true, we started playing back the same video numerous times.

In the end, we concluded that this was what Darius was saying:

“A B C D E — F G (his F and G did not come out well) H — I (short pause). A B C —”

Catherine took it into her audio programme, took away the noises and slowed it down(pitched changed as a result). It was much clearer this time and this was the longer version of what he was saying.

(Click ‘play’ and turned up the volume. “A B C D E — F G (his F and G did not come out well) H — I (short pause). A B C —E—F—Aaaaa—-B—-C—–”

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Yes, we discovered that he was in fact ‘singing’ (‘humming’ would be a better word though) the ABC Song! When we first realised this, both of us looked into each other’s eyes, disbelieving of what we had just discovered!

In fact, we were a little ‘frightened’. I’m not sure how to describe the sensation we felt; it was probably similar to a guy who had played a sound clip backwards for fun, only to realise that the backward-running sound turned out to be a voice that was trying to say something. In other words, it was a feeling resulted from discovering something atonishing when we were least unexpecting it. ^^|

I’m not sure if other parents have heard their children ‘talking’ at nine and a half months old too, but it was certainly an unexpected, amazing discovery for us. We often tried to figure out what he was babblering about especially when he sounded like he was stringing a phrase or something, but we would always end up clueless.

So as parents who are finally being able to ‘decipher’ our child’s words for the very first time, it had become a wonderful experience that we couldn’t really describe in words.

Anyway back to ths ABC Song, Catherine and I have been singing it to Darius very often over the past few months, especially during meal and play times. We knew he enjoyed listening to the song ever since we bought the Leapfrog’s Musical Table, but had never realised he was already ‘secretly’ learning to sing it! ^^

This would be one night that both of us would remember for a very long time.

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