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Because I'm a writer and spend my days trying to call forth words from the void, I'm fascinated by how a toddler who's learning language does precisely this -- and by how the words, in turn, call forth the toddler. The onset of language in a child raises one of life's great chicken-and-egg questions: which comes first, the idea or the word? When I say to Larkin, "Can you ask for that politely?", she responds, "Yes please Daddy Cooper!" Clearly, an almost-2-year old understands language functionally: she knows that when utterance X occurs, response Y and/or action Z follows. But does Larkin understand "polite" conceptually, as an idea? Or is she just performing a script we've taught her? What is really going on inside her head when she talks?

When I last wrote about language, Larkin knew a few dozen words, but didn't do sentences yet. We knew that once this happened, we'd be having actual conversations with her, and I wrote that we were "giddy with anticipation." "What will she say?" I asked.

Well, now we know. She says, "Daddy go away!" She says, or rather screams, "Larkin do it by self!" She says, "Bert is a doofus!" And some other things I can't even write here.

More on that in a minute. First let me just note that I had no idea how weird and funny it would be, this process of acquiring language. It doesn't happen in clear and steady increments, as you might expect, but rather with these silent, interior accumulations that then suddenly burst forth. Lately Larkin has been obsessing over Frosty the Snowman. We've sung the book to her a dozen times, and yesterday at lunch she suddenly droned the first two lines of the song -- tunelessly but accurately, every single word. It's also fascinating to watch your child turn a word into a concept and then apply it elsewhere. Our car stereo system occasionally blinks out; when this happened recently, we explained to Larkin that it was broken. Within days she started exclaiming "It's broken!" whenever any device paused in its function -- even the one-second interlude of black screen between a TV show and a commercial.

Then there are the curious little glitches, like Larkin pronouncing telephone "tepholone," no matter how often she hears it correctly, or continuing to call music "dance." Or the phrases your toddler falls in love with. Larkin fixated on a scene in Clifford the Big Red Dog where Emily Elizabeth goes away on an overnight, and Clifford misses her so much that he sees her face in the full moon. Larkin goes around breathlessly recapitulating this drama. "Clifford see Emmy Wizbeth face in moon, and she come back!"

I study the avid expression on her face when she's uttering a sentence like this. Is it possible for adults to remember any of the early-childhood strangeness of language, its newness? When you thought of certain words as having specific shapes and colors, or as being scary, just because of how they sounded? What is it like to suddenly have the power of naming, when yesterday you didn't; to fashion sentences and send them galloping off into the yonder?

What all this is about, finally, is the relationship of language to consciousness. And to memory. It amazes Molly and me -- it weirds us out, really -- to think that Larkin won't consciously remember any of our life with her these past 23 months. But a 2-year-old is rapidly becoming a person who can form memories. At Christmas my sisters were here, and at one point Larkin's cousin Tessa fell and burst into tears -- and Larkin raced to the kitchen to tell Molly. When your toddler begins telling stories from her life, it means not only that a particular human drama is making an impression, but that she's taking a new and different stance toward experience itself. For the first time, we watched Larkin take a step back, separating out the perceiving "I" from the "thing that happened." She now holds in her hands the basic time-and-space building blocks of consciousness.

Of course, the ability to converse entails the ability not to; having language allows a child to withhold it. One day Larkin was demanding another cookie. When I wouldn't give her one, she suddenly went quiet, and a look of intense, focused animosity crossed her face: for a moment, very clearly, she hated me. My God, I thought, she's punishing me with silence! It seemed so adult.

On the other end of the spectrum is the mysterious utterance of grace that seems to reach down to some core emotion of a family moment and give it voice. One December Sunday after a particularly stressful weekend of work, chores, and an obstreperous Larkin, Molly, and I decided to go to a favorite restaurant for a 4 p.m. meal. As we'd hoped, the place was empty, meaning Larkin could chatter away. Molly and I shared a bottle of wine and a big bowl of pasta, Larkin ate and romped around the booth, and after a while both Molly and I finally began to relax and enjoy ourselves. And then, out of nowhere, Larkin offered a comment. "Mommy happy," she said, smiling up at us. "Daddy happy. Larkin happy too." How sweet is that?

Language joins a toddler's hyperacuteness to mood with her ability to mimic and repeat, and what results can be hilarious and charming beyond measure. But you have to be careful. Recently Molly suffered some snafu in the kitchen and dropped a loud F-bomb. The next day Larkin started singing "Twinkle, twinkle little star" -- but substituting the F-word for every syllable in the song! Oops.

So enjoy the wonder of language and your child, this person emerging out of nowhere, even as you heed what I think of as the parental Miranda warning: Anything you say can -- and will -- be used against you!