2013: I Did It!

2013: I Did It!

One morning in September, Emmett, whose total vocabulary was just a few words, threw a toy on the ground, climbed down, picked it back up, held it up and yelled "I got it!" This kid decided to skip right to sentences.

2013.  Let’s recap.

Emmett’s Vocabulary to date:

Yeah

Noooo
I got it!

I did it!

Bubbles

bubble

Show

I do! I do! (Nearly always as a pair)

Wheee!

dip

chip

mama

Daa-deee

apple

bar

sheerpherGIRLS (which means Powerpuff Girls)

emmett

gum gum

bed

baba

wawa (for water)

sip

hug (which really means he wants to be picked up

stop

go

shammy (Sandwich)

up

down

outside

serral (cereal)

car

truck

petty (pretty)

awwww (usually while hugging)

slide

namnah (banana)

niff (sniff)

cheese

grape

baby

bug

puppy

surprise!

waffle

cookie

hi

hello

coffee

block

su-shine

buh-bye

tap

poopoo

butt

please

kookoo for thank you

phone

off

frah-fri (french fry)

sheep

ha-fah for HIGHFIVE.

^ Really, all the words I know are pretty much just more synonyms for those.

****

Isabel saw me using my iPhone and asked to see a picture of Doctor Who on it.  As should come as so surprise, I obliged and fed “Doctor Who” into google image search.  One of the first hits was a composite of all 11 Doctors Who.

She pointed at Tom Baker and said “It’s Doctor Who!”

She then pointed at the other gentlemen and asked “Who are those guys?”

I said, “Those guys are also Doctor Who.  They’re all the Doctor.”

She turned to me, and with a very serious and pitying face, said “Those guys are NOT Doctor Who.”

Which I couldn’t actually refute in any way.

So, between that and the fact that Emmett asks me for High-Fives, I’ve basically taught my kids everything I have to teach them.

Other 2013 items of note:

I quit my job and started a new one.  I work for VSP now?

I got to see The Web of Fear, after spending 20 years wishing I could.

We finally planted the Mandarin Tree that's been in a pot for four years.

The Wow Signal

As of this morning, we've got a new word. "Wow".

Currently, she's walking across the dining room pushing her doll stroller (with a banana in it), saying "Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!" Iz, that's how I feel all the time.

It's been two and a half months since the first word. Let's recap.

"No" She's getting a lot of mileage out of this one. Usually she says it all breathy; imagine Marilyn Monroe going "noooooo" with a head shake. But more adorable, and less sexy. Most excitingly, she's learned that saying "no" when you really mean "yes" is funny. As in "Can I put this away?" "Noo!"

"Ma" & "Da" She's settled on one syllable most of the time.

"Bye!" Usually accompanied by a hand wave. Adorably, she pronounces it like "Die!" She's learned to wave at airplanes as they fly overhead, waving and calling out "Die!"

"Hi!" Whenever someone comes into a room or she sees them again. Pronounced more like "Aye!" which gives our house this extra piratanical nautical vibe I'm liking.

"Eye" Proving that the bit of the brain that handles pronunciation is different from the one that resolved homonyms, she's can also identify the eyes.

"Wa Wa", and occasionally, something that sounds a lot like "A wa". Something tells me we're going to be calling water this for the next decade.

"Fooh" I can get behind this - why learn words for different kinds of food? It's all just food.

"Nomah" I have no idea what this means, but she says it ALL THE TIME. It's clearly not a negative, and it's not about her mom, so it's not a constructed word. It's a puzzle.

Yesterday, when she saw something that surprised and delighted her, she said something that sounded exactly like "Oh, Sit!" She felt like she had to sit down to absorb the surprise, maybe?


(Footnote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_signal)

I'm calling it: We've got a first word.

"Up".

She likes climbing the stairs. A lot. (Which I don't seem to have a picture of, oddly.)

We've had a variety of meaning-laden syllables crop op over the past few months; "Da da da da" is clearly me, "Ma ma ma ma" is clearly Heidi. "Waa" can mean either she's thirsty or that she wants to go for a walk. (Baby talk has homonyms? Who knew?)

She says "Yeaaa!" a lot, but I suspect that's more a sound of excitement than an affirmative. And a sound that is best spelled as "nnnnoooooo" usually means she's not happy about something.

So - clearly the language centers of the brain are solidifying. She's certainly making sounds that mean things, but they're vague things, and vague sounds. They're just that - sounds - not words.

Until "Up".

This started a week or so ago. The pronunciation is clear - it has two distinct sounds. Both the vowel and the consonant are in there, and the closing "p" sound is firm. One of the recurring aspects of the other near-words Iz uses is that she'll make the first sound of the word with the first mouth shape, and then just trail off. With "Up", not only is she using both letters, but she's reshaping her mouth while she does it.

And it only means one thing: she wants to go upstairs. She's loved climbing the stairs on her own ever since she learned how to crawl, and now she's got a word for it.

"Up." That's the right direction to be moving, Isabel.