Now that we have all of our tickets purchased and in possession, I guess it's time to make it official. Sophie and I are coming to Minnesota for a 3-week long visit, in December! She doesn't know how excited she should be yet for this one, but I do. I'm looking forward to spending hours and hours with family and friends...to snow...to Sophie playing with her nephews and all her adorable friends she hasn't met yet. To a winter Christmas. To pie for dessert and good old fashioned American Christmas cookies. To sledding with Sophie, and maybe ice skating with friends. I'm also just a little nervous about the whole travelling-alone-for-30-hours-with-a-one-and-a-half-year-old thing...but I'm sure that will work itself out just fine. It will be a great adventure!
So we're coming. If you want to see us between December 12 and 31, let me know. We'll be in touch. :)
25 August, 2008
21 August, 2008
ammendment
Ok, so I published the last post about words this morning before Sophie woke up. But 12 hours have passed now, and that post needs a little update.
Today, Sophie says Hello to both me and her dad, several times. She says shoe (although it means sock as well), and she says ouch - both when she falls down and when her daddy bangs his knee into the wall.
Danny thinks it's hilarious that one of his daughter's first words is shoe. She's got good taste... I'm so proud :)
Today, Sophie says Hello to both me and her dad, several times. She says shoe (although it means sock as well), and she says ouch - both when she falls down and when her daddy bangs his knee into the wall.
Danny thinks it's hilarious that one of his daughter's first words is shoe. She's got good taste... I'm so proud :)
Words (Part 1)
What are a baby's first words? How do you really know when she "has" a word? Is it the first time that she utters a series of sounds that perfectly matches the sounds we use to represent a word? What if that utterance mimics a word that Mamma just said? What if it's not in context? What if it is in context, but she only says it the one time and then never again? Or, is it actually when she uses a set of sounds that may not sound quite "right", but she uses it consistently to communicate a predictable meaning - is that a first word?
These are my musings of late... and I don't really have solid answers, but I've decided for now to count them all as steps along the journey to speech. (quite cute ones, too :)
Sophia is communicating. She is babbling up a storm and she has words. I don't know if I can actually say she is talking yet... I'm not sure where that fuzzy fine line is that says they have enough recognizable words for a stranger to say they can talk...but she is somewhere so close to that line. She surprises me every day with her new little grasps of language.
So, the first word that she really seemed to understand and use for meaning was Mama. That was back around 10 months. Of courses, that mostly still comes out when she's upset or can't figure out where I am. But these days she's using it interchangeably with Mum.
Then she got Dada, and still uses that occasionally though not as often as she did at first.
Since then, she seems to have two different kinds of words. There are the ones she has said perfectly, in context, completely un-promped, pointing at an object or grabbing it...but then has never said again (yet. To my knowledge.) :
bath (baf - ok, she didn't say the th)
balloon (she may have missed the l sound, but the word was very clear)
duck
shoe (she actually picked it up and was trying to put it on. She tries that most days, without usually saying the word.)
good (With this one she was repeating something I had just said. But she said it perfectly with a big smile. Made my day!)
The other kind of words that she has are the ones that a stranger might not be able to recognise, but she says consistently in context so that Dan and I can easily understand what she is saying. She has 2 of these now:
Maaa - more. Which pretty much means "Give me whatever it is I want right now please because I'm using a nice voice" It's usually used for food and drinks, but also occasionally for toys or anything else she wants you to get for her.
And then there's this kind of gutteral sound ukkk, accompanied by head-shaking which she uses to mean yucky or I shouldn't put that in my mouth cause my Mama would say it's yucky.
Oh, and she has one word that best crosses both categories - ello. She has said it a few times, in context, very clearly. Sometimes she picks up her toy mobile phone, puts it to the back of her head (she still can't quite find her ear - it's so cute!) and says ello!! Other times she waves at her favourite tv show - Playschool - and greets it. But I have yet to see her actually say Hello to a person. She waves.
She uses signs. We didn't think we were teaching her baby signs, we actually decided not too because we were just too lazy for that. But she uses signs anyway. I guess a lot of babies do. She waves for hello, and goodbye. She shakes her hands furiously in front of her body for no and reaches out one hand stretching in front of her for yes, I want that. You can't rely on her head for those signs - she shakes it back and forth for both :)
One of the absolutely cutest communication tools in her repetoire is the most recent sign she made up all by herself! She is absolutely fascinated with washing her hands lately. She loves when I put a little drop of liquid soap in her hands and let her rub them together and make bubbles, then splash it all off. That is one of her favourite parts of the day! And since we always wash her hands and face after eating, she started telling her silly parents when she didn't want them to give her anymore food (or drink or whatever else) by rubbing her hands together like she's washing them. That is her sign for finished - washing her hands. She taught it to us, and we use it happily (there's a lot less screaming at the end of mealtimes now :)
So I guess I can safely say she has at least 5 words, to possibly 10, (depending on how you count them), and 5 communication signs. Of course, she understands so much more than I can keep track of. She can do things when she hears verbal or non-verbals clues - touch her head if you ask her where it is, grab her her hair if you talk about combing it, clap her hands if she hears people on tv in the other room clapping. She can find belly buttons and give kisses upon request. She knows what her socks are and can find them. She will usually take her dummy out of her mouth and hand it to you quite happily if asked. She babbles in long sentence-like strings that are indecipherable, except that it's obvious if she is telling a story, asking a question, or being a bit bossy. Those are the things I can think of at the moment...but she probably understands more than I know at any given minute.
I probably don't need to tell you how excited I am to get to watch her first language develop, do I? And you know I had to label this post Part 1, because as soon as she starts sponge-ing up a whole heap of new words, you're going to get a Part 2 in the form of a long list of her first words. You know I have always been a language nerd. But I never loved it as much as this! This rocks my world :)
These are my musings of late... and I don't really have solid answers, but I've decided for now to count them all as steps along the journey to speech. (quite cute ones, too :)
Sophia is communicating. She is babbling up a storm and she has words. I don't know if I can actually say she is talking yet... I'm not sure where that fuzzy fine line is that says they have enough recognizable words for a stranger to say they can talk...but she is somewhere so close to that line. She surprises me every day with her new little grasps of language.
So, the first word that she really seemed to understand and use for meaning was Mama. That was back around 10 months. Of courses, that mostly still comes out when she's upset or can't figure out where I am. But these days she's using it interchangeably with Mum.
Then she got Dada, and still uses that occasionally though not as often as she did at first.
Since then, she seems to have two different kinds of words. There are the ones she has said perfectly, in context, completely un-promped, pointing at an object or grabbing it...but then has never said again (yet. To my knowledge.) :
bath (baf - ok, she didn't say the th)
balloon (she may have missed the l sound, but the word was very clear)
duck
shoe (she actually picked it up and was trying to put it on. She tries that most days, without usually saying the word.)
good (With this one she was repeating something I had just said. But she said it perfectly with a big smile. Made my day!)
The other kind of words that she has are the ones that a stranger might not be able to recognise, but she says consistently in context so that Dan and I can easily understand what she is saying. She has 2 of these now:
Maaa - more. Which pretty much means "Give me whatever it is I want right now please because I'm using a nice voice" It's usually used for food and drinks, but also occasionally for toys or anything else she wants you to get for her.
And then there's this kind of gutteral sound ukkk, accompanied by head-shaking which she uses to mean yucky or I shouldn't put that in my mouth cause my Mama would say it's yucky.
Oh, and she has one word that best crosses both categories - ello. She has said it a few times, in context, very clearly. Sometimes she picks up her toy mobile phone, puts it to the back of her head (she still can't quite find her ear - it's so cute!) and says ello!! Other times she waves at her favourite tv show - Playschool - and greets it. But I have yet to see her actually say Hello to a person. She waves.
She uses signs. We didn't think we were teaching her baby signs, we actually decided not too because we were just too lazy for that. But she uses signs anyway. I guess a lot of babies do. She waves for hello, and goodbye. She shakes her hands furiously in front of her body for no and reaches out one hand stretching in front of her for yes, I want that. You can't rely on her head for those signs - she shakes it back and forth for both :)
One of the absolutely cutest communication tools in her repetoire is the most recent sign she made up all by herself! She is absolutely fascinated with washing her hands lately. She loves when I put a little drop of liquid soap in her hands and let her rub them together and make bubbles, then splash it all off. That is one of her favourite parts of the day! And since we always wash her hands and face after eating, she started telling her silly parents when she didn't want them to give her anymore food (or drink or whatever else) by rubbing her hands together like she's washing them. That is her sign for finished - washing her hands. She taught it to us, and we use it happily (there's a lot less screaming at the end of mealtimes now :)
So I guess I can safely say she has at least 5 words, to possibly 10, (depending on how you count them), and 5 communication signs. Of course, she understands so much more than I can keep track of. She can do things when she hears verbal or non-verbals clues - touch her head if you ask her where it is, grab her her hair if you talk about combing it, clap her hands if she hears people on tv in the other room clapping. She can find belly buttons and give kisses upon request. She knows what her socks are and can find them. She will usually take her dummy out of her mouth and hand it to you quite happily if asked. She babbles in long sentence-like strings that are indecipherable, except that it's obvious if she is telling a story, asking a question, or being a bit bossy. Those are the things I can think of at the moment...but she probably understands more than I know at any given minute.
I probably don't need to tell you how excited I am to get to watch her first language develop, do I? And you know I had to label this post Part 1, because as soon as she starts sponge-ing up a whole heap of new words, you're going to get a Part 2 in the form of a long list of her first words. You know I have always been a language nerd. But I never loved it as much as this! This rocks my world :)
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