talking

ava has alot to say these days, but it's not always entirely comprehensible to the untrained ear. so, to those of you without a ph.d. in toddler-speak, we bring you . . . subtitles!!

1. "up above the . . . " 21 mar 2008

on grandma's recent visit she sang "twinkle, twinkle little star" to ava alot. by the end of the visit, whenever ava saw a star she would start singing "twinkle, twinkle" in adorable, garbled toddler-speak. the other day she trailed off as usual after the first two words, but then burst back with a perfectly clear rendition of the second line.

2. "pepper!" 23 mar 2008

i made ava some macaroni and cheese with a little salt and pepper. i didn't make a big deal out of the salt and peppering, and was all the way across the kitchen at the time. she didn't seem to be paying any attention to me. when she sample her first noodle though, she told me what was in it.

3. "hi poppy" 23 mar 2008

the arboretum handily labels all the flowers and trees. unfortunately, they typically use the formal names, which are a bit hard for me to remember, let alone teach ava. in spring though, the wildflowers are in bloom, and i've been pointing out the poppies, and iris and buttercups to ava on our walks. today as we neared the orange poppies she started waving to them and saying "hi poppy! hi poppy!"

4. "bye philip" 25 mar 2008

ava's daycare is big on little rituals. everybody gets greeted the same way every morning, takes off their coat in the same spot, and everybody gets waved good-bye to in the afternoon. ava's always had a hard time with the concept that you're supposed to say "bye-bye" before you actually part ways. typically, she would wave bye-bye to everyone at daycare after the door was closed and we were pulling away in the stroller.

recently though, she's caught on, and this week she started doling out individual salutations, even to baby philip! (this from the girl who just recently learned to say "mommy").

5. "dad juice" 28 mar 2008

pointing at daddy's bottle of beer.

6. "mommy sit down" 01 apr 2008

and then we had our first complete sentence . . .

she's been doing "mommy . . . mommy . . . sit . . . . mommy . . . no . . . sit . . . sit" for quite awhile and the words were definitely related to each other. however, until now there were definitely ". . . " in between each word and they weren't quite what i would call a sentence.

those of you who know mommy are laughing hysterically now, as you know that sitting is not something mommy does well. at least, not in the "sit down and relax" sort of sense. it's nice that ava chose her first sentence to demonstrate how well she knows her mommy, and to pass on some good advice.

7. "house! house!" 03 apr 2008

ava is very fond of her indoor playhouse. she'll drag any willing victim in to hang out with her, but she is particularly obsessed about hanging out in the playhouse with grandma. on grandma's march visit, it was hard for grandma to spend any time inside without ava's insistent tugging and exclamations of "house! house!"

grandma arrived for her april visit late on the evening of april 3rd. as a special treat (for grandma) i plucked ava out of crib, brought her out to the dining room and handed her over to grandma. she rubbed her eyes in sleepiness and confusion and looked perilously close to starting to howl. then all at once her eyes focused, she realized that this was grandma and decided to pick up the fun right where they left off.

at 17.5 months, ava's in the middle of the "18 month language explosion" and today she put together her first two word combination : "up, up, moon!!".

this must make her the first toddler in history to a) have easily upwards of a hundred words and b) have two-word combinations but c) still not be able to say mommy.

this has become quite the family joke. john likes to get out an array of stuffed animals, and go through a little routine like this :

john : who am i?
ava : daddy
john: who is this?
ava : ducky
john: who is this?
ava : goat
john: who is this? pointing at ava
ava: baby
john: and who is this? pointing at cailin
ava: uhhh?

last night we were trying to help ava adjust to the time change, by keeping her up until her normal bed time. she was understandably a little cranky, so we were amusing her by showing her the ladybug pictures on our big projected screen. when the show was over, the picture changed to our computer desktop, and she started her usual exciting pointing and "clock, clock, clock" at the clock in the upper right hand corner.

this inspired john to visit google images and search for clock, instantly filling the screen with dozens of images of all sorts of clocks. ava seemed pleased, so we proceeded to google our way through all her favorite words. by the time we got to the pictures of the ladybugs, she was just sitting there going "whoa, whoa, whoa!".

ava's vocabulary is growing rapidly these days. we're amused by her multi-syllable consonants (who knew the 'duck' could be a two syllable word) and the fact she has yet to decide that either john or i is worth a precious phoneme. the general public is very amused by "clock", especially when applied to their watches.

should you encounter ava in person in the near future, here's a little translation of her spoken vocabulary for you :

word	sounds like	used to denote
eye	aaiiii	eyes
duck	duck-ke	ducks, stuffed or real
cat	dat	cats and cheetahs
clock	gock-ke	clocks, watches and tires on cars(???)
apple	apfff	apples, pears, occasionally tomatoes
up	up-sss	i want up
down	daaaaaa	usually down, occasionally means up
hi	hi	hi or bye - always accompanied by a wave
cow	mmmm (for moooo)	cows
dog	dog	dogs
???	da-da-da	t-shirt logos