Friday, December 18, 2009

The Vagaries of Toddler Speech

I've got a "real" post brewing for the next time Petunia lets me put her down (maybe sometime in 2010?) but in the meantime... can anyone explain to me why Pumpkin calls the thieving fox in Dora "Swifer" but when she asks me to put Naima (her favorite song on Dreamland, her favorite bedtime CD) on loop, she tells me to make it "repeep"?

5 comments:

  1. Repeep! That's really cute. E very generously likes to put a consonant at the end of words - mom is sometimes momp, banana is usually bananda and hmmm is often hmmmmp.

    And as far as Petunia's not letting you put her down...I was hoping that B's need to be carried all the time was the 7-9 week fussies as described in Wonder Weeks. But she's almost 10 wks and Petunia's a little bit older than her. Hmmmmp...

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  2. @nej- I'm putting it down to a developmental leap followed by a growth spurt. Petunia will go down and play sometimes, but she is nursing a lot more right now, and then she falls asleep and while she will sleep just fine in her cosleeper at night, she wants to be held for her naps. Did I say "wants"? I mean "demands." As in will not stay asleep any other way right now. I'm getting good at one-handed typing.

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  3. I suspect it is a hearing thing rather than a pronunciation thing - obviously she's able to make both sounds, but for some reason the first time she heard "Swiper", her brain registered "Swifer"...and now that is how she says it. I've noticed E doing exactly the same thing with some words - not being able to read yet, and not having the context we do...the world is still a very confusing place.

    This morning E saw a picture of a knitted eggplant, pointed at it and asked me to make her a pear. I tried (and failed) to correct her, and then she pointed to the leaves at the top and asked what they were, just as my husband stepped in and said "that's an Eggplant". So then she requested "a pear with an eggplant on top" thinking eggplant = leaves on top of the purple pear. This probably makes no sense without pictures...sorry :) I've spent the afternoon knitting her an eggplant...in part because Santa is definitely not going to be bringing her the "brothers and sisters" she has requested...

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  4. mom2boys11:46 AM

    T thinks the refrigerator is the kitchen. I didn't know that until this morning when he asked to go to the kitchen and told me we had a biiiig kitchen. Which we don't. We don't even have a biiiig refrigerator except I guess to a two year old. Anyway I told him it was called a refrigerator but he said no, kitchen.
    The only spanish word T knows is abri - which he uses exclusively instead of open.

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  5. My daughter still says "elligator" when she means elevator. I tried to correct her just yesterday, and it worked for two seconds and then she was back to saying elligator.

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