Update on Natalie's speaking

Last week, while Baba and Lolo (Stephen's parents) were still with us in D.C. the week after Christmas, Natalie suddenly offered to say the table prayer before dinner one night. Even before we all sit down at dinner now, she launches in with this: "God is great, and God is great [instead of good], and we thank Him for our food. Amen."

Natalie has had a fascination with buses for a few months. Lately, when we've all been in the car together going somewhere, she sees a bus and then proceeds to say, "Mommy see the bus? Daddy see the bus? Sasi (Lexi) see the bus?"

A few weeks ago, Sarah remarked on her Facebook page that Natalie had entered the "Why?" stage, and she was intensely asking that for two or three weeks. She was also asking "Mommy/Daddy, what doing?" all the time. She isn't asking these questions as much now - only on occasion. But now she's actually answering her questions when they are asked back to her. The other day, she asked what I was doing (it was something like eating my breakfast), and I told her, and then I asked it back to her, and she answered in a complete sentence!

And my mother gave me these details of an incident when they were visiting: Lexi and Natalie were in the basement TV room watching videos. It became Lexi's turn to choose a video. Natalie slammed the laptop shut and threw her little body across the computer, yelling, "It's my turn!"

Her speech is still getting better by the week!

Natalie's speech

Lately Natalie has become quite the talkative 2-year-old. For a while now, she has understood us when we've given her instructions, for example. We can tell her to throw something in the trash or recycling, and she has understood the difference and acted accordingly. But now she is doing a lot of imitating of words and sentences and telling us a lot of thing on her own. Some examples:

• "Daddy, the baby is sleeping." - when she has put her doll to bed in the living room
• This morning she sat at the table with us at breakfast and went back and forth between me and Sarah saying, "Read it" while holding up cards from a deck of go-fish cards with an aquatic theme.
• "I have pockets!" she has declared after putting on a certain top in the morning.
• When we're in the car at a stoplight, she'll ask, "Why stop?" or say, "Stop."
• Also when we're in the car and Sarah or I sing to a song on the radio, she'll tell us, "No sing. Listen, Daddy/Mommy."

This means her vocabulary has taken a huge leap. We still often have trouble understanding her, however. Here are a few of her latest words and phrases:

Vos                  (get) dressed

I can (can’t) do it myself

Sasi                  Lexi

Pants

Hat                  Hat/helmet

Tha’one           That one 

For the last several days, she has been quite chatty almost constantly. 

Many times a day, when she is with either Sarah or me, she asks, "Mommy/Daddy, what doing?" We answer her, and often she'll ask again a few times. Or we'll tell her what we're doing (flossing our teeth, eating dinner, washing our hands) and then ask what she's doing, but she doesn't respond.

We're so impressed by her recent gains in speaking abilities, and it's great to have a new level of interaction and understanding with her.    

 

Natalie is actually speaking to us

We learned recently, thanks to some help from Stephen's mother, who was here for a week in early February to watch both girls while we went on a cruise, that Natalie actually knows and is speaking some words. Granted, they are still baby talk, but we are actually starting to communicate with her and understand each other.

The words she says:

ha = hat
ba = bottle
ma = milk
ma/mama = Mommy
da = Daddy

Words/sentences she understands (she can identify or do these things when we say them to her):

hat
bottle
milk
nose (can point to her nose and other people's noses)
Get your jacket on.
Take your jacket off.
Get your hat.
Put your shoes on.
Take your shoes off.
Let's brush your teeth.
Take your food to the table.
Take this to the garbage.
What does the doggy say? "Woo, woo."

She can do the hand signs for "more" when she wants more food.

She is also nodding her head fairly frequently these days, and sometimes it means the right thing, but just as often she is saying "no" when we think she really means "yes."

Taking after Sarah?

Lexi has really taken to the word book. It’s one of a handful of words that she really knows the meaning of. She knows where in her room the bedtime reading books are (behind a door in one of the built-in closets), and she gets excited at the mention of the word as we change her diaper and get her into her pajamas. She will hopefully take after Mommy and be a good reader, enjoying it as a relaxing pastime (unlike Daddy, who reads some, but it tends to be newspapers, magazines and online news).

Last night, I read Lexi a book at bedtime about a cat and dog that fight and cause chaos in the house and yard while their little girl owner tries to maintain order. It’s a book Lexi really enjoys because it has two animals that she knows the sounds of. She can see a dog and say “woof, woof” and see a cat and say “meow.” So she has fun following along in this book as it’s read to her. This morning, as we were changing her diaper, she insisted on a “book,” and so we gave her that one. She proceeded to “read” it with the “woof, woof” and “meow” sounds while adding plenty of other noises as “words” in between. It was so cute. She seemed to enjoy the book even more reading it herself.

New words learned, new connections made

Suddenly, as I wrote in the last entry here, it seems that Lexi is picking up new words, and she is continuing to do it at a rapid pace. Plus, in the past few days, she has seemed to make the connection in her head that words can be used to identify things and get things that she wants. Her new favorite words:

• up (on the list last time, but still popular, especially now that she can use it to ask to be lifted anywhere)
• "mahk" (milk): This morning Jane came to ask me if Lexi had drunk her milk at breakfast because at mid-morning, Lexi seemed to be asking for more milk. I told Jane that Lexi had gotten her usual fill at breakfast and was just practicing a new favorite word.
• "lahk" (light): This word goes with a favorite activity - turning lights in rooms on and off. Now she's having fun identifying all sorts of lights all over the place - the lights at the grocery store, a flashlight, the moon (which we saw on Friday night, full and unusually large), etc.
• uh-oh: self-explanatory

Next up: Conjugating verbs

Lexi's vocabulary is coming right along. Here is the list of words she knows (or the words that we can make out and know what she's saying):

• Up (when she wants you to pick her up)
• Hello (answering the telephone)
• Habari (Kiswahili for “How are you?”)
• Ball
• Bird
• Kwaheri (Kiswahili for “goodbye” – knows to wave when she hears it)
• Mama, Dada
• Mana (food)
• Key
• Car
• Me (when she wants something or more of something)
• Bye

Of course, Jane speaks to her only in Kiswahili as per our instructions, and Lexi probably knows many words in that language already, but we don't know what they are (it's clear that Jane understands what she's trying to communicate often).

Also, last week we noticed that Lexi started imitating words/sounds immediately after we said them, so our interactions with her are moving to a new level.