In la la land

Lexi’s favorite word these days is “la la,” which is Kiswahili for “sleep” (although I’ve also heard Desmond Tutu use it to describe himself going into retirement). I’d say it’s a concept bordering on obsession with her these days, but perhaps her grandparents (Sarah’s parents) had something to do with it when they visited Nairobi recently. She taught them the word when they were here, and perhaps that’s why she has taken great delight in it. It could also be that when Jane has trouble getting Lexi to fall asleep for her nap, she sings a little la-la-by that is just the words “la la, Lexi, la la” repeated over and over.

She is very good at identifying la la and people engaged in it (or supposedly doing it). However, strangely, she says it sometimes as soon as we go into her room in the morning (after she’s been la la all night). But at church the other day, a man a few rows back had his eyes closed while we were singing a hymn (clearly we weren’t at our usual Lutheran church). Although he was standing at the time as well, Lexi identified it with a “la la.” We were out somewhere recently, and Lexi saw a poster with a bunch of people on it. One of the people was lying horizontal, to which she declared, “La la.”

She also shows a tender, caring side when people really are appearing to sleep. A couple of weeks ago when I was ill with my mild case of typhoid, the afternoon I was feeling the worst, I had camped out on the living room couch under a blanket and in front of the TV. Lexi approached me several times, not quite sure what I was doing. But once or twice she patted me gently on the shoulder and said, “La la.”

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.

Discovering a world of words, birds and babies

Several months ago, when Lexi was younger and wasn't saying actual words, she made "friends" with a group of large black birds with long, curved beaks that lived high in some trees on the edge of the compound where we live. Because she spent a lot of time outside with Jane passing the hours each day, she used to see these birds flying overhead and making a loud and distinctive "caw" like a crow. Lexi soon learned to "speak" to them by imitating their call.

Lexi has grown and moved to higher pursuits like walking and talking, and fortunately her bird friends have grown along with her. One set of these birds, a family, has for some reason taken up residence in our small back yard and recently hatched a baby bird behind some of the bushes lining the grass. It cannot fly yet, so it spends time walking around our yard, much to the delight of Lexi. The mother visits it regularly to feed it. She still "caws" at the birds occasionally when she hears their relatives flying overhead and calling out. But more importantly, the new bird has given her a chance to practice some of her most favorite words: "bird" and "baby." Indeed, we point out to her, the new small bird is both a bird and a baby.

"Baby" is one of Lexi's most-used words. With it and others, she's starting to figure out that words can express things and have meaning. Wherever she is, or whatever she sees, such as a magazine of Dad's, she is trying to identify the baby. She sees children walking along the street when we're out in the car and will point and say "baby." Yesterday, we received several photo Christmas cards from friends that have pictures of the parents and children - several chances to identify the "baby" in each (even if the children are beyond that stage). To experiment, I held up the back cover of a magazine showing an elderly person and waited several seconds. "Baby," Lexi said after some thought. So she's still working on her accuracy, but maybe she deserves some leeway in this case because, to her credit, she didn't know the term "elderly man" or "senior citizen" but was probably trying to think of it in those few seconds. For her, all people will just have to be "baby" for now.

Another word that she knows and uses with much greater accuracy (and an impressive amount of it, given her age, I believe) is "pretty." She's much more discriminating with this word because I thinks she has really nailed its meaning. Often when she sees a flower-print piece of clothing, she'll point and say the word. I can't even prompt her to say it by pointing out things that I think (or that she should think) are pretty. Good that she's thinking on her own now and isn't swayed by our suggestions one bit.

Other recently acquired words and terms since the last report on this topic:

* all gone
* "up above" [the world so high], the phrase from "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," taught to her over the holidays by Stephen's mother when his parents were visiting us; she probably picked this up quickly because it has a word that she already knew: "up"
* book: This one gets her excited for her bedtime story
* "monk" (monkey)
* woof, woof: Sometimes used for dog
* Freddy: Her "baby" friend at No. 7 in our compound
* up: doubles for "open"
* cow: We haven't quite figured out what she's calling a cow or what she means by it, since she says it a lot.

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.