Words

 Burke teaching Daphne the joys of eating shiny olives right off your fingers!

Daphne now says the following:

Mama

Daddy

NO!

buh-bye

hi

peeese? (while frantically doing the baby sign language on her chest)

NO!

mooooore

bubbles

dog

button (bellybutton)

shoes

No!

cheese

help

upah! (up)

hair

light (no "t" at the end)

nose

toes

hair

NO!

eyes

elbow (with a hilarious high inflection at the end)

teeth

cat

apple

NO!

cow

boo (for book or story)

peek-a-boo!

car

bird

rock

slide

Jesus

And she makes the following sounds when she sees the corresponding animal:

moo

neigh

hoo-hoo (owl)

meow

woof

ooo-ooo-ooo (monkey)

rar (lion, alligator, tiger, bear, etc)

She recognizes all sorts of objects, words and sounds now.  For example, every time she hears and airplane overhead, she stops whatever she is doing with a mouth in a wide "O" and points at the sky, gasping and pointing to make sure I see it too.  She can follow through on simple directions like, "Let's grab your jacket and go on a walk" and she will run to her room, pick up the coat and come back (if she doesn't get distracted) to stand at the garage door, holding out her coat for me to help put it on.  She can just as easily ignore my instructions or hide in her closet and pretend not to hear me when I call her name.  She's a very good selective listener!

I love hearing her sweet, high little voice and the way she copies the exact inflection of our words.  She's growing out of it, but occasionally still sits in her car seat for minutes at a time calling in a frantic voice, "Mama! Mama! Mama! Mama!"  While I answer in exasperation, "Yes darling?  Yes Daphne?  YES baby?"   It reminds me far too much of this clip Tasha showed me years ago.

It is so precious to see her surrounded by stacks of scattered books, turning the pages and jabbering away as she reads to herself.  Whenever she starts throwing a string of gibberish at us, I have to laugh, wondering what on earth she thinks she is saying.  It is such a sweet time and so exciting every time we hear her use a new word.

Sweet overall, yes, but let's not forget her most recent verbal acquisition - poo.  I keep hoping she doesn't know what it means and is just playing with sounds, but that is unlikely as she now says it whenever she needs a diaper change.  And last night as we listened at her nursery door 20 minutes after we had laid her down for bed we heard her saying it over and over again, "poo! poo! poo! poo!" and laughing her head off every few repetitions.  *Sigh* And so it begins.