Friday, February 06, 2009

Speech Stuff

Cecilia is not talking yet, which is probably a blessing, seeing as Caroline does more than enough talking for both of them. Caroline was verbal very early, which makes it seem to me that Cecilia is "behind" in talking, but she's probably just more average. Caroline was saying many words at this age (not necessarily that others could understand, but it was clear to me that whenever I put a hat on her head and she said "hah" and looked up at the brim, she was saying "hat," for instance). Cecilia is less... interactive? That's not quite the right word. She just doesn't thrive on the verbal one-on-one exchanges. But she loves books and "reads" them with great interest. I am thinking I need to find a more relaxing bedtime story - she gets way too excited over "Goodnight Moon," I think because it has cats in it. And she discovered the real moon yesterday, in the sky in the late afternoon.

Thinking about baby speech made me start to reminisce about some of the things Caroline used to say... you know, the funny pronunciations kids come up with when they are learning to talk. I realized that I hadn't really written many of them down, and I better do it so I don't forget! I have memories of funny speech from my younger brothers but cannot always remember which one said them - one of us came up with "doonda" for "downstairs" and "nooney" for "naked." I do remember that my youngest brother said "dohdohdoh" for "barracuda." But don't ask me why we tried to get him to say "barracuda" in the first place ;) Obviously it was funny, so we had him say it over and over.

Anyway, I don't want to be trying to remember which kid said what when I'm 70, so I figured I should attempt to write some of it down!

Some of Caroline's early pronunciations:
Clean up - "deeahbah"
All done - "aaaahhhh" (with arms outstretched)
Lowe's - "ohve"
Sam's - "abpt"
brown - "bowah"
please - "psss"
soap - "ohpt"
rhinoceros - "rhinonahserus"
sunroom - "uhbt"
giraffe - "dahwah"
play area (the indoor play space in our mall) - "bayah"
library - "eye-bahbah"
Caroline - "Nah" and later, "Nina"
chick peas - "shck pss"
pumpkin - "punkum" (this is when she was even older, over 24 months of age)

If I think of more, I will add them! And if your kid had any weird pronunciations and you want to share them, feel free!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

did i make those up?
you forgot dabon man.

Erin said...

i think nooney and doondah were from mike or maybe even stephen. i made up dahbon man for gingerbread man. aren't you embarrassed that i wrote about barracuda? i still remember it so clearly, though!

Kelly said...

That is so cute! And I love the photo of you with the girls up near the top! That is awesome of all 3 of you!

Kelly

mel said...

heehee..
Jack had the weirdest ones...his first word was "Nohn". He would drag it out, "Nooohhhhn". We could figure out what he was saying, he would always say it in the car, and it was driving us nuts. THen one day I heard it on the radio..."Magic one-oh-seven-point-niiiiiine!" he was saying "nine". lol....

He also used to climb up in the window and go "dzzzt! dzzzt!", and it took us quite a while to realize he was imitating the flies that always hang out in the windows during the summer, trying frantically to get out, hitting the glass and saying "dzzzt!"