Her Words

A few months ago, Lilli reached that time in toddler-hood of verbal development.  She gave new meaning to vocabulary burst, repeating any words that struck her fancy (sometimes the bad ones too).  For a few months, she would say anything, and I mean anything, you'd ask her to repeat.  Except her name. She'd clam up immediately or walk away as if we told her to go away.  I knew it had to do with the difficulty she had with her "L's" but it still seemed off to me that she would seem so defeated so quickly.  Normally, if she doesn't get something, she'll bang her head against it until she figures it out.

We began working on various other L words with her, ones she didn't turn away from, like "lion" and her favorite cat, Linus (or "Nine-nus" as she called him for a while).  She started pointing to herself when we said "Lilli" instead of running away. She understood the concept but the words escaped her tongue. She slowly became more willing to at least try some L words and most of the time it came out sounding like a Y.  Now she calls herself "Yiddie" and that's a great accomplishment in my book.  She says all other L words now and slowly the pronunciation is becoming clearer.

She calls her step stool a "doof" and words like diaper and thunder come out with an "ah" sound at the end.  It makes me smile when she says them wrong. It's adorable and to be honest I'll miss it when she finally gets it right.  Sometimes I worry that I push her too hard, other times I know it's my job to teach her how to communicate. So, I keep trying to never say "no, that's not right" and always repeat the correct way to say the ones she misses.  It seems to work and I'm glad she is so excited to learn.  It makes my job a lot easier, that's for sure.

"Song of the Entry"
Tell Me Where You've Been by Hotel Eden