Monday 21 May 2012

Wordsmith

I can say, with some degree of certainty that Josephs first word where I am pretty sure he knew what it meant as he was pointing to one at the time is: -

DOOR!

He was pointing to the front door when he said it. I smiled and said "Yes!" and clapped him. He then ran to my kitchen door and said "Door!" quite clearly and I again responded positively with clapping.
It was spoiled when he ran to the fish tank and said "door" which made me wonder, but he wasn't done yet. I told him calmly that it wasn't a door, it was a fish tank. He then ran to the front door again and repeated the process, with me giving encouragement. He returned to the fish tank, looked at it and said quite firmly "Ni do" which, if I understand baby-ese correctly, probably means "not a door".
This brings his total of understandable syllables up by one as we now have "Mummy" meaning sometimes me or sometimes "I need a hug" or just that he's heard someone else say it and he likes the word. "Daddy" which sometimes means Andy but more often "What's that?" and "No" which just means that he's heard me say it a lot and he likes to repeat it.

As for words he can understand but not say, the list is increasing rapidly. He knows feet, socks, shoes, head (sometimes), nose, wheel, kitty and cat, his own name, and probably several others that escape me for the moment. My favourite at the moment is "bee", courtesy of Granny reading him a storybook about a garden quite regularly. Whenever the bee appears she demonstrates by saying "Buzzzz!" and waving her finger around. Now if you say the word "bee" to Joseph he quite happily makes a noise halfway between a buzz and a raspberry and wiggles his index finger about in the air. Ironically, when we saw a real bee in Grannys garden, he was scared of it and not inclined to demonstrate its behaviour.
I'd take him out in our garden to get a little closer to nature, but for some reason our stupid cat (note the lack of capitals, she no longer occupies a place of monarch in our house) has decided that she will no longer do her sinful business in the flowerbed or under next doors hedge, but in the middle of the lawn. Boy, does it make hanging the washing out a voyage of stinky difficulty when you don't always know where it's safe to tread and I can't let Joseph run about out there, I don't want him to get toxoplasmosis. She, by the way, still can't stand him, even though he's getting really good at giving her treats.
Better finish up now, he's posting wooden bricks out of the letterbox, whatever must the neighbours think?

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