Talking about talking

So the nappytastic mess seems to have calmed down a bit. Her miss to hit ratio has dropped down to a more acceptable level – she managed a 96 hour stretch without missing earlier this week. It seems that reversions like this are common during growth spurts or when levelling up. And she seems to be doing both right now. Her final baby molars have started coming in – which means lots of her poking around her mouth and making that hurts faces. Though so far she's refused all but one attempts to put Bonjela on it. I don't blame her – that stuff smells foul in a fake-candy kind of way.

She's kind of sort of starting to talk. She's definitely understanding most things as long as we don't start using new synonyms or other unfamiliar words. She can now say and mean a few words, the clarity of which seems to grow day by day.

No is the most obvious. She says it quite clearly, but we thought she was a bit confused at how it's used at first. But I now think it's how we ask the question.

Me: Do you need to go to the bathroom?
Her: (thinking) Need? Not really. I'm, having fun now. I'm sure I'll be fine
Her: No

She's got a wee vocabulary of words she uses like bo (elbow), bowl, ball, hello, baby, bye bye, vaaa (water), dog, duck, bats and cats (bats and cats are never singular). Plus there's ちょうだい and
どうぞ which we convinced her to use because they sound more polite than "gimmie".

She can also say her friend Will's name. As in We're going to the park with Will she'll smile and say something between Wee and Wei. I think it's cute how she's excited to see her friend and recognises when we talk about him.

Holiday from EC

For some reason, for the past fortnight the girl has regressed in her toilet habits to where she was 6 months ago. A month ago she was wetting maybe 4 nappies a week – half of those in her sleep. Now she's going through that many in a day. She's no longer giving us any signals, and will deny that she has to go even when she actually does.

It's perfectly natural for an ECd baby to slip for a while. It's supposed to happen when they level up in other things, or when sick, or various other causes. She's done this before to a degree, but never so markedly.

The weird thing is she's really only missed at home. Well, she missed once at a friend's place and once at a pub yesterday, but for the most part, she's only missing at home. Admittedly she's home more often than she's out and about, but if she'd wet 4 nappies at home over the same period where she wet just one outside, clearly there's something there.

So I've had to regress along with her. Really watching her for any sign of change in behaviour, or interrupting whatever we're doing to take her too the loo. We've even stopped calling it the "loo" or "toilet" in favour of "bathroom" which is made up of sounds I know she can say – just in case she decides to tell us she has to go instead of her usual gesture.

Watching for subtle changes in her behaviour is hard. By the time it's clear that she's gone from normal play to uncomfortably-full-bladder mode, she's actually moved on to unhappy-pants mode, and it's too late. The problem is amplified by (my suspicion that) she's actively trying to hide the fact she needs to go. Today I asked her if she needed the loo (she was still dry). She babbled a bit and handed me a book, demanding I read it to her. Despite the abridgement where the little train could quite easily without much effort, she was freshly wet by the time I finished.

So I can only hope this phase ends soon enough and we get back to normal. In the meanwhile I just have to try hiding my disappointment and making her experience on the toilet as fun as possible, so she doesn't start making negative associations.

Now we understand

The girl made her first real attempt to have what she said be understood. Specifically, she said a word, and I repeated it back to her, then she repeated it back to me, over and over until I finally said what she believed she was saying.

It went something a bit like this:

bɨts

bits?

bɨts

please?

bɨts

peas?

bɨts

base?

bɨts

pans?

bɨts

bitch?

bɨts

bats?

(smiles) bɨts!

bats

(smiles more) bɨts!!!

bats

(smug) bɨts

Oh, "bats"… You means these? (I point to the monkeys on her dinner tray)

bɨts

I'd pointed to her tray which has a picture of monkeys hanging upside-down from a branch. She's clearly decided that these are bats since her only experience with hanging animals comes from Stellaluna.