Chatting

When a baby learns to talk, the people around her also learn a new language. We have to figure out what she means and then remember the new words and be ready to respond when she uses them. Sometimes, I'll hear something and know that I had a theory about what it meant last time I heard it, but not be able to remember it. I guess that she has a lot of experience trying to communicate things and not being understood, and she just keeps on trying. A friend was impressed that she realized that he did not understand what she she was saying so she pointed to his shoes to clarify.
She also plays the "where's the X" game now, and will gamely point when I ask. It has been fun discovering the words she knows, but cannot yet say. She may be attempting to say them, but in one sense they become words only when I figure out what she means and remember (kind of like the tree falling in the forest, I guess). I'm also really delighted that she has started using Persian words. At the same time I realized that she needs someone to "learn her Persian" and understand and reinforce the words, because I don't think I'm tuned in to catch a Persian word, even though I know some.

So here is a list of new words (as she means them): socks, candle ("badu" or "cadu"), moon & mah (the Persian), potato ("bibilow"), fruit ("doots"), duck and quack, turtle, butterfly, goat & boz (Persian) and maaa, apple, clock, cluck, cloth, and sometimes rock (the last 4 all sound like "kok"), feather, hello (nice and clear), shadow, shower (these sound the same), window, lily, rose, poppy and geranium (gigi), eye, nose, toes, bottle, light and nur (Persian). She signs "finished", "vitamin", "water", "clean" in homemade signs. I know there's more, but I can't remember.

She's also started combining two language elements. Of course there is the "more" sign and pointing to what she wants. She says "moosh" for more + shir (milk in persian) and "hato" (distinct from hat) which means "Hat on".


We have a game wearing sofa cushions as hats.


This picture says to me "get ready, cause here I come". In the nicest way possible of course.