Fireworks

V's speech has left me speechless several times during the last few days. She constantly surprises me with what she has stored, what she can mimic, and how adept she is at using what she knows to get her point across. It's like an explosion of skills.

Here is a good example of using what she knows to get her point across: when she wants to go outside, she says "woof." It's not because she hears a dog or sees a picture of a dog, but because she knows, of course, that when we go out we see dogs. She accompanies the little woofs by pointing out the window, for extra measure. Here is another example: yesterday she went to the front door and repeated "baby, baby" and her little friend's name. She was also pointing up. I got the message loud and clear: she was bored with me and wanted to play with her baby friend who lives upstairs. When I grabbed her and carried her out the door, she laughed with delight, no doubt at least in part because she had succeeded in communicating--but mostly because she was going to play.

V is learning when the same word applies across concepts. For a long time, the only "nose" was her mamma's, or maybe pappa's (but of course his nose is a näsa). A couple of days ago she had her rubber ducky, which, oddly, is one of her favorite things in the world, and she pointed to the little beak and said, "nose." Since, she has done the same thing to her teddy bears.

It seems to be the case that, officially, V has learned her first word in Finnish. We were listening to her repeat a word that sounded close to mamma, but not quite. This didn't make sense, since mamma is one of her most distinctly articulated words. We realized that she was saying mennään, which means "let's go" in Finnish. I asked V's babysitter, and she verified: yes, V has learned that word from her time with the babysitter and the other kids.

New words at this point include brush (brushing her teeth is now part of the nightly ritual), uh-oh (not exactly new; she mimicked it before but now knows what it means), eyes, mouth, yes, no, and Swedish nej.

Now a word about nonverbals. V expresses her love for something by patting and petting, and she often says, "Oooooh," to accompany her pats. Lucky creatures who receive this treatment include me, her pappa, our dog, her goodnight bear, her rubber ducky, and her friend from upstairs. I am not sure where she learned this behavior, although her favorite book for a long time has been Pat the Bunny. That might explain the patting, anyway.