"Shhhhhh!"

V has a constant monologue going on, and I am not sure if it is because she is playing with language, or if she is actually trying to interact. Probably the former. It's nonstop babble, with everything coming out of her mouth that seems to enter into her head. One surprising aspect of her babble is the number of names that come out. She still repeats--actually, very often--the name of her little friend, our upstairs neighbor, who moved away now close to three months ago. That represents something like twenty percent of V's short life, so I would have thought that she would have moved on to new concepts, but apparently the name and idea are seared into her consciousness.

She also repeats the names of people she has only met once or twice, and, again, quite some time ago. For example, Tessa was the name of a little girl that V played with for one day only, and that was about two months ago. Today when V was falling asleep, she was saying, "Tessa, Tessa, Tessa." Does she just happen to fall upon the sound sequence and remember the name, or does something, in fact, prompt the memory of Tessa? I guess there is no way of knowing.

V seems to enjoy putting things into categories. I have noted previously in this blog, for example, that she likes to point out shapes. "Star. Ball. Heart. Moon." Lately, she also enjoys noticing body, face parts, and clothing on other people, toys, and from all sorts of pictures: "Fingers. Toes. Mouth. Eyes. Hat. Boots. Foot." Fingers are especially exciting. She often looks at her own, and then, as if ecstatic to discover that they are still there, she exclaims, "Fingers!"

Her predilection for categorizing things according to shape and appearance has led to conundrum when it comes to numbers. She has a book she really likes called, "Let's Count Baby." The premise of the book is probably easy enough to catch from the title. For the past couple of days, she has been interested in the actual numbers that are printed on the pages. She will point to the figure "8" and say "eight." Then she'll point to the figure "7" and say "eight." So then I correct her, saying, "No, that's a seven." So she'll say, "Seven," and then point back at the "8" and say "seven." And so on. I suppose this is the first time she has encountered a break from the usual pattern: even though these things (the numbers) all look more or less the same, they actually all have different names. And this seems to be confusing her! I am not sure how to deal with this, because I don't want her to think that a "7" is called "eight," and so on. But I guess I should just calm down. After all, she is only sixteen months old, and I am sure she has plenty of time to learn what the numbers are called.

In other news, she has a few new adjectives and adjective phrases: clean, nice, all gone. She also says "Nam!" if she really likes some food she is eating, so I guess that counts.

One of her favorite routines is to go through what all of the animals say. Quite typical, of course. What cracks me up about her, though, is when we start asking what certain people say. It doesn't matter who it is -- Mamma, Daddy, her sister, grandma, babysitter, even our dog, Cava -- the answer is always the same: "Shhhhh!" You would think we spend most of our time telling her to be quiet, which is most certainly not the case!

I am not sure what else to note about her languages other than English. Only to say that they are developing, but at a less noticeable pace than her English. Of course my reports are biased, as well, because she speaks English with me. However, I do hear her speaking enough Swedish to her dad and sister and enough Finnish when we are out in the city to know that these other languages do exist for her. Yesterday, for example, when we were in town, she was saying over and over to people in shops and so on, "Kiitos!" which means 'thank you.'