Something to Talk About

Sorry for the long post without many pictures - this one is mainly for the memory book!  I added 2 videos to make it more interesting.

Much to our delight, Olivia’s speech has really exploded over the past few weeks.

She now says hi & bye regularly.  In fact, getting her to leave daycare is a 10 minute ordeal and she runs to every teacher and tells each one “buh bye” and hugs them at least 5 times!  Here’s a video of her going “buh bye” in our kitchen.

She is still saying “mama” and I think she knows that I’m mama, but she doesn’t ever call out for me.  But the other night I asked who mamma was and she pointed to me.  (She also pointed to me when I asked her who Olivia was, so who knows?)  Unfortunately, she still refers to Matt as “gaga” but if you ask her where daddy is, she will look at/point to him.  The other morning I heard Matt talking to her on the monitor:

Matt: Can you say mama?

Olivia: Mama

Matt:  Yes good girl!

Olivia: Mamamamamama

Matt:  Good girl!  Can you say dada?

Olivia:  Gaga

Matt:  Yep. 

Poor Matt! But despite not being able to say his name, this little girl LOVES her daddy.  Here she is freaking out once she sees Matt is outside.

I also realized that Olivia doesn’t know any of the names of the people in our family.  She is around them all the time, but when I told her to give something to Yasmin, she looked around at all the people there and had no idea where to go.  So, I made her the cutest little board book with pictures of all the family members in it.  She L-O-V-E-S it!  We read it at least 10 times every day.  Literally.  So she now says some form of GrandDad, Yasmin, and Pop-O.  (Sorry everyone else!)

And, although she stopped for a few months, she is back to saying “no” as well, except it comes out “nah” but she adds a head shake to make sure you understand!  Matt was out of town this week and she answered “nah” to everything I asked her!  (Despite her opinion, she did in fact eat dinner, take a bath, and go to bed!)

Surprisingly, the word “cat” is another one of her favorites.  Which is weird because we don’t have a cat and don’t really ever talk about cats.  But apparently when Matt and I were in New Orleans last week, she saw a cat with Mimi & GrandDad that must have scarred/amazed her because she now thinks she sees cats wherever we go.

Another random/surprising word that she says is “purple.”  I don’t think she understands what purple is and if you point to something that’s purple, she won’t identify it as such.  But she can say the word.  And “tickle.”  This one she will randomly start saying when no one is tickling her at all.  Again, not sure she knows what it means – but she can say it.  I tried to teach her to say "gobble gobble gobble" when asked what a turkey says.  Unfortunately, I think she got it confused with "tickle" because according to Olivia, turkeys say "tickoo tickoo tickoo." 

And finally, she says “wa wa” for water.  She will also do the sign language sign for water as she says “wa wa” which Matt and I think qualifies her for genius status ;)

It is really incredible to see the little wheels turning in her head as she tries to communicate and understand what things are.  We are also now understanding how frustrating it is (on both ends) to try and guess what she wants when she can’t express it.  But we are getting better at figuring it out and she is getting better at pointing!