Words

The communication gap is becoming more evident as Eliza struggles to get her needs understood and we try to understand her. While she can say some words, she can't exactly say everything and while she understands us, she also can't understand everything. What helps all of us is her pointing, her signing and our questioning. I'll ask her questions that require her to answer yes or no and work by elimination to understand what she wants. Sometimes it's also easier to carry her and bring her to where she's pointing. But at times she's either too grouchy or too sleepy or too cranky to give us a good clear reply and it all ends up in tears and tantrums.
It can be as simple as wanting milk when she wakes up from naptime. Usually we'll carry her out of bed, and let her drink water. Today it was lunchtime but she must have been famished (that's another story), and wailed for something we couldn't understand and when i sat her on the sofa to drink water, she got upset and whined/cried more intensely. in the end we figured it was milk. Gosh toddlers this age have quite a temper!
Of course she's back to her cherry chatty self after her little dose of milk.

Meanwhile she's expanding her little repertoire of words, slowly but surely.
English ones:
- milk
- amen
- mama
- papa or dada for 'daddy'
- bye bye
- banana
- cut apple
- bear
- onion
- air-con (hai...due to the humid weather these days she's always asking for it to be on)
- Elmo (used to sound liek Elma but the 'o' sound is coming out clearly)
- eat
- star
- ant
- cheese
- bread
- baba (which means butterfly..or she'll sign it..not the most accurate sign but i get it anyway cos it isn't easy to cross yr hands and lock thumbs together to sign it)
- bed

Chinese/hokkien/other language words:
- 'mai' & 'ai' (which means 'no' and 'yes' respectively...and she loves saying 'mai')
- ah-ma
- ah-gong (it has always sounded like ah-gng for a long time, now it's sounding more like ah-gong)
- ah-te (my mil calls my fil "Jin3Te4" and Eliza will call him that if my mil calls him...really hilarious watching her imitate with that cheeky smile)
- 猫 (cat)
- 马 (horse)
- 鸭 (duck)
- kaka (is this any language?? cos my mil will tell her that insects/rubbish tt she picks up on the floor is kaka and she loves saying it)
- 抱抱 (carry)
- gaigai (what language is this though?)

Other signs
- sing / music
- corn
- bean
- butterfly
- outside
- water (getting better at it...she can't sign the 3 fingers but she'll put 4 fingers to her chin..i'll get it)
- shoes
- cry (she loves to sign this..and she'll pretend to cry..really funny)
- happy
- sad
- sleep
- moon

will add on when i remember what else she says. meanwhile we're still discovering new signs that she learnt on baby signing times though much slower cos some stuff she just doesn't want to sign...not useful i guess. Interestingly, once she's able to say the words she used to sign, she'll sign that word lesser, ie banana. or she'll sign and say the word at the same time ie asking for cheese.

I've also discovered that Eliza a little social butterfly...at least among kids her age and size. We'll go play and she'll chat up that little kid near her or far from her instead of playing the toys.
Kid no.1, ambush from behind...dunno what she was telling him, in the end got some car to play.


Later she went to talk to some kid with a mum...dunno what she said..and then walked away.
Then she found this toddler and sat down to chat and play with her. I later found out that they're the of the same age (check out how much more hair she has!)
I wonder what she's telling her new friend...

Later Eliza pointed to the little girl's shirt....ok i didn't manage to catch it but this was the situation...

And then Eliza pointed to her shirt...probaby telling the little girl that she has flowers on her shirt cos i was showing her the flowers on her shirt that morning.


Funny what goes on in their cute little minds.