Conversations with my toddler

I haven’t talked about Phoebe’s speech development in a while.

Truth is, there isn’t much to say.  Not that there’s no improvement.  There is.  She’s talking up a storm.  Perhaps not on level with her age, but her vocabulary has greatly expanded and nearly every day I hear her say something new.

Here’s a conversation we had this morning:

Phoebe: Mama, juice. (what she calls fruit cups)

Me: No, we’re going to have breakfast.

Phoebe:  Mama, juice.

Me:  No, let’s have cereal.

Phoebe:  Cereal?  (Thinks about this for a moment).  Juice?

Me:  No, we’re going to have cereal.

I open the refrigerator to get the milk and, of course, she sees the mandarin orange cups she’s jones’n for.

Phoebe: (pointing wildly)  MAMA JUICE!!  MAMA JUICE!! MAMA JUICE!!

I put her in the booster chair and pour the milk.

Me: Let’s eat cereal.

Phoebe now begins to cry with real tears and everything. 

Phoebe: (tearfully) Maaaamaaa… juice….

Whereupon, I open and drain a cup of mandarin oranges and give them to her.

Phoebe: (daintily placing one orange slice in her mouth) Mmmm… good juice.

Yeah…

My mother in law is coming to spend some time with us when Nugget makes his appearance so I wrote down a few of Phoebe’s words.

She knows a lot of words and you can understand most of them.  But sometimes the meanings are not the same as what you and I might think.

Words with multiple meanings
"Sauce" - some type of sauce, usually ketchup, but can also be salsa or grape jelly.
"Car" - can be a car, but can also mean the stroller
"Omnia" - usually means "banana" but can also refer to her Dumbo stuffed animal or elephants
"Cracker" - can be a cookie or cracker or chips - anything crunchy like that
"Cookie" - interchangeable with cracker... could be cookie, could be cracker, could be chips...
"Cow" - can be a cow but also a horse.
"Carow" - candy, carrots or my aunt Carole
"Juice" - can be juice but also any fruit in the refrigerator

Words and Phrases that have meaning to her but maybe not to you
"boo-boo" - boobs.  This is usually accompanied by her pointing to or patting your boobs.
"Ouchie" - a physical ailment like a scraped knee.
"Ahm" - Apple
"Tig" - Tigger stuffed animal