Words

Yesterday afternoon, Julia was playing with her Winnie-the-Pooh computer and accompanying educational cards; the basic gist is that she inserts a card, and the fake Winnie-the-Pooh voice asks her all kinds of questions related to the pictures on the cards. ("Is the kite to the left or the right of Piglet?" "What letter does kite begin with?" Do you know how to spell the word cloud?" etc.) While she loves playing these games, Ethan and I are not as into it, since we are the ones who have to answer her questions about how to spell words and what letters they begin with (for example, when I was on a very important phone call and she was screaming into the kitchen at me, "Mama! Mama! But I need to know what letter the word GATE begins with!") Ethan decided to give Julia some skills to be able to figure out these things on her own, so when she asked him how to spell the word "chair," he instructed her to find the chair in the picture. Then he asked, "And what letters do you see there?" Julia's response was: "Uh... C, D, A, I, SEVEN!" Hmm. Not quite ready to do the spelling on her own yet, I guess.

On another language-based topic, Ethan and I are both fairly certain Madeleine has spoken her first word, but one can never be 100% sure with baby babbles. She has taken to saying, "Ba. Ba. Ba," when she is playing with a ball of any sort. In fact, when she saw Julia on her giant hop ball out in the backyard yesterday, she started crawling over in delight, squawking "Ba! Ba! Ba!" However, "ba" is not exactly an uncommon sound for a baby to make. It is entirely possible that she is just vocalizing and baby-babbling and we're ascribing meaning to it. It doesn't help that she only wants to say it on her own terms. If I try to give her a ball and sit there cooing at her, "See the ball? Where's the ball? Can you say ball?" she looks at me with complete disinterest. If SHE is the one who discovers the ball and goes crawling off after it ecstatically, she is highly likely to start with the "Ba. Ba. Ba." business. So, it may be an first actual word, which is exciting, or we may just be delusional parents imagining our child is way more advanced than she really is. Time shall tell!