Toddler Talk

Leah has a lot to say these days...unfortunately we don't understand most of what she's saying outside of a few identifiables: hello, hi, bye, thank you, ball, mom, dad, eye, apple, Elmo, baby, Dallin ("lalla"), no, sure ("sha"), ice, shoe, Pat (when she wants to play with the "Pat the Bunny" app), cheese, night-night.

But she talks ALL THE TIME...and her sincerity and earnestness as she looks at us and goes on and on makes us really, really wish we knew what she was saying.  One of the best examples of this is when we're getting her out of time out and we ask her to say "I'm sorry".  Instead of simply repeating those words (or something even remotely like them), she gushes out a very long, drawn-out string of what appear to be heart-felt apologies followed by a hug.  It's puzzling that her response looks so much like a good apology when I wouldn't expect her to even really understand what "I'm sorry" means.

One of her favorite things to do is talk on the phone.  Whenever she hears a phone ringing anywhere, she puts her hand to her face like a phone and says, "hi-yah?" (hello).  She can turn ANYTHING into a phone.  Besides the obvious (real or toy phones) other objects she has used as a phone: a pack of stickers, pens, pencils, calculators, any random oblong or rectangular shaped toy, her fingers, and our favorite, a big binder clip (separating and opening up the two sides while she talked and then closing them when she "hung up").  Her phone "conversations" go something like this:

"Hello?"
Pause.
Random typical Leah babble...I don't even know how to write that out, but it would include lots of z's and sh's".
Pause.
Ha ha (laughter)
Pause.
More babbling.
Pause.
"Bye!"


She would then act as if she were hanging up and (often) promptly begin the process over again with another "phone call".  The pauses are what crack me up - as though she were listening to someone else's response.

Another favorite activity of Leah's is reading her books.  The first thing she does after I get her ready in the morning and the last thing after getting on her pajamas  to go to bed at night is climb up on her rocker and sit down with some books and read. She babbles on and on and on with so much expression as she looks through her books, with an occasional sound or word that might go with that book.

Here's a pretty good conversation she had with Dave the other night along with her latest favorite song.  (I also have one of her reading a book...I'll try to remember to upload it another time).  Enjoy!