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| Momma's happy hobbies |
It has been far too long since I have written here, sweet pea, though rest assured your story has continued dense with discovery in these unmentioned days. I've kept a diary to Uncle Kelson, who is in Italy, and my hope is to transcribe those entries here eventually.
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| Ready for the World |
I have broken my fast because I had to tell you
how irresistibly fascinating your linguistic development has been. You seem to take the same joy in labeling what you recognize that I do, and you speak or sign extremely often. Yesterday I was wearing a shirt with a Remington insignia on the pocket and you looked at it and said "Deer" with a grin. I had no idea you knew that word; I don't remember teaching you, and there are no drawings of deer in any of your books. You probably got it from Signing Time, the one show I put on the t.v. for you. You've taught me and Daddy 3 signs that you learned before we did, because you've paid such closer attention to that show than we have -- bus, table and... what was the last one... game, I think. A few weeks ago we discovered that you can translate from sign to English -- you'll say what I sign -- and you have at least more than 50 signs, probably closer to 100. Most of them you know the words for but a lot are too hard to say. Usually both data points help me interpret; the voice clarifies the sign while the sign clarifies the voice.
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| Loving your dinosaur |
Your pronunciation has very consistent patterns, errors I guess, so consistent that I am repeatedly caught off guard. The other day you were learning the word "sick" and you said "yit" -- of course. You substitute a T for a K in almost every context -- if I sign "grandma" you translate it "Tate" for Mama Kate, although I did hear you say cup (instead of tup) a couple weeks ago. That one makes sense; they sound a lot alike. Your other consistent pattern is rather baffling -- any words that start with a sibilant (an s, sh, or z) you will begin with a Y instead. You pointed to my santa hat tonight and said "Yanta." A zipper is a yipper, but the trash is the trash and your nose is your nose -- it seems only to happen at the beginning of words. You replace F with W at the beginning of words (figa is wida, since the g turns to a d too) but with a TH at the end of words (Geoff is deth, since j comes out like d). You often say the word no but the sign for no you translate with Arapaho -- you say hiitah, since the word is hiikah -- given that we usually sign no only as a command, when we are telling you not to do something, and that's also when we use Arapaho.
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| Signing "Help" (sideways) because you want down |
It's late, and I should go -- it's after midnight, and Daddy is in the bedroom sleeping with you. Today was 12/21/12, an exciting day in a funny way -- a big urban legend about Mayan calendrical prophecies got kind of out of hand to the degree that people were half-heartedly predicting either that the world would end today or everything will transform dramatically. We'll see. You'll transform dramatically either way.
Your development is like a continuous Easter Egg hunt -- every day you have some happy surprise for us, some joyful word or new skill. Love you baby. A whole bunch.
