Chatty Kathy!

I cannot believe how fast my little girl is growing! I know I have said this before, but it is just so amazing to see her learn. Her vocabulary has totally skyrocketed. I believe that the book says she should know 10 words now. She has FAR surpassed that!

While Jocelyn obviously can't read, she really recognizes things and knows what they are by name (even if she can't say them). This one story I'm about to go into happened probably 3 or 4 weeks ago, but I haven't gotten a chance to tell it:

Mike brought home a bag of bags of chips from work. The bag is a paper bag with a Starbucks logo on it. So I stuck the whole bag on top of the refrigerator. Well, Jocelyn was sitting in her high chair and started pointing at the bag making her 'I want' sound. I was confused, because she doesn't eat chips (or, at least didn't at the time... more on that later). And, besides, she didn't know there were chips in there. But then it hit me later - she recognized the Starbucks logo! She and Grandma would take walks to Starbucks a few times a week and split a piece of coffee cake. So she saw the Starbucks bag and figured there was coffee cake in there. Seriously! How smart is that?

It's the same thing when we go to the grocery store. We walk past Goldfish crackers, and she points and yells "YUMMY!" And sometimes she gets it wrong. When I pulled out a box of chicken stock she pointed and yelled "Milk!" because their milk at daycare comes from boxes instead of cartons or jugs. And, of course, she recognizes foods themselves - yesterday Mike was holding her while I stirred the rice and she pointed and yelled "Rice! Yummy!" (which I didn't know she knew, either the word or the object, or liked). And she chowed down on it!

But, I swear, she learn new words every day! She knows basically all of the Sesame street characters ("Ernie" is the cutest for her to say, followed by "Bert"). Oh, and she has a book called Peek-a-Who and there is a Peek-a-Zoo page with lots of animals on it. The animals are not labeled, and there is a spotted cat on it. Sometimes we call it leopard, sometimes we call it cheetah. Well, Mike was reading her the book and she was pointing at all of the animals. When she pointed to the spotted cat Mike said "cheetah." She kept on pointing at it, as though she was challenging him on what he told her. He kept on repeating himself. Eventually she spit out "Leopard." She totally corrected him! So, from now on, it's a leopard.

She knows basically all of her colors. She recognizes and tries to say all of them, but she still has trouble with orange and green. G's and R's are hard to say. Pink is also an approximation. But she gets the rest fairly clearly. Oh, and she also says Grandma - but it comes out like "Munga" or "Ranga." I think that this last visit from Grandma made her very aware of her absence now, and that she misses her, because Jocelyn is often pointing to Grandma's chair, room, etc. and saying "Munga." She even pointed at Mike's beer, tried to push it away from him, and yelled, "Munga!" Because, you know, beer is Grandma's drink :-).

I always draw a blank when it comes to blog-writing time, so I can never list out all of the words she knows. She definitely knows "baby" now and uses it all the time. She asks for Donovan when he is not around, and if she finds his blanket is without him then she still runs it to him. When we sing 'Wheels on the Bus' she rolls her hands together. When she is supposed to clap in a song she claps. She loves to play with her balls, her puzzles, her cars and trucks, her stuffed animals and of course she loves her books. She babies her stuffed animals, probably because she has a baby brother and sees mommy taking care of a baby.

Tonight I drew Jocelyn a bubble bath, and when she got to the bathroom she yelled "bubbles!" and got super excited to get in the bath. She can also say "pee" and "poop" and points to her front and tushie, respectively, when saying them. She can say "Milk" and "Cookies" and often combines those words with the word "more. Who can blame her? Oh, and the kid LOVES tea! She used to ask for sips of my tea (she always wants sips of what the grown ups are drinking), and if I was drinking herbal tea I would oblige. She also has a tea set, which we lay with a lot. But it's gotten to where she wants me to make her tea! And she is not patient about it, either. She wants it NOW. I take her through the steps as I make it, that way she can start to maybe understand the time piece. It's cute how she yells "tea" though. Oh, and incidentally, that is not a word we can spell to talk about, since the first letter of it is the word itself.

She can also say apple, applesauce, water, cake (often followed by yummy), running, mat (in reference to Donovan's play mat), please, peas, dog / doggie, cat (which she used to say, and then stopped), Dakota, hat, hug, up, walk, out, and a whole bunch of other words. And 'na na' is her word for blanket.

She loves to give kisses. Tonight at bed time she must have given me at least 6 while I was singing to her. She also gave Mike and Donovan quite a few. And she loves to give hugs - she runs into your arms (usually when you're sitting on the floor or squatting to her level) and throws her arms around you, then pats you on the back. It's awesome :-).

Typical for a child her age, her favorite word is "NO!" It's the one word she doesn't say in her sweet little voice. She screeches it at the top of her lungs, often accompanied by tears. It's my least favorite word in her vocabulary, and I totally blame Mo Williams and his stupid pigeon (okay, I really like that book, but it taught her how fun it is to yell NO at the top of your lungs). I know this is normal, but that doesn't mean I like it. Ah, terrible two's... what a misnomer, since they start WAY before the second birthday.