"Look Mom! A Hog!"

When you have a two year old, sometimes you wish they came with a few manuals. People always joke that it would be nice if kids came with instructions. With new talkers, sometimes I just wish for a translating book. Allie gets very frustrated with me when I don't understand the words she is so repeatedly screaming at me. If I didn't understand the first time it came out of her mouth, chances are the next 42 times she repeats it I'm still not going to get it. Can she point? Can she use it in a sentence? Give me the word origins? All those things might help. Anyway, there have been a few break throughs on understanding the language barrier lately and I thought I'd share them with you...



When I washed Allie's hands a couple months ago I grabbed the towel to dry them. She said "Look! A spider" I was startled (spiders aren't my favorite) and looked all over trying to find the spider. I didn't find one, so I thought maybe it had scurried under the stove. I avoided that area all morning, then forgot about it. The problem with that is that she repeated the proclamation every time I washed her hands. I tried to figure out if I was hearing her wrong, but she said "spider" pretty clearly. I just reasoned that she was wrong (like the times she excitedly says "cow" and points out horses.)


Point of the story...the mystery was solved when, after months of saying it, she finally pointed and I made the connection...

It could look a little like a spider, I guess. It does have 8 leg things...

The other word discovery was last week when we went for a walk up the canyon. She kept telling us she was seeing "a hog!" As we weren't at a farm, we once again questioned her brilliance. After many "hogs" were spotted, I made the connection. She was pointing out logs.

She is getting better at talking, but there are always days of confusion and frustration (she gets frustrated, I get confused). Overall, this stage is really fun for me. I love to watch her figure things out and learn to communicate her feelings.