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Lia's Lexicon

In honour of Lia's eighteen-month birthday, we present this annotated list of Lia's current vocabulary.

amen [ahm]

1. (Interjection) So be it.

Lia has picked up on the ritual of prayer before meals, most especially since she figured out how to fold her hands together. She scrunches up her eyebrows and looks earnest and intent, babbles a little, and then says "ahm."

baby [beh-beh]

1. An infant.
2. A stroller, possibly containing an infant.

My lord, Lia is obsessed with babies. Every single thing that could possibly be a baby gets pointed at, exclaimed over, and signed about vigorously. So we thought the time was right to get her a baby doll.

banana [nan-ah]

1. A yellow tropical fruit.
2. Any type of food.
3. Lia wants that thing!.

Nana was Lia's first word, spoken around twelve months old. The sign for "eat" was one of her first signs, around thirteen months, and she just started doing "more".

belly [beh-ee]

1. The stomach.
2. The belly button.
3. (Accompanied by pointing) Lift up your shirt! I want to see your belly button!

Nobody escapes from Lia's demands to see bellies. Doesn't matter how much flab you have, she needs to examine the navel. The other day she had a Gymbo clown stamp on her belly from Gymboree class, and it was the Cutest. Thing. Ever.

chair [joo]

1. High chair, couch, kitchen chair, rocking chair.

If it's high, she wants up. We've lately started "drawing time" at the kitchen table with Lia sitting in her travel booster seat. She holds crayons daintily at the very end, so hasn't succeeded in making many marks on the page yet. She's also finally figured out how to climb over the ottoman, so the days of keeping her out of the living room are over.

cat [mee-ow]

1. A domestic feline.
2. Sam, the hellion who shares the house with us.

Despite having sustained a few wounds after close encounters with Sam, Lia just loves the poor cat. She has, however, developed a healthy respect for Sam's personal space, and stays as far away as possible, sidling along the wall when she has to pass her in the hallway. "Cat" is one of her favourite signs, and she'll grab our hands to make sure we're doing it too.

Mommy, Daddy [ma-ma, da-ee]

1. Those big people who look after me.
2. (Daddy) The telephone (because chances are his voice is coming through the receiver).
3. (Mommy) Pick me up! I want to see what you're doing up there!

Is there any better sound in the world? Lia was preferring Mommy for a while, but now that Shawn's gone back to work and she misses him, we hear delighted utterances of "Da-ee!" when the key clatters in the front door. Sometimes when she first wakes up she says, "Ma-ma-da-ee" as if it's all one word.

moon [mao]

1. Bright orb in the sky.
2. Lia's favourite book, Goodnight Moon.

Lia suddenly clicked with books in mid-August. She started recognizing and naming all kinds of objects, and books with balls and clocks and cats and dogs really captured her attention. She'll grab my finger and use it to point at things she wants me to name. She calls books "bao," and asks for them many times a day.

From her Goodnight Moon book, she's learned the words "moon" and "hush." She also says "meow" for the kittens, clicks her tongue for the clocks, and rubs her fingers to sign "star." The bedtime routine isn't complete without several readings.

tower [dow]

1. A stack of brightly coloured cups.

These stacking cups have been one of Lia's favourite toys from the beginning. She's always gotten a real kick out of knocking over towers. This game proved a problem on our latest visit to the Children's Hospital--they were trying to evaluate her fine motor skills, and gave her several small blocks to stack. They would start a pile to show her what to do, and then she would gleefully knock it all over the floor! We taught her too well.

By the way, the sound "dow" gets used for "tower," "down," and "cracker," so context is very important!

puppy [yo-yo]

1. A pink velour puppy.
2. Lia's lovey.

From early on, Lia has called her puppy "yo-we-yo-we-yo." We never knew why. Eventually we started calling him "Yo-Yo" too, which seems like a pretty good name for a puppy. Then one week when we were at the Plant Bath, Lia was fussing in the change room and one of the Chinese women crooned this same noise to her, "oh-yo-yo-yo." Could this be a comfort noise that Lia heard from her caregivers in China, which she transferred to her lovey?

Click "More" for the complete lexicon as of October 9, 2007.

Words

Amen, Apple
Baby, Bag, Ball, Banana, Bath, Bear, Beep, Belly, Book, Bottle, Bye-bye
Chair, Cheese, Cookie, Cracker
Daddy, Down, Duck
Grapes
Hat, Hot, Hush
JoJo
Kitty
Leaves
Madeline, Mama, Melon, Moon
No
Outside
Shoe, Shovel, Snack, Sock, Spoon
Toe, Tower
Up
Water
Yoyo, Yummy
Zoe

Signs

All Done, Apple
Baby, Ball, Bath, Bear, Bib, Bird, Book
Cat, Cheese, Cold, Cookie, Cracker, Cry
Diaper, Dirty, Dog, Doll
Eat
Fan, Flower
Grandma, Grandpa
Hat, Help, Hot
Lia
Milk, More
No
Phone, Play, Please
Shoe, Sign, Sleep, Star
Thank-you
Water
Yes

Sounds

Baa
Clock (tick-tock)
Fish (lip smacking)
Flower (sniffing)
Hot (blowing)
Meow
Monkey (oo ah)
Moo
Snoring
Vroom
Woof