Words

At her doctor appointment today (where I learned that Sarah is a giant baby in the 82nd percentile for weight, 80th for height and 90th for head) the doctor asked me what words she was saying.  Apparently the average at 18 months is 4-14, and babies that grow up in bilingual environments tend to have delayed speech, but even so I realized I wanted to start compiling a list of words that Sarah "knows" as of 18 months.

(In no particular order other than the order T.J. and I remember them while also watching the Blackhawks game...)

Mama
Dada
Nana
Doggie
Oh no!
Mine
Mah (more)
Chicka (Chicken)
Abble (apple... though this is in the abstract... she doesn't like apples and I'm not sure she knows it applies to juice)
Hola
Bye Bye (as of this past weekend)
Eye
Nos (nose)
aibane (airplane)
Ouch

Then we have the words that have a few meanings....
Kuck (truck and stuck)
Ah Dee (All done, but can also be Auntie and Andi, a friend at daycare)
Baby (baby, but also Bailey)
Bebe (Binky, often shorted to "bee" but also Toby)

And of course, there are the animal sounds...
We used to know kitty cats went "meow meow meow" but we seem to have forgotten that
But the dogs go "Ruff ruff"
Cows go "moooo"
and Ducks go "Quack"

Her favorite current book is "Moo, Baa, La La La" and she can fill in most of the animal sounds at this point.  If the multiple times a night reading of this book continues, I suspect we'll add horse, sheep, and rhinoceros to our animal noise repertoire.

Dipping Sauce

Two things Sarah has always been is a good sleeper and a good eater.  Someone asked me the other day when she first slept through the night, and though I can't remember exactly when it was, I know by the time I went back to work in January she was sleeping quite well, and I suspect it was well before that.  She's gotten to the point now where she sleeps 11 - 12 hours every night, regardless of when she goes to bed.  She's even gotten to the point where if she's tired enough she'll go to the gate at the bottom of the stairs, say "ah dee" (all done) and walk herself upstairs, lay down and go right to sleep without fussing.  I know, I know, I'm extraordinarily lucky.

She's also always been a good eater (one of my first posts on this blog commented just on that fact) but perhaps it is the impending "terrible twos" but recently she's sometimes let me know what she wants and what she doesn't (goldfish, yes, cheerios, no).  Even old staples like grilled chicken are often passed over for an extra serving of yogurt or peas.  And yes, at least at this point in her life, a serving of yogurt or corn can pass as dessert to one who does not know better.  In order to attempt to stem this tide of picky eating, we recently introduced the idea of "dipping sauce". The other night we had turkey burgers for dinner that wasn't going over too well with my little eater.  As one cannot subsist on legumes alone, I pulled out ketchup and tried to see if that would get her to eat better.  See below for evidence!

 Not the cleanest experience ever, but a protein enriching one.  Last weekend when we were out of town, my mom told me that Sarah was dipping her fake peanut butter sandwich into her yogurt.  I guess she learns quickly.