Talk talk talk

Kayla talks. A lot.

Jocelyn, not so much. For an almost-18-month-old, she doesn't have a whole lot of words. Mostly grunting, pointing and crying. I guess it works - we can easily figure out what she wants, and she gets it. So why use words?

I am a little concerned about her minimal vocabulary. So far, we've heard her say:
Dada = daddy
Mama = mommy
mmmmmph = woof
rarrrrrr = lion roar
bobo = uncle dave
buhhh = bird, grandpa, grandma ... yeah, basically it could be anything
hua = flower

I'm going to share my concerns with her pediatrician at her 18-month appointment next week to see if she thinks Jocelyn needs some testing done. But I'm not that worried. Jocelyn understands a LOT.

After bath, she takes off her towel and opens the door to one of Kayla's nightstands and pulls out a diaper and gives/throws it to me. Then I'll ask her to close the door. Then I say "Thank you, good job!" and Jocelyn flashes a HUGE grin and claps for herself.

After changing a wet diaper, I'll wrap it up like a little football and ask her to throw it away. Once she almost headed toward the hamper. I quickly redirected her to the stepcan that we have out in the hallway. She lifted up the lid with her hand and threw the diaper in. And then flashed her huge cheesy grin.

This morning I asked her to throw her diaper away again. This time I showed her how to step on the pedal to open up the lid. She watched, then tried it herself, threw the diaper in the pail. Then she wanted to step on the pedal again (maybe to check that the diaper was still there?). Then she flashed me her huge cheesy grin.

The girl definitely knows what's going on. Maybe she's just lazy. We taught her some of the same faces that Kayla used to do (and still does): Big Smile, mad, surprised (she does this cute little gasp) and confused (tilts her head). I need to catch that on video sometime!

Okay, time for some Kayla-isms (at least the more recent ones that I can remember).
"waterlemon" - watermelon. We corrected her and after that she said "wa-ter-me-lon" very slowly to make sure she put the consonants in the right places.
"smackaroni" - macaroni. Just cause it sounds silly.

Lastly, Kayla likes to be called "Big Girl" or "Princess." She and Jocelyn are princesses. Daddy is the King. Mommy is the Queen. So Kayla will sometimes call us "Majesty" or "your Highness." One day, she was thanking me for something, maybe for cooking dinner, or washing raspberries, or cutting up strawberries for her. So she said, "Thank you, your High-nesty."

I hope that's not her nice way of calling me a royal a$$.