Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Interjections!

Celeste is bursting with language these days. She probably has 35–40 signs (I haven't looked at the official list Evelin's been keeping lately to be sure of the exact number) and a few spoken words — backpack, bubbles, yeah, nah, ... But the latest additions to her répertoire are two interjections: "Uh-oh!" and "Ouch!"

The "uh-oh" is really cute. Sometimes she'll just walk around practicing it. Other times, she gets the context perfect, like when she drops a book or toy while walking. Then there are the times when she drops a handful of peas or something over the side of her highchair and says, innocently enough, "uh-oh." The flip side to that is when she drops some food and Evelin or I asks her "Do we throw food in this house?" and Celeste replies "Nah." as she drops another handful over the side.

"Ouch!" she picked up from one of her Christmas presents, a Fisher-Price Little People Animal Sounds Farm. As the website says, "Press on Farmer Jed’s workbench to hear hammer and sawing sounds!" Well, the hammering sound goes "boink boink boink boink boink Ouch!" Celeste now pushes the button and before the hammering is done turns and says "Owwwww." Thankfully, she doesn't have the ouch = pain context down, but she does think it's fun to say. She also will say "Ouch" when the sawing is going on, but I'm pretty sure a sawing accident would lead to more of a shriek than an ouch.

For one more random toy reaction story: Yesterday afternoon, I was on the phone with Evelin (she likes me to give her updates about when Celeste wakes from her nap and what/when she eats) and Celeste was playing next to her Rockin Pony. A helicopter flew over, and Celeste signed PLANE and I said that, yes, it did sound like a helicopter. All of the sudden, Celeste was grabbing on to her horse's neck with her head buried in its mane. My eyes weren't on her at that exact moment, so maybe she slipped (she didn't have shoes on and her leggings don't have grippy feet), but it looked like she was worried that the helicopter was after her horse.

I said she shouldn't worry because her horse was tame, it wasn't subject to a wild horse roundup and that the helicopter was just flying over head. Evelin, still on the phone, pointed out that this was another example of the sorts of things I don't need to be saying to Celeste ...

Technoarti tags:

3 comments:

Karen said...

Yes, you maybe should have left out the thing about the horse roundups. Sometimes kids aren't afraid of things until we tell them not to be.
This signing thing is something else. I wish it were a concept when my kids were toddlers.

Karen said...

Actually, I suppose it was a concept, but I didn't hear of it until you and Anita started with your kid-raising.

T. Carter said...

Yeah, I just wasn't thinking ... it's exactly what came to mind and I didn't filter ...