Monday, November 22, 2010

Uh-oh!

I haven't posted lately about how Sophia's communication is developing. It seems like every day she learns a new word, either to understand or to say for herself. The current favourites are "uh-oh" and "ooos".

'Ooos' are quite obviously shoes, and since mummy often counts them as we put them on "one shoe" and "two shoes", Sophia can frequently be heard saying "ooo ooos" (two shoes). [It's always really hard to represent sounds accurately, given that there will be variations in the regional dialects of those reading this post, but you can read 'ooo ooos' as pretty much the same as 'two shoes' but without the 't' or 'sh' sounds]

But my favourite is "uh-oh". We've always been parents who down play little tumbles by saying "whoops-a-daisy" or "uh-oh!", so that Sophia can learn for herself that she's fine, she can pick herself up and carry on. Obviously we're there to offer assistance if she needs it, but we want her to learn that she doesn't need to be picked up and soothed for every tiny little thing.

"Uh-oh" tends to be used when something has been accidentally dropped, and Sophia's picked up this meaning with glee. Two case examples...

The other day I was cooking in the kitchen and Sophia was sat in the corridor with a basket of toys (right outside the kitchen, so I could keep an eye on her, but outside the babygate to keep her safe). Sophia had been playing for a while when she decided a fun game would be to drop her toys over the gate, and as each one went over she gleefully called out "uh-oh!".

Yesterday I observed Sophia at the point where she's got bored of her dinner and decided it was time to show us that. She said "uh-oh" and then (after she said it) she threw her cup on the floor.

Other Sophia words:
Daddy
dirty
Mummy (but still mostly mum-mum or ma!)
Doe-dee (Sophie! Her name for herself)
Oh! or Oooh! (to be used as an exclamation, when pointing at something, just for fun...)

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