From the mouth of a baby

Oh God! She is talking!!

I should have written this about a month back , but the delay is because I still haven't recovered from being amazed. It was like one fine morning, the little missy decided that she would talk and tats exactly what she did. No wonder am amazed.

Until she turned 2, I was quite worried because the number of words that she spoke was on the worrisome side. I was foolish enough to ask my doc if she needs speech therapy , which thankfully, she didn't recommend, the doc  instead asked me to just give her some more time. Me being me, read and read and read and read about speech therapies and early intervention and what not, and worried myself sick. All said and done, for the official record, Nephy was 2 years and 1 month old, when she started talking.

After all these months of teaching her my name, she finally said Bessie-amma. Oh, its nice to hear from you baby. For that matter all of us are addressed by our names. Anto-daddy or Anto-appa, Def Aasa, Raj Thatha and such.

Some snippets of her talk :-

Just a minute back, I took her for a night-time bath and her dad switched off the TV which was playing her all time favourite , Barney. She went to her dad and said 'Why Off TV'. What... what was that? Well, time she learnt the answer to such questions 'Because, I said so!!'

Another one, she said right now. 'Amma wait, papa go $$$$', looks like she has an urgent business to attend to.

Some not so desirable sentences of hers:-
'Appa Vaa moodu' (Appa, shut up) : This one has a history, and the world should know about it. One day, Anto and I were arguing about something and exasperated(as usual), he turned to Nephy and said 'Baby say, amma vaay moodu'(Amma, Shut-up). The plan back-fired. Incensed, she fired back saying 'Appa Vaay moodu'. Oh Boy, looks like its girl power.

'Chumma eru'(Oh, keep quiet) : The other day, my mom was saying something to me. In jest, I said 'Amma, chumma eru' and she picked that up.
Otherwise, we haven't accidentally taught her anything offending (I hope).

However, some words that she started speaking while young still remain the same.
Ammachi(Grandma) is still Aasa.
Teletubbies are Po, Lala, kaba-kaba(Dicksy) and Jakkamma(Tinky-winky), don't ask me why.
Barney is still Ba.
Water is stil tha-tha.

Although, I primarily use Tamil, she seems to be picking up the english words faster. Maybe because, she learns them from her friends in the playground, which is quite a number I should say. Her social life seems to be blooming too.

The little one is bossing us around with her new found tongue saying  'Go there', 'Open that', 'Close that'(However, we still only know 'that' and 'there', whoever has heard of 'this' and 'here'). My little baby bully!!