Lately though, she has been on a whole other level of chatty. The child never stops talking! She opens her eyes first thing in the morning, smiles and within a second her daily chatter starts. "Mummy! Eyes, toes, nose, tummy, flies. Daddy!"
Now that she has so many words (upwards of 40, and learning them at a scary rate - yesterday she learnt 3 new words - chair, tractor and sheep) she seems to like to practice them a lot. Maybe she is worried she will forget how to use them otherwise, because she makes excellent use of all those words. All. Day. Long.
In fact, it's not just all day long...she talks at night too. She talks in her sleep, which I suppose is no real surprise as I do as well. But it's just so funny to hear this tiny little human babbling to herself as she sleeps.
But, as well as she is doing with her proper words, most of Isabelle's chatter at the minute is still total jibberish. She wanders round the house chittering away about goodness only knows what, and will call "Mummy! Mummy!" followed by a string of totally unknown words. To me. Because she seems to know exactly what she is chatting about, and will often repeat the same things over and over again. Sometimes she is even telling a little joke, as she will use a string of her 'words' and then laugh....then repeat and laugh again! She finds herself very funny - something else she has inherited from me!
She particularly loves 'talking on the phone' - she will take our mobile, or the house phone (or the remote, or her bus magnet!) and chat away for 5 or 10 minutes! She even leaves pauses so the imaginary person on the other end can answer her back. It's great to see such a wonderful understanding of how conversation works from such a mini human. Here she is on the phone recently...
So I spend most of my day listening to this tiny person talking away, and I have no idea what on earth she is talking about. I usually just answer with "Wow! Really? That is some story! What happened next?" Obviously, these are not always the correct response as I get a few funny looks, but what else can I do?
The only way to get silence is to stick something else in her mouth...
I have discovered though, that if a sound is being repeated, and I listen carefully and watch what she is doing, I can actually figure out what she is saying. At the minute, Isabelle can't make a K or hard C sound - she replaces them with a T or a D sound. So 'clap clap' is 'dap dap' and 'cuddle' is 'tuddle'. I have to listen very closely, but when I figure out what she is saying, it's easy to know the next time she repeats the sound what she means.That's OK for me, because I am with her all day, but for other people they have a much more limited understanding of her chat - even Simon. For example, if she is holding something and says 'Ta ta', it's because she is offering it to you (and you will say ta ta when you take it), but everyone always assumes she is saying 'dada' - which is not something she has ever said, she just says daddy.
It must be pretty frustrating for these little people to be chatting away, and have so little of it understood. Like being in a foreign country where you only speak part of the language. One thing I wish I had done more with Isabelle is sign language. She has 3 signs - plane, butterfly and bird - and she uses them all the time, and it makes it so much easier to communicate with her when she can convey so easily what is on her mind. We did go to Sing and Sign classes, and learnt signs at our Baby Sensory classes, but I was a bit lazy in continuing this at home, and wish I had tried a bit harder as it takes the guess work out of interpreting, and relieves her frustration when she can communicate easily.
As Isabelle wanders round chattering away all day, I am becoming better at interpreting her 'toddler-ese' and figuring out what she is saying. The only one I haven't quite gotten yet is when she hears dogs barking and she shouts 'Wise wise! Shhh! Wise!' I have no idea what the 'wise' bit is supposed to be, despite spending a lot of time trying to figure it out!
I'm just waiting to find out she's actually telling me about the solutions to all sorts of global issues...
