Talking

Nathaniel's speaking is really improving! He has got to the stage where he is repeating the last few syllables of everything you say, especially when it is entirely inappropriate eg
Tassy: You know, censored is a real chunk!
Nathaniel: chunk, chunk

So far, his limit seems to be about four words as long as they don't have too many syllables. My favourite is him repeating "Things that go" which is one of his favourite, and my least favourite, books. (It is really boring - its four pages about trains, planes, cars and boats, and has rubbish text and not much to talk about in the pictures. But each page has a two part jigsaw embedded in it and N likes to take out the pieces and stack and rearrange them in important ways.) He say "Ings a goooo...." Its really cute!

As far as words that he will use independently go, apart from sticking mainly to one syllable, his biggest problem is that he hasn't managed to grasp that the ends of words are important. He focuses on the first starting consonant and the primary vowel sound. Therefore buggy is bu(g) and banana is ba. There is a sort of sound of the next consonant, but it's not fully pronounced. This means that things are normally understandable (at least by me and Ian) if you have the context. If you are standing in a room with a bucket and a buggy you have to look for hand signals!

But it is surprising how many words he knows well enough to be able to do their first syllable. Some of the weirder ones are sleeve (sli), combine harvester (ha(r)) and trap (tra). Should he ever actually visit a farm, he'll be able to converse happily with the far-far (farmer), tra(c)-ta, caaw (cow), la (lamb), shi (sheep) and gay (gate).

Although he can get Da's attention, he knows that his real name is Da-dee and will say it proudly for you if you ask. He will also say Dee-da hopefully.

He is also putting words together. Mainly this is "more something" (eg tscheese, bre(d), hat (satsuma), bra(n) (bran flakes), "biy biy something" eg bu(s), ta(t) (cat), da(d). and "no something" eg ba(t) (bath), taw (towel). He has also progressed onto "no more something"

Of course, we are already regretting letting him talk at all. His favourite meal is breakfast where, in addition to the boring shreddies and pillows you can also sometimes get bra(n) (Bran Flakes) and kay (Special Kay). He knows where the cereals are kept and will point at the larder hopefully asking "more kay?" several times a day!

We are also enjoying teaching him how to say things like offensive stereotype (he made a good stab at that!) and evil multinational (he made some good attempts at this while going round tesco!).

So he is a generally happy boy and is finding that more and more he can get what he wants, especially when that is, "no more bre(d), dow....(n), more soo (sofa), boo(k), ki(s)". Yes, that is a accurate transcription of the sixty seconds that occur ed at the end our snack this afternoon!

And no post is complete without some photos. So here he is enjoying being able to play outside this afternoon.