Mother as translator

My little Hero has been growing so quickly these past few weeks. She's a year and 5 months old and I can't believe how much she says!

She enjoys putting big books on the floor and standing on them, like a little stage. As soon as she steps onto one, she says, "eeeh--- full!" (Trans: "Careful!") And then she busts out her own version of Eensy Weensy Spider.

Even her brother understands what she's saying. He used to resist listening to her, insisting that whatever she was speaking was not English. "Maybe she's talking Chinese, Mama. I don't know that."

 Recently, she's been mimicing the last word of our sentences. So conversations go a bit like this:

"Hero, do you want taho?"

"Ta-ho!"

"Eat?"

"Eat!"

And so on.

Then there are moments when she repeats a word, pointing and emphatically gesturing towards nothing. This moring, I was carrying her out of the bedroom, telling her about what we'd have for breakfast and she began clucking like a chicken.

"Bukbuk buk!"

"No Hero, we're having pancakes! You can dip it in your yogurt, it's yummy!"

"Keee- ken!" (That means chicken)

"You want to have chicken for breakfast?"

She then squirms out of my grasp and reaches for the stack of books by the door. I take them down and she moves some aside, pulling out a lift-the-flap book that we had read together the night before. On the cover, a group of animals. No chicken. But as she turns the book over, she points to the spine. A rooster. Content, she takes my hand, look up at me and says, "Ooohgut? Ummy."

That means, "Yougurt, yummy."