16 Months Old: Our Little Talker

Rebekah has been a busy girl this past month. She seems to have really found her voice, and is trying desperately to learn how to translate the things in her little brain into understandable words. She tries to repeat almost everything we say to her, and sometimes it comes out comprehensible. =) She tries SO hard to communicate with us. Sometimes we understand her, and sometimes we don't! She is averaging about one new word a day right now, so it seems like she has hit the "language explosion" stage. It is a lot of fun to watch!

Here are some of her new words (granted, some of these words would not be recognizable to the common ear unless you know her language!):

cup, car, auto, good girl, help, boil, OK, please, thank-you, I love you, socks, milk, two, three, key, TV, cook, camera, brr-cold!, splash, hat, banana, Bible, church, cook, potty, bubbles, down, off, sit, blue, baby, pretty, feet

Just recently Rebekah has started saying "good girl" for herself whenever she does something that she considers to be commendable! She will also say "good girl" in a questioning voice when she wants to make sure she is doing something she is allowed to do.

We have been counting with her a lot lately, so now when she hears the words "how many..." she points to things saying "two-three" and then continues on in her own undiscernable jabber.

Rebekah is loving her books more than ever lately. She will go over t0 the bookshelf, find the shelf with all of her books, and then pull several (if not all) of them down. Then she will just sit there looking at books for quite a while.

You may recall that I have to boil our milk before we drink it. Milk goes bad much more quickly here than in the States, so I buy and boil milk about every other day. Rebekah has observed this process so many times that now, whenever she sees milk on the stove, she says "boil!"

Rebekah has become very fascinated with cars and other vehicles lately. Pretty much everything on wheels is a "car" to her right now, although she will say "auto" (for auto-rickshaw), and is learning to identify buses and bikes.

As you can see in the "Watching Cartoons" video that was posted last week, Rebekah loves her dolls! She has become more and more attached to them over the past month or so, and they "follow" her all over the house. She usually wants all three of them in bed with her as well. It makes things a little crowded, but she doesn't seem to mind. =)

Rebekah has gotten pretty good with stairs lately. We have to go up a flight of stairs to get to our house, and she can now go up or down completely by herself. She is quite proud of that fact too!

One big accomplishment for Rebekah this past month is that she learned how to climb up onto the couch by herself! It may not seem like much, but it is a big thing for this household because Rebekah LOVES sitting on the couch to look at books or play with her dolls. Before she learned to climb up there herself, she was constantly coming to us and asking for "help." Now she can do it on her own, so we are thrilled! In the past few weeks, Rebekah has started saying "I love you" ("I da doo"). Usually when she says that, she will give us a big hug around the neck, waist, or legs...whichever is accessible at the time. =) That would have to be our favorite of Rebekah's new achievements!

Rebekah is also starting to challenge us more and more. It seems that discipline is a constant thing in this household these days! We appreciate your prayers that the Lord will give us much wisdom as we raise and train our precious little strong-willed firstborn. (Both Nathan and I are strong-willed firstborns too, so I'm not sure if that makes it easier or harder!)