Periodic language report

Coming now to the end of her 20th month, Eliot's language development is a source of great fun at our house. Lately she is constructing up to 6 word sentences, uses the "-ing" form well, counts to five (seemingly with one-to-one correspondence, though I wouldn't stake much on this claim), and has mastered a few irregular plurals ("one man, two men"). She is particularly fond of a few rather abstract forms, like "like" (see Brandad) and "Remember..?" for people we haven't seen for a little while. This morning it was "Remember Dan?". As a matter of fact, I didn't, so she went on, "And Bharathi, and Leela, and Avi?". Ah-- STAN. She also uses "Maybe" a lot, to make suggestions, gently correct us and try out things she is not sure of. We were looking at letters yesterday and I pointed out a "W"; she said, "Maybe M?".

She has a hilarious lack of spatial sense right now (or is currently dealing with the world via semantic tokens rather than physically, is Blaise's theory)-- she tries to sit on Matchbox motorbikes, step into her activity cube's 3 inch door, put her foot through a door on a page, climb onto drawings of boats, makes me put on Playmobil caps ("Like Grandad's!") to see if they fit me after they turn out to be too small for her. Don't remember Anselm ever doing that.

She is also a girl of action. While we were reading a bedtime story about Kim visiting her grandmother and working in the garden, I told her that when she visits Grandma, she can work in her garden. She shot up from my lap, ready to go RIGHT NOW.