Words at 18.75 months

I thought I would do a post listing the words Riku can say now as it will be interesting to compare in a few months time.

His words at 18 months and 3 weeks are:

Papa, car, bye-bye, shoes, juice (I never wanted to give him juice, but some days it is the only way to get vegetables into him...), water, kitty, cracker, uh-oh, doko ("where" in Japanese), where'd it go? (said as if it were a single word, something like wheredigo?) what's that? and are (sounds like ah-ray, an expression of surprise/confusion in Japanese). He has started calling me "Ba-ba" lately which is a bit unfortunate since it means old woman in Japanese, but oh well, it's a step in the right direction!

To be sure a lot of the words are not all that clear- bye bye is more like "ay-ay" at this stage, shoes is "she", cracker is "ku-ka" and water is more like "oo-duh", but we understand him and no doubt his pronunciation will get clearer. There are quite a few things that are ba or ba-ba- ball, bubbles, Anpanman (a cartoon character) and butterfly.

He does lots of animal sounds which are apparently considered to be words by speech development experts so I'll go with that! The menagerie includes: woof woof, meow, moo, roar, cheep cheep, quack quack, plus noises for pandas, elephants, pigs, gorillas and monkeys.

He's definitely not an early talker, but he is within the range of normal, especially for a child in a bilingual household, so I don't think we have anything to be concerned about at this point.

He has a lot of signs now, although some of them he only uses occasionally or on and off. The list includes: want/more, milk, plane, dog, elephant, water, sleep, hat, help, hot, yummy, wash hands, brush teeth, flower, butterfly, banana, cheese. He used to sign shoes and book, but I haven't seen those ones for quite a while. He also made up his own sign for blueberries somehow, but since they have got more expensive in the last month I have stopped buying them and I think he has forgotten about them! There are probably a couple more I can't think of now.

So that's where we are at the moment! I'll leave you with a photo:

He didn't sign "help" this time, but I think the look on his face says it all ;) What a mean mummy taking photos...