Life is ever evolving in the world of Elizabeth (and consequently in the lives of her parents too). Walking around the house has become standard fare. We, the parents, are still impressed with her balance and how infrequently she actually falls! She, the star of the show, just simply enjoys the next step on the mobility continuum and the added sense of freedom and power it brings her. But we do still love that she often asks to hold our hands when she walks. Not because she needs our support, but we think it is just because she enjoys our company during her exploration.
And we are starting to discern actual words among all the sounds she makes constantly throughout the day. Mama and Papa have been used by her for some time. But recently we are hearing “dicht” and “dub”, both of which highlight the multilingual world in which Elizabeth lives.
Dicht is the Dutch word for “to close”. Elizabeth has become our fastidious door closer and accompanies her action by saying “dicht, dicth, dicht”. She is sometimes so quick to come close a door, that one doesn’t have time to get the item out of the fridge, remove the dishcloth from the drawer, or grab the clean glass from the dishwasher! If she walks into the kitchen and sees a drawer slightly ajar, she says “dicht” as she reaches to close it. For some reason, her attraction to closing doors and drawers has not yet evolved into a fascination with opening them. Maybe that will come in time, but in the meantime we will encourage her door closing obsession as it is actually very useful!
Dub is the Arabic word for “teddy bear”. Since neither one of us knows Arabic, we just thought she was making a random sound. But our neighbor helped us understand that Elizabeth was actually saying a word by telling us the meaning of “dub dub”. This will be the challenge of Elizabeth being exposed to a language that neither one of us knows. We won’t always know that she is speaking actual words or understand what she is trying to say to us!
I also think I have heard her use the word “kijk”, a Dutch word for “look!” However, J is not yet convinced that she is using it as a word but just a random sound. So the jury is still out on whether or not kijk is part of her vocab just yet.
The very cool thing for me, the mono-lingual member of the family, is watching Elizabeth interact with ease with all three of her languages. I ask her to come and help me close a door…and she comes over saying “dicht, dicht, dicht”. I ask her where her teddy bear is…and she goes to get it and proudly announces “dub dub”. It is an amazing thing to watch and observe!!
Another one of Elizabeth’s Arabic words is “bu bu”, which means baby. Playing with “bu-bu” is another one of Elizabeth’s preferred activities right now. She loves to feed the bottle and give the doll hugs.
