See Whoa Whoa

Henry's situation has set the bar of expectations rather low for Evie, which I've mentioned before as being both a good and bad thing in my other posts.  So the fact that she's pointing at objects and clearly having conversations that only make sense to her rather than just meaningless babbling noises is significant, but also new territory.

While the words and sounds she's using are meaningless to us, they clearly have some sort of definition and structure in her mind because of how specifically she's using them.  So in other words, she's learning to speak as a typical child.

Our hearts are swelling at this prospect.

She has a few words and phrases now, and it began a while ago with her learning how to sign "more," and use it properly in context. She uses that one interchangeably between "more" and "again," but I suppose the intent is still the same.

When she hears "peekaboo," she responds with "I see...."

When she sees (and wants) either an apple or tomato, she says "appo" (she doesn't actually want to eat it.  She just wants to play with one, which makes me fearful of one day walking into a room covered in squashed tomatoes).

Occasionally, when she wants out of the high chair or bathtub, she says "awdun."

And the one that kills us is one that I just managed to interpret, although she's been saying it for at least a week.  She would say something that sounded like "see whoa whoa."  We only caught the "see" part, so we figured it was just her exploring various ways to say "I see it."

No, she's actually referring to dogs.  And here's how I made that connection.

I just happened to notice coincidentally that she was including the "whoa whoa" consistently after "see," but not all the time.  So then I was curious as to what the difference was, and then it became clear.

Lucy.

Lucy was the common connection.  Which also explains why she would say "see whoa whoa" when my mother would take the kids out for walks and they pass by the house that owns a boxer who constantly runs up and down the fence, barking.

Evie is associating Lucy (the "see" part) with barking ("whoa whoa"), because that's all Lucy ever does.

"See whoa whoa" is Evie's word for dogs, because of Lucy.

Evie has words.