Verbal Upgrade

One of the joys of parenting is that you get to experience first hand the wonder of human development. It never ceases to amaze me how you can one day be overjoyed at the outcome of pee on a stick and the next thing you know you have this little person running around becoming more and more independent and growing into their very own distinct personality! It seems now that Sumayah has got the walking down she has turned her attention to talking. For a long time now she has been saying 'mama', 'dada', 'baba', 'ta' and 'up'. But then suddenly this week she decided to do a verbal upgrade. 'Dada' has now become 'da-ddi?' (yes always with an inflection at the end), she has said 'B-lal' a few times, and calls Abegail (her nanny) 'Abi'.

Tonight we were also astounded by how much she actually understands. After supper Yaasier said to Sumayah, 'go fetch the ball for dada' and just as I was getting up to show her where the ball was she walked over to the toy box, picked up the ball and brought it to Yaasier. Yaasier and I just looked at each other in proud amazement. She also tends to say 'up' whenever she wants to go out and will often lead us by the hand to the outside gate and say 'up, up'. But the thing that amazes me most is her level of problem solving. Whenever the sliding door to the garden is closed she would stand on her toes trying to reach up to the key hole with the housekeys. I simply put this down to role-modelling. But one day I witnessed with my own eyes how she pushed one of Bilaal's plastic Jolly chairs to the sliding door, house key in hand and proceeded to climb onto the chair so she could reach the key hole! I stood watching her, too dumbfounded to remove her from this clearly dangerous stunt for a 12 month old. Of course she fell off the chair and cried, but was soon trying to get back up again. We now leave the plastic chair outside... not that that stops her from climbing on the coffee table!