Dorothy's language skills have been developing at a pretty brisk pace, yet I'd be willing to bet that most people who don't spend lots of time around wouldn't be able to figure out most of what she means. "Owl," for example, comes out as "owh." "Bear" sounds like "beyah" (which would sound right at home in Boston), "cheese" is "chssss," etc. Even Mommy and Daddy are not always certain what she's saying, although we can usually figure it out eventually.
For some time now, Dorothy has pointed at the moon wherever it appeared in various books, and in the last week or so she's also said "mooh" (it sounds closer to "moah" than to "moo") as she pointed to the images of the moon in her books.
Tonight, as we were getting her out of the bathtub, Dorothy was pointing at my chest and saying "mooh." I was wearing a t-shirt from my days at the Illini Space Development Society (before it switched from being an NSS chapter to a SEDS chapter). The t-shirt had a modified version of the astronaut performing an EVA image, with a crescent moon added in the upper left corner.
We were stunned. We of course told her encouragingly that yes, that was the moon on Daddy's shirt. But we were surprised that she'd identified a moon with only 1/8 of it visible and in a context she hadn't seen before. Pretty neat!
Of course, we then told her that Daddy was working to make sure she could go to the moon someday. Even if I can't ride on the space elevator, I hope she can!
Posted by Tom Nugent at August 23, 2005 10:05 PM