Leila Rose Petal

Dear Princess Petalpants,

I’ve been meaning to blog about the words you use for a while but keep forgetting. We just had a little conversation, though, and I thought I should sit right down and blog about it.

You were standing next to Finn’s desk looking at the pile of activity books we have there for him. You looked at me and said “Book.” So I said “Book?” and you said “Book”. Then I said “Would you like a book?” and you said “Yeah”. So I got some of your books out for you and you’re looking at them now.

When I write that you said ‘book’ I am exaggerating a little but I’m not sure how to type what you actually said. Like most of the words you use it sounded like the word ‘book’, but without the ‘k’ sound on the end. I don’t know how to type that. You also say ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘down’, ’sock’ and ‘bath without the endings on them.

Your favourite word at the moment seems to be ‘juice’, which comes out sounding like ‘choooozzze’. You are also rather fond of ’shoes’ - both the word and the object - and that comes out sounding like ’shooshoooze’. This should not be confused with your word for the fish which is ’shoosch’ (or something like that).

‘Ta’ is reserved for when you’re giving things to people and when you’re given something you say ‘dada’ in a singsong tone that reminds me of one of the carers at childcare saying ‘there you go’. This is quite different from the way you said ‘dada’ to Dad last night. There can be no doubt that are different words/phrases. ‘Hello’ is a word you’ve been using for a while too. You say it as ‘hedo’. You love to say “hedo dog”, “hedo cat”, “hedo shooosch”.

As I wrote above, you also say ‘yeah’ when things are offered to you. At one point you said it a lot, but it’s becoming less frequent. ‘No’ is also a lot less frequent than it used to be and generally appears to reserved for times when you really, really don’t want something or someone is trying to do something you don’t want them to do - like Dad washing your hair.

‘Mum’ is another word you use sparingly. You say ‘mumumum’ sometimes when you are upset. Today in the car Finn said ‘Mum’ as he almost always does at the beginning of a sentence and you followed up with ‘mumumumumum’. It was quite cute.

Love,
Mum