Guardar Valéria

Valéria sings the clean up song in Portuguese. 

If you don’t know the clean up song, it goes like this:

“Clean up! Clean up! Everybody, everywhere! clean up! Clean up! Everybody do your share!”

I made a Portuguese version of it and taught it to my girls when it’s tome to put things away. 

So every time I tell them to put something away, Valeria starts singing the clean up song and putting things away. 

No poopies Valeria

Whenever Dean asks Valeria if she’s pooped she replies - “no poopies!” And walks away. 

Of course that’s not true. 

Colors, Numbers, Shapes, Letters - Alexandra- July 2018

Alexandra knows her stuff is green, and even though some times they both use each other’s stuff, Alexandra gets very upset if you willingly or mistakenly gives her Valeria’s stuff. “Alexandra verde!”

Alexandra knows all the colors. 

She also knows several shapes. In both languages. She came up with the word pizza for the quarter circle. 

By November 2017 she could also count to 12 by sheer repetition, and now she actually counts things. 

She also recognizes the letters A and L. I haven’t really done a great job with letters yet. 

Azul! - Valeria- May 2018

By the time we traveled to cape cod Valeria had learned one color - Azul!!!!!!!

That’s bc we differentiate her possessions from her sister’s using blue and green. She knows her stuff is blue. 

So she saw a blue bag hanging from an LLBean store and went - “Azuuuuuuul!”

Now, July 2018, she is finally getting several colors right. Though she still gets them wrong at times. 

Words - Valeria- July 2018

Some of Valeria’s words:

Boo-boo (stress on the last syllable) - pacifier.

Cati (chocolate)  (alexandra used to say Côti, then it evolved to alati)

Kiki (kitty)

Êta - borbuleta (butterfly) (Alexandra used to say buleta)

The other ball - Valeria- July 2018

About two weeks ago she came asking me for a ball. I thought it was the blow up ball out in the sun. So there I went to pick up the ball. As I’m standing at the door to the sunroom, she starts crying as if I can’t possibly understand what she’s trying to say. I look to her puzzled, and asked you don’t want me to get the ball? She kept on crying as if saying can’t you possibly understand what I’m saying. OK then where is the ball? She held my hand, Walked me over to the fridge, and pointed it to the floor. It turned out she wanted the bouncing ball they had fallen under the fridge.

Faster speech development- Valeria - July 2018

Valeria seems to have a very different speech development pattern than Alexandra.

Alexandra still uses the word Colidas to refer to anything that writes. Valeria this past week held up a pencil and said, “Lápis”. 

Valeria also uses verbs a lot more frequently. Of course, very much vowel dominant.

She says “ah-eeh” for “sair”. She uses the verb “ah-bee” (abre - open) as a wild card. She repeats verbs we say, positive or negative forms, to get her mind across. Example:

Bega (pega) when she needs me to get something for her.

When she doesn’t know the correct word for what she wants she basically plays a guessing game game that goes like this:

We say the word we think she wants and she says “no no no”

We say the right word, she repeats it with a beam on her face.

It happened this morning. There several toys in the pack’n’play she was trying to climb. I kept showing each toy to her and saying its name. “Você quer os anéis?” (Do you want the ring tower?). Valeria “no no no no no”

Until I gave up offering toys, as there were none left. “Você quer entrar?”

“Entá! Qué entá!”

Other verbs she uses is “botar” (put on / put in), sobe (go up)

Other nouns: eite (leite), fanche (elefante), patchu (pato), coio (colo), boia (bola, she used to say bó)