Beans is slowly but surely picking up words. She has a handful under her belt already, a combination of basic words (no, yeh) combined with words that leave most people scratching their heads, turning to me and saying ‘erm, what did she say?’ – ahguh (all gone) and think-eeh (stinky) being the main culprits. Recently though she has started to listen intently when she’s spoken to and she is beginning to copy sounds. This brings a new challenge.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to encourage her. Repeating simple words to her when she is playing is easy; changing the way that I speak is not. I have always been conscious not to use ‘bad words’ around her from the day she was born, although I have to admit to muttering one or two under my breath in the early days when she bit down on me when I was feeding her. I think that’s fair enough!

But it’s not bad words but laziness with language that I am definitely guilty of. Dropping ‘th’ for ‘f’ and calling everything ‘that’ or ‘this’ is something that I am actively trying to stop myself from doing, but it’s not easy. On top of that there are all the odd words that every family has; the usually made up words that litter our speech every day.

When I was growing up our TV remote was a ‘dufer’ (no idea), in our house it’s a ‘momo’ (long story), and to top it off me and the husband have a battle of wills where the northern/southern divide is concerned; I say ‘bAth’, he says ‘baRth’. Does any of this matter with regards to Beans’ developing speech?

As far as the made up words go, they’re not for everything and as a child I had sense to call a remote a remote in the company of friends, so I don’t see them being a problem. The glass/glaRss argument will rage on and I’m sure Beans will end up saying both or picking a favourite one day.

But her developing speech is also making me notice mannerisms; things that I must do day in day out without realising. For as long as I can remember she has giggled when I take a sip of tea and let out a satisfied ‘aaah’ afterwards. Now it’s taken on a new dimension and her bedtime bottle takes an age as she stops to say ‘aaah’ and giggle to herself after every sip.

Speech is such an exciting development and one that opens up to so many new things, I’m enjoying seeing her express much more of her personality as a result…That is until she learns to answer back!