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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Everything is purple, but some things are more purple than others

Zoë recently fell in love with the concept of colour. Unfortunately, until yesterday her only word for any colour was "purple." Everything is purple, but if something is actually purple it gets a more emphatic pronunciation. 

If you ask her to, for example, pick up the green crayon, she can do that. But when you ask her what colour that crayon is she will answer "Purple!" Blue is purple, red is purple, black is purple. Purple is PURPLE!

Yesterday, however, she repeated the word yellow. So that's progress.

Muppets follow a similar rule. Every muppet is Elmo, but some things are more Elmo than others.


She can identify (most) characters if she's asked a direct question: "Where's Big Bird? Where's Abby Cadabby?" but if you say, "Who's that?" she will answer, "Elmo," unless it's Elmo, in which case she'll answer, "ELMO!"

So I suppose there's generic purple and then there's PURPLE-purple, and there's generic Elmo and then there's ELMO-Elmo.

She's also said the word "prayer" for quite some time and knows the social cues for praying: after scripture study, after we sing a song (hymn or lullaby), before we eat a meal. She'll fold her arms and say, "Prayer!" without being asked, though this doesn't mean that she'll actually sit reverently through the entire prayer. When our home teachers were over on Sunday she gladly got ready for prayer but ended up twirling around the room singing, "La-la-la-la-la!" while the prayer was being said.

Yesterday at dinner we were amused when she spent the duration of the prayer yelling, "Bless-a! Bless-a! Bless-a!"

I guess she decided it was her turn to say it.

I've been meaning to mention (since around Christmastime), that her favourite songs are songs with nonsense syllables in them, such as "Deck the Halls" with its "fa-la-la-la-la." She would sing "fa-la-la-la-la" on cue.

There were other songs, too, with nonsense syllables in them that she enjoyed singing with us...but I can't remember what any of them are right now.

Oh, "Angels We Have Heard On High!"

It doesn't really have made up syllables, but Zoë would join in with the "Glo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ria."

Lastly, "Up!" has been in her vocabulary for a long time. I've been trying to teach her the opposite, "Down!" but so far she has yet to repeat that word. Instead she says, "Floor!" So when she wants up, she'll say, "Up!" and when she wants down she'll say, "Floor!"

It gets the point across.

1 comment:

  1. "Yesterday at dinner we were amused when she spent the duration of the prayer yelling, "Bless-a! Bless-a! Bless-a!"" -- This cracked me up. You'd have to have been in certain church services I've had the pleasure of attending to understand my giggles.

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