The other night, I had the sad realisation that we had seen the end of nummy. The first time it happened, C had been saying ‘dee… LISH… usss’ which I finally put together as ‘delicious’. So, forever recording things, we tried to video it. Some milk with frozen raspberries in it (a favourite of hers), and ‘how is it?’ Speaking like a Michelin Star judge, instead of deeLISHuss, she pronounced her drink to be ‘nummy’. The way she said it – well, it still makes me laugh.

Sadly, when C was asked last week if her dinner was nummy, she said it was delicious. Can you tell daddy it’s nummy? It’s yummy, daddy! And only when she tried, really tried, could she tell him it was nummy. 

I find language development fascinating. I did a couple of linguistics subjects at university (as electives as part of my music degree) and have enjoyed watching babbling turn into detailed accounts of things that have happened in C’s life. 

There are the words that are guesses at words. She used to say ‘armbow’ for elbow and I miss it. Like many children, she will check for our ‘heart beep’ when playing doctor. And there are the mispronunciations like ‘hopsital’ or ‘hostipal’ or ‘aminal’ or ‘bonato’ or (my new favourite that happened on Tuesday) ‘Lemmie-un Falcon’ and ‘3CPO’.

There are the words that are right but wrong. For a while now we have been hearing ‘her’ instead of she. We have started correcting her a little bit – there’s only so long that something like this can be endearing before it becomes just wrong. But what really impressed me at the start of last week was when she ‘read’ Old Mother Hubbard and alllll of the ‘she’s were replaced with ‘her’. ‘Her went to the cobblers/ To buy him some shoes/ But when her got back/ He was reading the news’. Every. Single. One.

I’m not sure how common this is but she often swaps around double-barrelled words and phrases. For a long time she would ask to watch ‘cracker nut ballet’, or ‘Two Frozen’. Just this morning she told daddy to have ‘corn sweet’ on his toast.

But there are also the words and phrases that come about that turn into the vernacular of a family.

A word that C has taken and reinvented is jungle (verb). Over summer I was pregnant and huge and trying not to do any extra lifting. C would barrel into me or try to climb all over me or jump onto me after climbing onto the sofa. ‘Stop it! I’m not a jungle gym!’ was said multiple times. But daddy loves it… So C would climb all over Glenn when he was on the sofa, an activity that she still does. She hangs off his legs, pretends he is a horse, hides under his knees and pops up like a jack-in-the-box, pushes his back (he loves the back massage) and climbs onto his shoulders. Recently I asked what she was doing? ‘I’m jungle-ing on daddy!’ Perfect.