Overheard in the 'Tar house

Last night:

KayTar walks in, mildly pouting, and stops in front of me.

"I saaaad (sniffle) a-cause.....(long pause)......(crosses arms and sticks out lower lip) NO BED!"

translation: I'm sad because I don't want to go to bed.

That was a because statement! HUGE! Huge, I tell ya. That is a first for her. It still had a bit of that halted feeling of mimicry, she hears BubTar say this same thing almost nightly (pout and all, man, BubTar has the pouting down pat, always has), but even so, VERY advanced for her.

****

This morning she woke up early and was having a lot of eye pain, so I went in to snuggle her. I laid there for a while and then said, "Mommy is going to make her coffee." and she said, "Coffee? Yes or no? NO! No coffee, Mommy. Way down a KayTar." So we snuggled a while longer, until I was finally drifting off to sleep beside her and then I felt her small hand on my leg, "Come on, MomMom! I show you somesing....FUNNY! Come on, wes go. Cho-nch you? Cho-nch you see funny?"

Isn't that clever? It felt spontaneous, motivating me with the promise of funniness to get me to wake up and follow her. I think it was. Who knows, really. Her capacity to memorize is so far beyond anything we can keep track of, we never really know what is spontaneous speech. She says certain things over and over that have clearly been retained from something other than us and for the life of us we can't place it. One of which is toasting and saying "No worries!" she is doing that constantly, but we have no idea where it came from. Sometimes she also shouts, "Give me presents!" but she hasn't a clue what it means. She knows what presents are, but in the context of that sentence, there is zero comprehension, it isn't 3 separate words, it is ONE phrasing. It just sounds nice to her ears, I think, so she says it. The first time she said it, I replied, "Where did you learn that?" So now she shouts, "Give me presents! Where you learn dat?!" There are a million more that leave Josh and I shaking our heads saying, "Where did she get that?" on a daily basis. I don't think we'll ever figure them out,but that's just KayTar.

If she was an animal, she would be a parrot, for all the obvious reasons. Poor BubTar only really gets bothered by her when she is copying him relentlessly, which unfortunately is a daily occurrence. When Josh gets home from work, KayTar stands right next to BubTar while he talks about his day, she mimics everything, hand movements, body language, facial expressions and she stays only a half beat behind him. They are almost in sync. I've got to video it one of these days. It isn't limited to that, though, she probably spends half their time together studying and copying him, which to a five year old can get old fast, I'd imagine. He's a sport about it usually, unless he's trying to concentrate. We split them up if it starts to grate on his nerves, but there are times we can't help it, like in the car. We do what we can, though.

Even so, I do feel like we are hearing more spontaneous speech from her, especially during imaginative play. Last night she named my mother's Christmas tree lights after Sonic characters (Evidently little girls with big brothers absorb these interests, especially our little parrot) each colored light represented the corresponding colored character. Her pretend play is so fun to watch. She seems to be able to find her own words in those scenarios much more easily than when she is interacting with others. I'm not sure why. We are seeing change and growth daily in her speech, though, and it is really exciting to watch.

The BubTar and his shadow.
Alternately titled: The parrot and her Muse.


PS (largely unrelated and mostly for my recording purposes):
She sounded out the word "cooperation" at therapy yesterday when her therapist asked her to read a sign, "co-ooper-AFUN!" And this morning she sounded out "pregnant", "pre-n-ant". Not 100% correct, but DUDE. It blows my mind. Every time.