She Learned THAT Word

I have a student who told me his one-year-old has been walking around saying "shit" likes it's going out of style. Sometimes I envy him. Josie finally learned the word that I was hoping she would never add to her vocabulary: "NO."


Welp, that's all for me folks. Where do you go from here? It's a constant no-fest around here.


"Hi, Josephine!"
"No."


"Daddy's home!"
"No. No no no."


"I love you!"
"NO."


Except, I guess it's pretty cute that she actually say "Nah," and she usually says it in a very offhanded way. She hasn't shouted "NO!" with all her might yet; she just says Nah, Nah, Nah, all day long, like Eh, that's not really my preference, but thanks.


The first time she said it, I was at work, Jeremy was sitting on the couch, and she all stretched out next to him on the couch and she reached out her hand and started whining in the general direction of the coffee table. Jeremy picked up a toy and held it up, asking, "Do you want your giraffe?" and Josephine said "nah." He proceeded to hold up five more things and ask if she wanted it, and she said "nah" to every one. She ended up not wanting anything on the table, but was suddenly satisfied. You know, from all the negative responses. It just kept going from there.


My favorite so far has been one day right after nap when she was sitting next to me on the couch and we happened to catch ten minutes of The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That (which she LOVES; she scream GO! GO! GO! and cracks up), and as it ended, she just shook her head and said "no" over and over -- she was telling the show she didn't want it to end. Love that kid.


She has never really learned "yes" either, which might sound bad (like we are people who never say yes) but she learned "bubble" yesterday during what was probably only the fourth bubble bath she's ever had (She eats the bubbles. Every last one of them. So we space those things out.), so I'm pretty sure the kid just learns words based on other reasons, not how often she hears the word. At one point she would say "yah yah yah" while bobbing her head up and down to say "yes," but then she quit abruptly. Then, this week she started saying "Kuh" (we think she is saying "okay" since apparently I say "okay" a lot) when we ask her questions and she wants to give an affirmative. 


"Are you all done eating?"
"Kuh!"


I'll take it.


While the constant "nah" is not my favorite, she has also recently learned some other cute things that distract from her ability to say "no."

• When Jeremy gets home from work, she still gets all excited and runs over and meets him at the door, but now when he takes off his ID and gives it to her to play with, she points at his picture and yells "Dada! Dada! Dada!" over and over.

• She is REALLY getting into dress-up!

• She was walking around on her tippy-toes last night at her 18-month well-visit. Tiptoes? Are you kidding me? It feels like she just learned to walk!

• She can pull herself up to peek over the back of the couch:

• I finally got one of her new dance moves on camera (you might have already seen it on facebook; if not, here is my dancing queen):

• And finally, she also knows a whole heck of  a lot of animal noises and can point at some body parts, which we love hearing over and over. I didn't get all of them, and it spans three videos, but there were distractions like seeing herself in the camera and crackers and dogs. Such is life.

What can I say? She's the best ... even though she says "no" all the dang time. :)