Fae Phonics

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How many syllables in the word "Star" ⭐?  Two!

Yes, you read that right, two - at least according to Fae. 

Here's how you say it:
 🌟: Taah-Taah! ✨

She does the same thing for Cat, which is also a two-syllable word:
🐈 mah-mao

You might say it's just baby babbling, but I'm pretty convinced it's a conscious, stylistic choice she makes. Fae does her fair share of random babbling too, and says many clearly one-syllable words properly, like ear and moon. But some words simply deserve more than one syllable.

Here's a tentative list of her vocabulary nowadays, at around 15mo:
- hah: hat. She absolutely loves hats! See the photo. We should probably make a "Fae with hats" post sometime...
- raccoon: Fae said this before saying Mommy. Five years before, Mara had declared baby Gaius was a little raccoon so there's something going in the family...
- dye-oo: dino / dinosaur 
- ap-ple: a very, very clearly enunciated apple; apple was Mara's first word too.
- caw-caw: bird
- ehr-bough elbow; hear the actual audio bit near the bottom of this post, it's soooo cute!
- eeee: ear
- mooom: moon
- bah-boh: butterfly
- aah-yee: eye; I felt the need to spell this one's exact sounds because she says it so emphatically, and always points to someone's eye to be clear.
- aah-pah: apă / water (Romanian) 
- nigh-nigh: good night / sleep
- ssssss: snake
- spsss: whale, or more specifically the spshhh sound it makes with the blowhole
- br[raspberry lips]rrr: car, or vehicle of any sorts that goes on land 
- btbtbtbtbtpt: bee; she tries hard to say bzzzz but so far every attempt has been quite far from it. Yet she doesn't give up!
- all dye! all done, for example all done with eating; sometimes it means done with eating, but she wants to play with her high chair buckles. She'll sneak in stray food bits afterwards anyway.. because no "all done" is truly that final for a baby   
- grrrrrr: tiger
- rrraaawr: lion
- hop-hop: bunny 
- pee-pee
- poop - especially when she discovers and points to chicken poop
- hoo-hoo: owl
- baa-baa: sheep
- neigh-neigh: horse. Or raindeer. Or zebra.
- deeh-ah: deer
- humh-humh: dog; based on the way Romanians say bow-wow.
- bah: ball. It sometimes does roll over into a bah-bah if she's extra excited.

People's names:
- taah-tee for Daddy
- maah-mee for Mommy
- maah-maah for Mara
- gah-gah, or gah-guy for Gaius
- mma-mma for Grandma, and sometimes taah-mee, but not as reliably. Often when trying to work out this name - she tries hard - she'll turn it into a whole train of syllables, likely telling an entire story about her adventures with Grandma instead.
- Anya: her baby cousin who was born just a few months after her.
- pa-pa for Grandpa, though she hasn't had as many chances to use it yet
- quiet stern face for most everyone else's names....
- peeh-pah a generic declaration of "people", usually after they have disappeared out of view and she finally decides to wave bye-bye.

Elbow sound
Here is a recording Greg made of her at night time, lying back with daddy in bed trying to fall asleep at 11pm, and instead happily saying Elbow over and over and over... Feel free to listen to just the first 10 seconds, they cover the cutest part quite well. Or listen to the whole thing to really get in the Ehr-bow zone.


That's it!
If you still want some more photos, here are her sweet little elbow dimples from when she was 10mo. This image makes me say Ehl-booow too!
And no, Fae did not write this blog post, but she does try to help quite often:

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