Wednesday, January 28, 2009

"Up. Kaka. Don't! Nana. More! Sookal." etc...

My little Lily is growing up so fast. I know I complain SO MUCH about how slow she is sometimes (namely with speaking) but she has really been stepping it up the last couple of weeks! Or maybe I have been stepping it up the last couple of weeks?...

The key to our success has been making the kids ask for things that they want. This was at the prompting of Sungu's pediatrician, when Jeehon took him in for his 18 month well-visit a few weeks ago. Lily is really good at throwing a fit when she wants something, so I used to be in the habit of giving her anything and everything I thought she might want. And quickly. Milk. Juice. Oatmeal. Crackers. A new diaper. Jun Lee. The Backyardigans. A hug. A timeout. Whatever.

The first couple days of doing this were pretty hard, for everyone. There were lots more tears from both Lily and myself. And everyone who was within earshot of the two of us. (That's within a mile radius of our house.) Sungu was repeating everything Jeehon was saying like a champ, and Lily continued to cry. And then she started doing it too! And I was so beyond elated. I remember one time I was ready to give up and just throw the 'kaka' (cracker. Yeah I know, it sounds a lot like 'ca-ca' which doesn't mean cracker at all) at her, and then she said it.

In that moment I seriously remembered this sermon I heard about patience and perseverence. The pastor talked about a bamboo shoot that someone had planted. They waited and waited and waited for it to grow. It grew so slowly that the guy was about to give up. Until one day it just shot up and grew at an unexplicable exponential rate. And that's my Lily. Kinda.

She definitely has a wider variety of sounds that she makes. She is even using more of her baby sign language, and has a few favorite korean words ('ah-bah' which is dad, and 'sookal' which is spoon.) She said 'Nana' and 'Papa' today, and I was even able to get it on my phone and video-text it to Barb and Jerry. And Chris is working at the PHoenix Open this week, which means Lily won't be seeing her dad for the next few days, but she excitedly 'spoke' to him on the phone today and almost said 'I love you'. Chris was pretty happy about it. But I have to admit that my favorite of all her words is of course 'Mama', which she has been saying for awhile now, but she uses it a lot more. Sungu and Topher are saying it too, and I really believe there is no sweeter sound than 'Mama' on the lips of babes.

No comments: