Is there a developmental psychologist in the house????

Anju has called us "Mama" and "Dad-n" for quite a while now.  However, sometimes it is hard to recognize what she is saying and I'm sure her vocabulary is much fuller than we give her credit for, since many of her "words" are nasally grunts or one-syllable sounds and it takes us awhile to realize, "hey, that's her word for ______!"

In the last few days, it has become clear that "Mama" refers to a girl and "Dad-n" is a boy.  We sat in the last pew in church on Sunday, and each man that passed was pointed to and called "Dad-n."  Solveig and I are both "Mama" and "Mom" is usually me, but can be whoever hands her what she wants/needs.  Anju also seems to call herself "Mama" at least sometimes.  "Dad-n" is Jonah and Shawn and apparently every man at church.  But if I say Jonah or Solveig or Daddy's names, she knows who I'm talking about.  Hmmmm?

"Pup-Pup" is still every animal with fur and 4 legs, including cats, puppies, camels, horses, bunnies, and cows.  They all say, "woof."  The only other kind of animal in Anju's world is a monkey, which she loves and doesn't seem to say, but if anyone says the word, "monkey", or shampoos their hair (our kids shampoo has a picture of a monkey on it), she makes very convincing monkey noises.  She even pointed out that there was a monkey on her diaper and made the monkey noise.

So, we're still in the overgeneralization phase, which is at the same time cute and annoying.  I still don't understand why she can say "ba-bye" but "baby" is a 2-syllable nasal noise.  I took the Psychology class, "Human Growth and Development", a language development course from the Communication Disorders department, and many ESL classes in college (jeepers, I minored in linguistics!!) and I am still confused about that one.

By the way:  Little People baby from the last post is still going "na-nite."  She saw her this morning in the chair and pointed at it and said, "na-nite."