How to speak Penelopese

Sarah-my-sister, this picture is for you!

Penny is now two. We celebrated with a small party. Most of her friends and ours were out of town, but she had fun, we had cupcakes, and that's really all you need for a successful two-years-old birthday party.

Penny's been saying words for about a year now, but now it's starting to form a language. I usually serve as translator, but I thought I'd start putting together a little dictionary.

Meimei? Sleeping? Eyes? Closed? This was Penny's first long sentence. She's very concerned with whether someone's eyes are open or closed. And almost every word she says is intuned like a question. That's part of speaking Pennese.

Goot oer- Scoot over

Kiwi- scary

Apple- apple, pear, pineapple, etc

Cow- zebra

Two, tree, two, tree- counting

Syar- star

Kicken- Chicken

Kicken- Kitchen

Pah-ee: Penny

Pah-ee: Potty. This is a problem.

Boppies- panties

Bopper- diaper

Cockit- Chocolate

Gock-giss- glasses

cocker- cracker

Icreen- Ice cream

Yap- lap

Yiyon- lion-- yes, Penny has inherited my Y/L speech impediment. I grew out of it eventually, but sometimes when I'm tired...

Gabidge- garbage

Sabidge- sandwich

Yu- 鱼 fish in Chinese. She's pretty consistent to say this one in Chinese

Xiexie- thank you in Chinese. She loves to say Thank you in English, too, but she'll happily say it in either language.

Hawer- water. Mixture of heshui (to drink water) and WATER. Now no one understands her-- in English OR Chinese!

Nooooooo! Nnnnnngggggg!- To many people, this seems to mean, "Look at me, I'm so cute. Come squeeze my chubby arms and cheeks," when it really means, "Get the heck away and stop looking at me. Don't you DARE try and touch me!" Unfortunately, it's hard to explain this to 1.3 billion people.