Speech and language

I pootle off into hospital for a few days and suddenly her speech becomes clearer, her sentences are more grammatical, and her vocabulary expands. Clearly I am holding her back.

No, but seriously, I'm very impressed. She started off by telling me, when I spoke to her from recovery after the c-section, "You have a baby Emer there!" and later when she came to see me she wanted to see "My bruvva" and "My sista" interchangably. It took a few days of no correction for her to change to "my sister" exclusively, but she still uses the masculine third person pronouns for her, in spite of mild correction. Presumably that, too, will sort itself out.

"Where's your baby?" the midwife asked her today. "My baby a called my sister," she replied. "Oh, what's your sister's name?" she was asked. "Emer!"

She now asks to have "Baby Emer's Milk" instead of just milk. She accepts that rice milk and breastmilk are ok but Nea and Mammy can't have cow milk, only Nana and Daddy can have cow milk. She has learned to distinguish between muesli and other cold cereals.

I'd love to guess at the extent of her vocabulary but I can't imagine how I'd begin to do it.