Supporting characters

She screams Mama if she is tired or hungry. She lights up and breaths out Papa, when she sees him (and somehow it makes me jealous as I want to be acknowledged in fun making as well as taking care of her basic needs). And now she tries to say Кряк (the Russian version of the sound the ducks make). It is a common sound in our lives at the moment as she loves looking at the birds and local reservoir has many ducks, the duck monster progressed to making Russian duck noises :-) and one of the supporting characters in her* favourite book is a duck. I also think she is trying to repeat the word Тигр (tiger) after me. Her babbling and general desire to communicate certainly progressed in the last couple of weeks. Today she started waving goodbye and once in moment of utter mental tiredness I almost said “Sorry, I didn’t catch it. Can you, please repeat what you just said” in the response to her expressive babbling, because it did sound like she said something extremely intelligent.

* Potentially it is my favourite book (and not hers) as I love the simplicity of the drawings combined with the presence of small details that feed my imagination into expanding on the narrative. At the end of the book I love pointing at the smiling baby in the cot and saying «Ребёнок улыбается. Он знает, что сейчас придёт мама и возьмёт его на ручки» (“The baby is smiling. He knows that his mum will come and pick him up”). Though I always wonder where the parents are throughout the book and recently realised that parents don’t seem to feature in most of the kids books we have. I guess domestic and farm animals make cuter stories than exhausted parents.