While playing last weekend, Ken thanked Reid for something and she said, “You’re welcome,” clear as anything. It surprised him as we haven’t been consciously coaching her on manners, just using our own. Reid has been using “please” consistently for quite a while but in the last week or so “thank you” and “you’re welcome” have been added to her vocabulary. Not that she has lost “a-huh” and “un-uh” which probably impress me more since I know that no one is trying to teach her those.
I don’t remember if I’ve written about how Reid has taken to labelling what she is doing, for example, she will run down the hall saying “running, running” or announce “sitting” as she sits down. At work I’ve been writing rules for multimedia and web sites and have said that such descriptions of the actions that are happening are required. It’s especially funny to hear Reid do it, too, given my work. Lately, her verb fascination with verbs has led to her saying “teeth-ing” when I hand her her toothbrush. (I guess she wouldn’t pluralize sisters-in-law correctly either ;+) I wish I’d taken more linguistics courses in university but they offered just the one at Guelph.