Freshly bathed

  

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

 

Ima and Uncle Ivor took HG to the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem today, her second visit this year. Now that she is talking so much, in particular about animals, she was obviously much more communicative about which parts she liked and which interested her less, though during her previous visit, when she was eight months, she seemed just as interested and excited.

Right near the entrance there is a lake with waterfowl. Of course HG still loves ducks, and was eager to let us know she had spotted some. Further along were several species of swan, a bird HG has never seen in real life, but which she has become interested in lately because Ima has an apron with swans on it. One of her new words this week has indeed been "barbour", Hebrew for swan.

What really surprised her Ima though was that amongst all the water fowl, the first swans that she saw at the zoo were black swans, very different from the white English mute swans on Ima's apron. Nevertheless, even though there were ducks and other birds around, as soon as HG saw the black swan she seemed to recognise it by its shape and appearance, announcing with elation "barbour, barbour!" and pointing with her finger at the black swan. Only later on, turning the corner of the lake, did she see white mute swans, which again she correctly identified as swans.

She bleated for the deer and antelope, identifying them as goats or sheep, close enough for a little girl who has never seen deer or antelope before. When it came to the big white Arabian oryx with their long straight horns she seemed a little confused, unsure whether they were goats/sheep or cows, alternately mooing and baaing and looking at Ima with a questioning gaze.

As soon as she saw the elephants HG raised her arm and let out a loud "ERRRRAH!", mimicking the elephants trunk and trumpeting call, repeating it over and over in excitment as the baby elephant walked towards her (safely behind his enclosure though) and started playing with a tire and branch. HG couldn't take her eyes of it and kept making her elephant noise and trunk motion.

She seemed more interested in the mandrill monkeys than the chimpanzees, but made her "aahh eeeh eeeh" monkey sound for both, and she was only within earshot of the parrot aviary when she started making her parrot calls, eagerly craning her neck to see the birds, though their enclosure itself was still a fair distance away.

A little family of peahen and two chicks rambled down the path beside her buggy at one point, and pointing happily at them - a bird she hasn't seen before - she turned to Ima and asked "dah?", her way of asking "what is this?". When Ima told her that it was a peacock, or tavas in Hebrew, HG tried several times to say this new word, eventually succeeding with a passable "tavvs". 

Brought to you by the letter T and the number 2

HG is still busily learning new words. This morning, she seemed to be working on T words. Her t's sound a bit like d's, but she's getting there. Looking at one of her animal books, she saw the parrot and said, "Tuki", Hebrew for parrot. (Well, she dropped most of the second syllable, but it was clear enough.) And then she made a parrot noise: Aw! Aw!

She looked at Ima's foot, reached for the big toe and said, "Toe!" She was so proud of it that she repeated it many times. Then, when getting dressed, Ima helped her first with "one arm", then HG chimed in with "Two! Two arm!" She's never said two before, or tuki. (We may have heard toe once or twice before.)

She's also been working on her colors. Ima showed her the morning glories on our balcony, and HG said, "Blue!" (They were.) One of her colors books has a mixed-up page, where everything has the wrong color. She noticed the blue chick, and exclaimed, "Blue!"

She's also learning red, which she calls "adom" (Hebrew). (In general, she prefers whichever language has the easier word to pronounce.) Though she does get confused between blue and green, as well as red and orange.

It's all right. She's working on it.