Vera's Vocabulary

Many of you want to know how communication is with Vera. It's going pretty well, actually. Vera understands just about everything we tell her. And if we don't know what Vera is saying to us, we can usually figure it out with a little help.

These are the words/phrases that Vera says in English consistently. We've had her for almost 5 weeks and been home almost 4. I cannot wait to have a normal conversation with her!

Vera says all of our names, though she still has trouble with the long E sound when it's the 2nd syllable of a word. So Abbi sounds like Abbuh. Toby is Tobuh. Every once in awhile she'll say their names correctly, but usually not. She can say other words with a long E sound like 'eat' and 'sleep' with no problem. She also has trouble with the hard J (the Russian language doesn't have that sound) so Jacob comes out Sacob most of the time.

She also says:

No :)

Mine

Please (working on Thank You but there is no 'th' sound in Russian so it usually comes out Fank You.)

Okay

Again

Open/Close

Hi/Hello/Bye bye

Night night

Bed

Sleep

Pajamas

Car

Stroller

Closet (she loves to play in the closet)

Kitty (though it sounds more like Kila - rhymes with Sheila)

Dog

Sit (comes out 'sot'...working on it)

Eat

Cherries

Yogurt

Banana

Apple

Pasta

Yummy

Yucky

Tickle

Clean/Dirty

Potty/Poo poo

Watch

Trash

Look

Light

On/Off

Book

School

Foot

Spoon

Cup

Brush

Silly

Gentle

Bath/shower

Shampoo

Soap

Sticker

Socks

Shoes

Hot/cold

Show me (she says this when she wants us to show her something AND when she wants to show us something)

Big hug

All done

Silly dog

Good boy (to Toby)

Toby hush

Too big

No touch

One more

Excuse me

It seems like there are more, but my mind has gone blank. Not a bad list for such a short time home...in my opinion anyway. We're pretty sure she'll need speech therapy, but she's doing very well so far. She still doesn't put more than two words together, unless one of our names is included. We're working on I love you (she tries but can't put it all together), counting to 10, come here, drink, water, give and a few other things that she says multiple times a day in Russian.

Edit: Since posting this yesterday, I thought of a few more words that Vera says:

Push

Soup

Vitamins

Salad

Bubbles

Swim

Coffee