A special voice mail & help with sweeping

We thought we'd hit the ground running in 2008 with a special treat on the blog.  Hopefully we still have some readers out there!

One of the developments that our little Asha Ruby has been working on over the past few months has been her verbal communication.   Yes, the little Roobs is turning into quite the little talker on top of her expanding sign language vocabulary. That said, she often either needs some translation or is not completely understandable by us limited English-speakers.

Some of her favorites words that we can recognize are:

• Mama / mommy  (often said with a question mark at the end)
• hi!
• bye!
• baby  (refers to actual babies in addition to anything cute and cuddly such as furry animals or sock lint)
• uh-oh!  (said in a sing-song way)
• whoa-whoa-whoa!  (something exciting)
• ow  (sometimes before she whacks you!)
• no  (we're so glad she knows this one!)
• yup
• hot-tah  (hot)
• hat-tah  (hat)
• up-puh  (up)
• ap-puh  (apple)
• ba  (book, Buddha, or ball)
• nye-nye  (night-night)
• da-da / arf-arf-arf!  (dog)

Along the way, Rubykins has even renamed some of her family.  For example, Papa is now known as "Baba" and Grandpa Colin has also been affectionately renamed "Yaya".

Asha Roobs recently managed to even record her own Roo-babble when she "accidentally" called Papa's cell phone (oops, make that "Baba's") and left a very special voice mail.  As a special treat, we managed to make a recording for everyone's enjoyment.  If you listen carefully, you can hear a few of her cute "uh-oh's" strung together...

Asha Ruby's Special Voice Mail (.mp3)

Another one of our sweet toddler's favorite activities has been sweeping.  Yes, you read that right... sweeping!  We even have a little broom for her to push around the house.  We are not sure if or when this enthusiasm will spread to other forms of cleaning, but we can always hope.  Here is a short little video of her outside helping Mama to sweep the patio with a broom that may be a touch big for her...

Video: Sweet Sweeper