Books and Backhoes

Since the last installment on Morriscope, our little A.R.M. has been doing some major bulking up in the language department. She has become quite the talker, and her vocabulary seems to increase every day. It now seems like she knows the name of most of the objects we encounter on a regular basis, and the words she uses to name them are sounding more and more like actual English words. She has also been putting two or more words together, and especially fond of the expressions “no mama,” “oh yeah!”, “fall down,” “no way,” “drinking mocha” (mocha being her new word for mama’s milk), “up or down” (a general expression when she wants to be picked up or needs help getting down), and “many backhoes” (more on that later). She also spoke her first official multi-word sentence the other morning: “OK read the book!” She loves reading books these days, so she uses this sentence a lot.
She also has started to use the possessive, and began by calling herself Adi (which actually means “jewel” in Hebrew), then switched to Asha, but now seems pretty intent on calling herself Ruby or occasionally Asha Ruby. Despite her love of her red-jewel name, however, our little gem seems to be favoring colors of the non-red variety. Asha seems to be gravitating towards blue and pink, and she points out blue and pink everywhere (even for things that she thinks would look better if they were blue and pink instead of boring green, yellow or brown). She also seems to prefer wearing blue and pink whenever possible, despite her prevalence of red clothing.

Speaking of pointing things out everywhere, our little Ruby is now a backhoe spotter extraordinaire. We have a backhoe that has been working next door the past month, and watching the backhoe from an upstairs window has become Roo’s favorite hobby. Mama and Baba had no idea how many backhoes there were out there until we took a few drives with our chatty backhoe-spotter. Now every urban, suburban or rural adventure includes a running commentary from the backseat that sounds a something like this: “Backhoe! Backhoe-ah! Two backhoe! Hiiiii! Many backhoe! Reer-reeer (backhoe sounds)... Blue backhoe! Pink! Byeee! Backhoe-ah! Many backhoe! Kiss!” To celebrate Asha Ruby’s adoration of all things backhoe, we have pieced together a little video depicting her backhoe affection (with a special guest appearance at the end). We hope you enjoy!