Sister speak

When Evie and Lucy first learned to speak, almost everything they said was an imitation of what they heard from me. For years, both of them asked me to "hold you" in response to my question, "Do you want me to hold you?" As I wrote in a prior post, number three often experiences life a little bit differently. Noni is starting to string more words together now and I've noticed that, rather than learning from me, Noni's speech patterns mimic her those of her big sisters. This morning, she handed me a box of cereal and asked, "Can you help me?" Her question was not a response to me asking her from time to time, "Do you want me to help you?" but instead an imitation of Evie and Lucy asking me for help. At the playground, she has started yelling over to me, "Mama, watch this!" as she plays in the sand. She's heard the phrase over and over from her sisters at the park as they swing on the swings or do flips around the monkey bars. While learning from her sister's may teach Noni the correct personal pronouns, she not necessarily learning to be polite. Her other favorite sentence these days? "Watch show. Elmo. Now!"