Where's my decoder?

Clara is starting to say a few words. Many many words sound oh so similar, and things are very contextual. "Ga" seems to mean many different things, and "please" sounds an awful lot like "Lee." So if you're holding her and you ask "Do you want to get down?" and she responds "Ga!" it's clear as day that she means "Down!". But if she instead points to the fruit bowl and says "Ga!" you can convince yourself she's saying "Banana!". The only consistently clear thing she says is "Thank you."

So yesterday I was driving in the back seat and I hear her say "thank you" several times. Of course I say "you're welcome, Clara" because she's probably thanking me just for being such a great mom. But she keeps saying "thank you" and so I look in the rear view mirror and realize she's pulling her hood over her face and playing Peek-a-Boo. Turns out "thank you" has a homonym too, and it's "peek-a-boo."

I would still like a decoder sometimes for Lee. Of course she learns most vocabulary by context, so she often substitutes similarly sounding words, which can confuse the heck out of you. Today we were walking around the MFA, and there are sculptures of people stationed around the museum. One of them was hanging from a very high ceiling as if he were flying through the air.

"Mommy, I think he's Japanese," Lee says after looking at one of them.

I look and see no indication that he might be Japanese. So Lee and I go back and forth a few times about this until she finally says in frustration "Like at Jordan's." Ah, of course. We were at Jordan's store in Reading just a few weeks ago, and at that store they have a Trapeze school. Japanese, trapeze.....oh so similar.