Consonant Blends and other quirks

We have a remarkably articulate 2 year old who talks up a storm in a very clear and precise manner, so whenever she does have difficulty pronouncing something, we feel compelled to document it.

Some of our favorite quirks over time:

When she was 18 months, her vocabulary was already fairly substantial, and consisted of English, Mandarin and sign language, but for some weird reason, she couldn't say "water." She could sign it, but no matter what, she called it "Gaw." We have no idea where it came from, it's not close to "water" or "Shui" (the Mandarin equivalent), but that's what she would say. We worked so hard, saying "Wa, wa, WA-TER" slowly and clearly so she would get it, and she would lean in, raise her eyebrows just like we did, and reply very deliberately "Wa, wa, GAAAAAAAW" The funniest part was when her grandparents decided to just adopt her word into their vocabulary. I'll never forget hearing them say "Do you want some gaw?"

We just about died laughing when she tried to say "computer" and instead all that would come out of her mouth was "potato." That's the one we decided to adopt, and suddenly all our computers were renamed. The kindle fire even became our "hot potato." We were crushed the day she pronounced computer correctly. We're not changing our network names back, though. Those stay, a reminder of the adorable days of yore.

Her current and ongoing quirk is very specific, and no less cute. She can say the "S" sound just fine, but cannot pronounce it when it comes right before another consonant. If a consonant blend starts with "S," she will just say the 2nd consonant. In a cluster of 3 consonants, she can actually say the latter 2, but still no S's. It makes for some very cute (and slightly confusing) words!
Here are a few highlights:

scrubs = cwubs (oh yeah, she's also got the stereotypical r=w quirk)
stop = top
stretch = twetch!
stepstool = teptool!
story = towy
squish = quish
stinky = tinky
sticky = ticky
stuck = tuck
scooter = cooter
stairs = taiws
small = mall
smile = mile
snake = nake
sneaky = neaky!


If we really push her, she will sometimes make an effort, but it will either sound like "S, S, cwubs" or she'll blow air through her nose to approximate the initial S sound, but it ends up sounding more like a funny H. So occasionally you'll hear her say something like "hmall," or "hnake."

I doubt this is unique, there must be tons of toddlers out there calling people 'neaky 'tinkers, but I wanted to make sure I wrote it down somewhere. Because I know that someday, just like "water" and "computer," she'll be able to pronounce the initial S in a consonant blend like a pro, and I want to remember.