Look Who's Talking

Picture caption: Addisyn in front of the Sea World Christmas Tree

The poll question was "How many times per day does Addisyn say "this"? Someone guessed 1000+! Who was that!? Although it does feel like it sometimes; in fact, when I was counting Tuesday morning, there were 50 this-s within one hour. However if you guessed 100 or 150 I'd say you are a winner! I counted 120 total on a day that I was around her almost all day.

Addisyn now has about a 110 word speaking vocabulary, and most of them sounding like English. My favorites are sparkly butterfly "khackly kaiakai", beep-beep, please, happy, and yummy. Grandma taught her and loves hearing her say okey-dokey-smokey. The most foreign sounding are garage "atz", down "na/nawn", and batteries "boppies." It is quite the experiment in the study of communication, that is, interacting with a child in language development. One day Addisyn wanted to read her Chicken book, but it was in the truck, so we prompted her to ask for it and this is what she ended up saying: "cluck out daddy's pease" (i.e. will you get the Chicken book out of daddy's truck please). This was by far the most complicated statement she has ever made, with four words together.

We've run across a lot of other kids her age who are already talking in sentences, and so we thought she was slow to use words compared to other kids we know her age, but after looking at what she does know (as opposed to what she doesn't know) we are pleased. I think she is like me, in that she is reflective before speaking, and uses words to communicate significance, rather than just to hear her voice. She doesn't just spit back random word sounds; she knows exactly what she's saying, and I appreciate that.



Picture caption: Piper climbing up the kitchen drawers

This last few weeks has been fun with Piper too, because it is more apparent that she is interacting more with language. She makes noise in "conversation" and will imitate syllable sounds when we talk with her. It even sounded like she almost said "Addy" and "ma ma" the other day! We know she is understanding words because she will wave her fingers when she hears hi or bye, clap when I say yay, and -my FAVORITE- will press her mouth on my cheek when I say "give me a kiss." (ohhhhh, isn't that the SWEETEST thing EVER!?) Since Piper has discovered control of her hands, we are trying to teach her some basic signs to help her communicate with us. Our goal is to learn please, thank you, eat, drink, all done, more, and yes.