*Talking*Talking*Talking*

Lillian can say so many things now it's hard to know where to start. At her 12 month appointment the doctor said that she was exceeding her 15 month milestones across the board, had met her 18mo milestones for talking and saying things like 'thank you'=teetu to get what she wanted with an outreached hand was a 2 year milestone!

I tried to get a relative order and descrption of what 'her' version sounds like. It is all so interesting to us how they learn to talk. For a long time we were not giving Lillian credit for what she was saying because it was frankly just pretty early on she started and we just werent sure what the criteria is for 'talking' as far as what counts etc. My friend is a speech pathologist for children and she has said that it doesnt matter what the sound of the word is, it could be completely different from the word but what qualifies it as 'speaking' is: #1 if the sound is consistent (they dont usually improve the word until later when they have built their repetoire), #2 if it is said with intent not just in a stream of babble #3 if it is self initiated. I tend to wait a bit before I count her words beacuse I want to make sure I'm not one of those 'annoying mothers' who artificially inflate what their kids do, there is a fine line in my eyes between being proud and 'annoying' and I can definately see how easy it is to cross because well.....she is the greatest, cutest, smartest, .. ..... oops there you go, see it creeps in LOL!

Anyway on to the talking!

It started with Daddy, followed by doggie (=jealous mommy), then finally one day mommy came out when we were in the parking lot of a resteraunt in indiana after visiting with Grandma Horvath, Jared Sr, and AuntMary & Uncle Gary. Jared had been teasing me about her only saying daddy, it was a little game she played where we would day "mommy, mommy, m-o-m-m-y" and every time she would look at us (with those big brown eyes) and say "dada". Finally, after giving me a hard time Jared was trying to get her to say mommy and this time she said a very crude mama and I was SO excited!

Next it was duckie. We had a bunch of ducks to play with in the bath tub and the tub itself was a blow up duck, plus she had a book we were reading alot then with a duckie page so I guess that is why, plus being another 'd' word I think it was just easy.

Not so coincidentally the next word was stop, which we tell the dogs a million times a day. Very cute when the dogs would start pushing around her and she would shove her hand out and very bossily sounding (hmmm???) push it at them and utter "sop, sop" NOT so funny when mommy was playing kissy face and she did the same thing!

1. Daddy


2. Doggie


3. mommy


4. duckie


5. stop

In a relative but not exact order following those first ones we had:

6.book="buo"

I tried to get in the habit of reading her a book as part of our bedtime routine and it caught on. Now, every night she points over to her book shelf and says "buo, buo" very very cute!

7. bye-bye

8. hi

9. uh-oh

10. hot="haa"

11. all done="ah dun"

12. thank you="teetu"

13. peekaboo="pobu"




pretty much says but not counting yet:

cold
sachi
nala
eye