Word Explosion

Taylor has finally had her word explosion. The speech therapist came this past Wednesday. Normally she spends most of the time playing with Taylor and observing her as she plays, but this time she took a lot of notes because I had so much to fill her in on. We had not seen her for about 3 weeks since we were out of town on her normal week to come and Taylor had made a lot of progress. Ms. Becky said that usually you hear a big explosion around 18 months, which Taylor did not have, so it was encouraging to finally hear that. She is finally starting to string words together on a regular basis to form 2 and 3 word phrases. There are times that I can tell she is trying to say more, but sometimes it is still hard for me to make out certain things that she is saying - especially if there are no context clues. She is getting a lot clearer on some of her words though. Over the past week she has said, "More milk, please." She also likes to say things like, "Come on, Mama," or whoever or whatever it is she is talking to. She talks to her dolls and her stuffed animals. She has even started reading to them which I need to get on video sometime. I love watching her pretend. One day we were looking for her bear that she sleeps with and I was calling out, "Bear, where are you?" Taylor immediately picked up on it and said, "Are you, bear?" She has also started asking for things by name instead of gesturing for what she wants. This is very helpful for me because I don't always have to guess as to what she is wanting.

Taylor has also started singing more words from the songs she knows instead of just singing jibberish. I realize that most of what they are repeating at this age is syllables, but hopefully she is understanding some of the words she is singing. One of her favorite songs is Come, Now is the Time to Worship. Just as recently as last night she has seemingly started making up her own songs. Last night while she was getting a bath she was singing something that was incomprehendable. You could tell that it made perfect sense to her though. I caught it on video, so when I get it downloaded I will try and post it. I do kind of wonder though if she was trying to sing a song that she already knows because on the way home from church tonight it sounded as if she was singing the exact same song in the car. At least the syllables were the same.