Verbal Explosion

All of a sudden, Allyson has decided that its time to use her words. It has been very obvious that she can understand just about anything we say/do for a few months now but just recently she has started to convey her thoughts verbally. It is amazing! In addition to many animal noises and proper names (mama, mom, daddy, dad, Ella) she says other words perfectly clear: blanket, cracker, cookie, more, cup, up, down, car, no, yes, hop, mine, please. Other words that we can figure out include: shoes (sue), school (coo-a), book, monkey, elephant (ella), please (pees), thank you (a-ka), cheese, hot, cold, outside. She has noises for a lot of things based on what they are learning in school. In addition to all kinds of animals and body parts she also uses sounds or motions for train, truck, airplane, eat, kiss, drink, hot, and baby. Recently she learned how to jump so she is very interested in jumping on and off of things- she barely gets off the ground but she gets very excited about it. I always have said 1,2,3, jump when we do something so now she gets up on the couch or steps and makes noises like she is counting then tries to jump. She hasn't figured out how to jump off of something yet but she is getting close and she certainly has no fears about trying.

Karl and I both really love this new stage of development. We receive comments daily about her development at day care and they are very impressed with her knowledge and retention of what she learns. It is very obvious that she is a quick learner (of both good and bad things) and she is actually a little bit ahead of the rest of her class in terms of vocabulary and social interaction. The funniest part of all of this new talking is that she actually uses the words in the right context. She only responds "no" when asked a question or given a direction she disagrees with. Example: Ally, time to take a bath and she says no and keeps playing. She also only says "mine" when she is asked to put on or pick up something that is hers. Example: Ally, lets put your jacket on and she goes and gets it and says mine. CRAZY!

I like to contribute her growing skills to the fact that she loves books and we spend a lot of time each day reading, we have from day 1. I also have talked to her constantly and always tell her what we are doing or we are always pointing things out and asking her questions. While we have always done those things, its just now getting to be really fun because she actually answers.