Andrew's Verbal Skills

Now that Andrew is 17 months old, I am finally noticing some big strides in his language development. I'm gonna be honest, having a daughter who was speaking in full sentences by the age of 1 may have given me unrealistic expectations. I thought he'd follow big sister's example and be jabbering up a storm by now. And it's not that he can't communicate to us, but his words were just not there.

Sarah was 16 months old when Andrew was born and thankfully VERY verbal. This made dealing with a newborn and a toddler so much easier. And while there were many "I'm going to pull my hair out" crazy moments, most of them were not because of Sarah's lack of conversational skills.

But like I said, until the last week or so, I was pretty sure Andrew would speak in grunts, unitelligible sounds and one word phrases for the rest of his life. He was content to "talk" to us in the system he had developed. And why not, he had big sister there to interpret for him or he could just get loud and mad until we frantically found the thing he wanted.

Now in no way do I think he is developmentally behind, but Sarah just seemed to absorb words. No one had to point things out and teach her what they were. I mean we never deliberately sat her down and taught her words. She just started talking and never stopped.

There was a point a couple months back, when I realized that unless we started fostering more language development in him, he wasn't going to make much progess. So instead of giving into his grunts and whines, we would ask him to say "please" "apple" "milk" whatever it was that he wanted. It took a while for him to see things our way but I'm happy to say he's learning new words every day!

Here's a list of the things he says now:

Bup - cup
Meelk - milk
Up
Out
Side - outside
Bwush - brush
Baby
Snack- fruit snacks
Wappah - waffle
Apple
Cheese
Eat/Bite - let's us know he's hungry
Thissy - Sissy/Sarah
Dodo - Codie
Papa
Mama
Dada
Mimi - Grammy
Toes
Nose
Eye
Mow - mouth or meow depending on the context
Ea-yo- ear
Hai-yo - hair
Head
Fall
Two - Whenever he hears "one" he says two
Buh Bye
Nigh Night
Sock
Shoe
Bwish - fish
Dat - cat
Dah- dog
Peeg - pig
Efint- elephant
Ruroh - hello
Elp- help
Dar - car
Wowk - fork
Nan- Peter Pan doll
Bwock- block
Chayo - chair
Stayo- stair
Eww
No

I'm sure I have forgotten a few things here and there. And of course he still has strings of jibberish and we all end up frustrated in the process of trying to figure out what he wants. But so goes life with a toddler. One minute you can't understand them, the next they pretend not to understand you. Anyone else having fun listening to your kiddos vocabulary expand?