The kids are 19 mos old. Each milestone seems to promise growth and independance for our kids. As their physical development slows down (growth and movements), their cerebral growth will be more evident and monumental.We have been teaching the kids baby sign language since about 10 mos, mainly the words more, milk, eat and all done. At about 12 mos, Chelsea started making the more sign. Soon after, she picked all done and milk. She also started saying mama. She started saying dada, but then stopped. When Doug would leave the room, she would yell out mama. So he started clarifying who was who. He would point to himself for dada and point to Chelsea as he said her name and the same for mama and Colman. About a month later, when we would ask her to say dada, she would point to herself. We were confused why she was doing this. After a couple of weeks, it dawned on us that Chelsea thought the "sign" for dada was pointing to herself. So when Doug would come home from work, Chelsea would squeal with delight and point to herself.
Chelsea also enjoyed reading the Baby's first Signs books. She wanted to read it often and soon learned the 10 signs, one of which was "hat". When Carol was taking some food out of the microwave, she said the food was hot. Chelsea started tapping her head, which is the sign for hat. Colman followed her example. And it has stuck, the sign for hat can also mean hot in the Goodwin house. We also instilled some manners into them by teaching the signs for please and thank you.
The next word that Chelsea learned was car. This is her favorite word. She says caw caw. She loves cars. She likes watching anything with wheels drive by. We see trucks and buses and lots of caws from our front and back windows.
She is quickly learning lots of words. She seems to speak the last syllable or letter of words. Guh guh is milk. (but she does the sign with it) Puh puh can be cup, poopy diaper, puppy dog, poddy. Tah tah is either Santa or guitar. Roh is zero. Chelsea has recently started saying her own name - Chesee or Cheshee or Cheh. She says Co co or udah for Colman/brother.
Colman did not show much interest in signing. He would only do the all done sign so he could get out of the high chair. Otherwise he often just cried when he wanted more food. Thank goodness he eventually learned the sign for more, shortly after our trip to the beach. He also learned please and thank you so he is quite the gentleman. He thinks the more sign will get him whatever he wants. Only problem is, that is all he knows how to say; he does not specify what he wants more of. So when we are playing he will do the more sign because he wants to watch a DVD. Or while eating, he will do the more sign with a plate full of food because he is ready to move onto fruit. (He would rather eat fruit than cookies.) Fortunately, he is a simple guy and most of the time he wants fruit. We try to teach him to say the fruit names, but everything comes out as dah!
Colman does babble a lot and Carol just loves his low husky voice. He may not be speaking as much as Chelsea, but he does show us that he is learning. We have been showing the kids a letter and number DVD. The videos are simple and repetitive. The numbers video is the favorite, but they will watch the letters, which teaches upper and lower case. Colman likes to watch the letters more than Chelsea. And it pays off. When we are looking through books or catalogues, Colman is quicker to point out letters than Chelsea. We suspect they know most of their upper and lower case letters and numbers from 0-10. Kids are like sponges at this age, so it is fun watching them learn new tricks. Carol calls this the puppy dog phase. When they do tricks but have limited verbal communication.
Though he does not say much, it is clear what Colman's passions are: fruit, cars and catalogues. He loves looking through catalogues and pointing to pictures he recognizes. When he is upset, a catalogue always calms him down. He of course, prefers toy catalogues, but will also look through magazines. And as a typical boy - he loves all things with wheels. He says go go and gaw gaw more than mama. He even likes pictures of cars and trucks. We have a second hand puzzle of transportation modes. Colman can play for long periods of time with the puzzle.
This is a long and verbose post. We hope to document these years for CnC to look back on and read. There are so many phases that kids go through. For now, they are happy with little plastics toy caws, but before we know it, they will want to borrow the gaw keys.
