Our Maggie loves to talk

Maggie is quite an impressive little talker. She has had a cute little jabber from early on, and she likes to squeal and squawk and make all kinds of little sounds.

Maggie's speech is helped by the fact that she is quite a little parrot. I'll make noises, and blow raspberries and she'll copy what I do. If she hears her cousins or her new little sister crying or yelling, she'll squeal and follow along too. Maggie does the same with words. She doesn't always know what you're saying, but she picks some word you say to repeat nearly every day. We are going to have to be careful with what we say. Just this morning Maggie grabbed at her poopy diaper while I was changing her. I panicked and said "Crap!" as she got some on her shirt (no pun intended). The next thing I hear is "crabp" from Maggie and she raises her little hands up in the air to do the pincers for the sign for "crab". Quite cute, but I've got to watch my language.

Speaking of signs, one of the things that has helped Maggie's vocabulary is Signing Time. My sister Melissa gave us the first three volumes almost as soon as we announced that Laura was pregnant with Maggie. Maggie started watching the DVDs at about 6 months and we bought her another set of three for her first birthday in March. Since then we have checked out nearly a dozen other volumes from the library.

Maggie has loved the DVDs from the beginning. The songs, and all of the little kids featured in the DVDs really keep her attention. Laura loves Signing Time too, because they can keep Maggie occupied long enough for Laura to take a 2 minute shower, wash a few dishes or otherwise tidy up her self or around the house. The songs do get stuck in your head for the rest of the day, but for the most part the music is enjoyable. After multiple repeats, songs that aren't absolutely abhorrent is quite a feat for children's programming - Do I need to remind you about Barney and other such ilk for kids? Signing Time has an advantage that the majority of the songs are enjoyable even after multiple viewings.

Because Signing Time is educational, we only have to feel a little bad that the TV is helping out as a part-time nanny. Maggie sat quietly through the early viewings, but lately she has been acquiring vocabulary like crazy. I wonder if she picks up a new word or sign every other day.

She is so attentive to the Signing Time DVDs now, it's hilarious. We'll check out a new volume from the library and she gets excited to follow along. We laugh as we watch her try and sign words that she has in all likelihood has no idea what they mean. ¿"seasons"? ¿"weather"? Just last night Maggie sat down with the latest volume from the library and was diligently trying to repeat all the signs for colors. I so wanted to video her sitting in her Dora chair following along with her hands, but the batteries in the camera needed to be recharged from our hospital stay for the birth of Chloe.

Difficult signs are funny too. "toys" is finger-spelled, and when "toys" comes on, Maggie holds up a closed fist and rolls her wrist to do the for "toys".

All of this talking and signing started up close to the beginning of this year. Maggie's first words came around probably in January: "dada" of course, followed shortly by "ball". Her first sign was "dog" showing up close to the same time as her first spoken words. If you have ever seen Maggie with dogs, you wouldn't be surprised about her choice of signs. Over this last month or two her vocabulary has exploded, both in speech and in signs.

Maggie follows some of the typical speech patterns for kids. "dada" for "daddy", "wawa" for water, and "baba" for bottle. When she's really excited to see me, "dada" turns to "dadeeeeeee!" We have also watched some words mature. For example, "book" started out as "k", but has now changed to "guk". "walk" used to be "kkkkk", but is now "walk" with a soft "k" at the end. She works hard on the pronunciation to differentiate between "walk" and the "wawa" of "water". She would hate to miss out on a chance to go for a walk.

To pass the time in the hospital as we waited for Laura's scheduled c-section, we started in on a list of the words that Maggie knows and uses. Here's what we came up with: Maggie has spoken 63 different words (15 only spoken not signed), signed 76 different signs (28 only signed not spoken) and a total vocabulary of at least 91 words. *(see footnote).

These are the words that are a regular part of Maggie's speaking vocabulary. These words come unprompted and we know that she knows what they mean.

baby, ball, banana, bath, book, bottle, bye bye, car, cracker, daddy, Dora, duck, eyes, flower, gorilla, grandpa, hat, hello, hippo, hot, keys, night-night, owl, puppy, shoes, strawberry, swimsuit, walk, water, yaa!, yogurt

These are the words that Maggie says on occasion, but often with some prompting. She probably knows the meaning to most if not all of these words, but they don't make appearances as frequently as the first list.

cheese, cookie, fish, girl, grandma, light, mama, no, outside, pelican, rock, suzie (for her soother), teeth, thank you, turkey, turtle, uh-oh, washcloth, yes

(Did you notice Maggie's gender bias?)

The next set is the list of words that Maggie has tried, but only make irregular appearances. We're not sure how many of these that she knows what they mean or if she's just playing parrot.

boo, boots, bunny, crab, diaper, dolphin, eat, leaf, pajamas, poopy, shirt, swim, wait

There are plenty words on the last two lists of what Maggie will say where she does know the meaning of the word, but signs more often than she vocalizes. In addition, from the list that I made, there are at least twenty-eight signs that Maggie does that she just doesn't say at all. There are words like "bear", "pig", "plane" and "thunder" where Maggie does the sign, does a sound "rawr", "snkkkh", "pbbbbt", and "kkkkkoh" but never says the word. There are plenty of words that Maggie says semi-regularly or irregularly, but she signs more frequently.

Here are Maggie's signs that she does on a regular basis, generally unprompted and we assume that she knows the meaning of these words.

baby, ball, banana, bath, bear, bottle, brush hair, car, cheese, chicken, cold, cow, eat, fish, flower, gorilla, hat, ice-cream, leaf, penguin, plane, pretty, puppy, rain, shoes, strawberry, thunder, towel, walk, washcloth, water, wind, yaa!

These are the signs that we see on a less regular basis, of which Maggie probably has a good understanding of the meaning of most of these words.

bug, bye bye, cat, cookie, crab, cracker, diaper, duck, frog, girl, grapes, horse, light, lizard, monkey, no, owl, pajamas, pig, sheep, shirt, Signing Time, snake, sun, swimsuit, thank you, wait , yes

And these are the signs we have seen Maggie try, but only on rare occasions. This list does not include the signs she has done while trying to follow along with the Signing Times DVDs.

book, boots, dolphin, grandma, grandpa, hippo, hot, mama, outside, porcupine, potty, rock, swim, toys, turkey

We have had a lot of fun watching Maggie learn to talk. She always surprises us. In the mix of baby jabber of "baba" and "wawa" comes a nearly perfect "cracker". We were sure that she thought her chair was named Dora (it has Dora the Explorer's picture on it), but then a quick picture of Dora apeared in just the corner of the TV screen and we hear "Dora" from her little mouth. I'm excited to see what comes next, speaking or signing, from this little girl.

* Using the Jaccard Index of similarity (= shared units divided by total units) gives us an index value of 53% -- 53% percent of Maggie's vocabulary is shared between signing and speaking, leaving and 47% of Maggie's vocabulary is unique to either speech or sign; ≈31% uniqe to sign and only ≈16% unique to speech.