Love of Language

There needs to be some documentation of the growth of our girls. The past year and a half has seen so many changes.

With language acquisition, Chloe was much different than Maggie. Maggie's marker for language progress was the birth of Chloe. When Chloe reached the same age of 16 months the word count for Chloe was probably a little higher than Maggie's, but Chloe's vocabulary was almost all signs: 70-ish words but only 10 or so were vocal. At her second birthday, Chloe was still a quiet girl, but she'd put a few two-word sentences together with signs. After her second birthday, Laura said that she felt like living with Chloe was like living with Lassie. Chloe would point, and grunt to get what she wanted. Chloe would display her satisfaction or dissatisfaction in grunts and gestures until she'd get what she wanted, and the rest of us modified our behavior to Chloe's actions.

At Christmas time (2011) Chloe was surprising us with short spoken sentences of two or three words together. You know you have a quiet child when they're almost 2 and a half and two words coming out of their mouth at the same time surprises you.

Now Chloe is almost a couple of months past her third birthday. Sadly the signs are almost completely lost. She has maintained her cuteness by saying 'W's for her 'L's, 'D's instead of 'G's, and 'T's instead of the hard 'C's. A "little guy" who is "so cute", ends up being a "wittow die" who is "so toot". She had us laughing the day she said "Oh, deez".

Chloe is still somewhat quiet, but you can really catch her talking when she has her dolls and toys. During play time you can hear some vocabulary, but it's all of the inflections and tones of voice that really display Chloe's character. Almost any toy gets put into the family, and when left alone Chloe will have whole conversations between "mommies", "daddies", "babies" and the occasional sibling. The babies seem to miss Mommy a lot, but Mommy is quite re-assuring that the babies will be okay.

Singing is another part of vocal play time for Chloe, and she will sing the “ABCs” or “Twinkle, Twinkle” in loops all throughout the day.

Maggie has had her own adventures in language. She continues her love of letters and words. It is fun to watch her mind work. A year ago or more, we were driving in the car and Maggie asked if we too could see the ".... flamingo?" Laura and I were stumped. Then we finally caught on. Flamingos are birds with long necks. Cranes are birds with long necks. We were diving past a series of 4 or 5 cranes doing construction on I-15. Case closed.

Laura and I haven't done anything spectacular with Maggie to help her read. We've just kept words and letters as games to play. Maggie was the one who decided that letters were fun and we got a few DVDs on the alphabet to help her out. Loving the letters has turned into reading, with the help of some picture books from the library. Sometimes I'm not sure how much Maggie is reading and how much she is recognizing word shapes, but I know she does both. She will read a few pages during reading time. If the book is a favorite (and not too long) she might read the whole book. Maggie will make a few mistakes, but if you point at the words she got wrong, she'll try again and then some of the reading kicks in. When I've tried to check out a picture book in Spanish, Maggie has gotten mad at me because she doesn't recognize the Spanish words. She only wants to read English.

The fun part about Maggie reading is that she just expects it to be part of the conversation. If there are words in front of her she will try and read. This is the same game she did with letter recognition, but now she’s trying whole words. I have received series of text messages of "maggie", "maggie", "daddy", "mommy", "coco", "love", etc. as she hunts and pecks at an open keyboard at home.

When I'd take her running, sometimes she'd get after me and I would have to go back so she could read the signs we had passed. She'd ask for help on some of the bigger words, but Maggie gives them a good effort first. Maggie has also surprised her primary teacher when she was reading the words as the teacher was writing on the board, "I can forgive others".

Another surprising example of Maggie reading was when I took the girls to see the primate skulls display in the hallway at UVU. I pointed at a label and told her that it said "chimpanzee". Maggie looked at the next label and read “orangutan” even though the label said “Pygmy Orangutan” – she was skipping the word she didn't know. The display only has skulls and labels. There are no pictures, so I was impressed. Then Maggie found “gorilla” and since she was on a roll she also tried to sound out “Gigantopithecus” (an extinct primate, larger than a gorilla). Maggie did pretty well. She got a couple of “g” sounds in and a “t” sound or two and a mumble to finish off the last syllables. This isn't a species I’d heard of before, and I still have a hard time saying it as well as Maggie did.

I know they've said more cute stuff than this, but I had to get at least a couple of things down. It is fun to live in a house with such bright little girls.

I may have to rename this blog "Faceterest" or "Pinbook" to see if either will help Laura to start posting again.

Household Fun (and new vocabulary)

¿Why did Maggie go into hysterics? She was cowering in the corner next to the drain and howling.

¿Why did all of the toys in the tub get a bleach bath?

Both of these cases were coprogenic.





(Maggie had way too many raisins yesterday.)

Unexpected Words

Last night after we finished reading a conference talk for our Family Home Evening, Maggie was jabbering away as usual, sitting on Laura's lap. She kept saying "mah-sanh". (Think of a soft "n" in French words for a clue to Maggie's pronunciation.)

Finally I figured out what she was saying.

Laura had put the conference Ensign face down on the TV tray next to the recliner. Maggie was responding to the small photo of President Monson on the back cover. "mah-sanh".

Neither Laura nor I really expected that word from Maggie. The last time Laura had pointed out President Monson to Maggie was in November in a homemade Gospel ABC book.

Surprises every day.

Maggie loves to sign - and we love her signs

We recorded these videos to capture some of Maggie's baby talk. Just as little kids can't quite say all of the sounds in a word, Maggie's signs aren't quite complete. She loves to sign. We've bought and been given some of the Signing Time DVDs and we've had a regular rotation from the library. Maggie is transfixed when a new DVD comes home. I think signing makes language much more of a game for all of us. Maggie probably loves how her signing helps to capture her parents' attention too. Maggie does love to jabber, and sometimes we even get a little jibber-jabber from her hands: she'll wiggle fingers and twist her hands and we have no idea what she's after, but she's happily explaining.

This first video has one of our favorite signs: bugs. The true way to sign "bugs" is to put your thumb on your nose while curling/wiggling your index and middle fingers a couple of times in unison. We'll be sad when Maggie learns how to do this sign correctly.



Here are a few more animals that Maggie knows: tiger, gorilla, monkey, owl, and porcupine (half-heartedly)



Finally, Maggie has a small blue "First Words" book from Priddy Books and she knows a sign for all 26 pages. She almost signs every single picture in the book in this video. Sometimes she gets in a hurry to see her favorites. Here's the word list: girl, boy, shirt, pants, socks, shoes, coat, cup, chair (sit), ball, boat, car, truck (she skips this one), train, plane, bear, orange, apple, banana (skips?), leaf, flower, cat, potty, dog, duck, and fish.

If you watch closely you can tell what one of her favorite things is... it was also her first sign.



9/16/2009 9:22

Maggie giggles and dances

This was just a few days after our move. We hadn't unpacked, we didn't have a couch, but we did find some ways to entertain ourselves in all our mess.



8/23/2009 19:36

Maggie's word count

We did another word count because Maggie has been learning so many words so quickly. We didn't bother to describe which words she is signing and/or speaking. This is just a list of words.

First off - the latest words:
apple
backpack
beaver
bee
belly
bike
bird
blankie
block
blue
boat
boy
bracelet
bum
bus
butterfly
camel
carrots
caterpillar
chair
cheek
clean
cleanup
clouds
coat
color
cook
corn on the cob
crocodile
cry
cup
dance
deer
done
don't (crotch)
door
down
drink
eagle
ear
elbow
elephant
Elmo
foot
fork
fox
game
giraffe
go
goat
good girl
grass
green
hair
hands
happy
heart
help
hop
howsitgoin
i'm done
it's okay
jacket
juice
jump
kangaroo
kitty
knife
libro
like
lion
look
march
mountain
mouth
muscles
necklace
night-night (crib)
noodle
nose
octopus
orange
panda
pants
peach
pear
peas
pillow/armadillo – she uses the same sign for both, but knows the difference when you ask her to point to either one.
pizza(olives)
play
popcorn
purple
rabbit
raccoon
rainbow
ready
red
runaway
sandwich
Santa
see
shark
show
sleeping
snuggle
socks
soft
spoon
squirrel
stars
stinky
stop
stroller
stuck
swing
table
tickle
tiger
toes
tomato
train
tree
truck
vegetables
watch
what
wolf
yellow
yucky
zebra

Maggie knows a few more names:

Co-co - this is Maggie's adaptation of her sister Chloe's name
Erica - her cousin who recently visited
Mary - a neighbor friend, and of course
Maggie

Maggie also has some favorite numbers and letters. She recognizes many of these letters in print, but for the most part she just likes the sound of the "words" or knows what other letter or number they follow:
4
6
10

'z' is Maggie's favorite letter - because it's so fun to sign:
'x', 'r' are her next most favorite letters and she points them out wherever she can.

Maggie's letters:
a
b
c
p
q
r
t
x
y
z

and finally, Maggie knows a bunch of words or sounds that are a part of play time or songs:
"baa"
"bill bill bill"
"bok bok"
"gobble-gobble"
"hoo-hoo"
"meow"
"moo"
"move on back"
"neigh"
"oo-oo-ee-ee"
"peekaboo"
"pill pill pill"
"rat-tat (tat)"
"round round"
"ruff ruff"
"swish-swish"
"uh huh"
"wah wah (wah)"
"woo-woo"
"yeah"
(panting) - for dogs

combine all these with Maggie's old words and Maggie's almost to 250.
"nnnkkk" (oink), baby, ball, banana, bath, bear, boo, book, boots, bottle, brush hair, bug, bunny, bye bye, car, cat, cheese, chicken, cold, cookie, cow, crab, cracker, daddy, diaper, dog, dolphin, Dora, duck, eat, eyes, fish, flower, frog, girl, gorilla, grandma, grandpa, grapes, hat, hello, hippo, horse, hot, ice-cream, keys, leaf, light, lizard, mama, monkey, night-night, no, outside, owl, pajamas, pelican, penguin, pig, plane, poopy, porcupine, potty, pretty, puppy, rain, rock, sheep, shirt, shoes, Signing Time, snake, strawberry, sun, suzie / soother, swim, swimsuit, teeth, thank you, thunder, towel, toys, turkey, turtle, uh-oh, wait, walk, washcloth, water, whoah, wind, yaa!, yes, yogurt

nostalgia

Our little girl has been in our lives for 1 full year. In some ways it's hard to believe that it's already been that long, but in other ways it's hard to believe that we have only known her for 1 year. She is such a huge part of our lives, everything seems to revolve around her. I can hardly remember what life was like when I didn't have to think about nap-time, feeding time, changing time, bath time...blah, blah, blah. She isn't the most mellow kid, she has a mind of her own and lets me know if things are not perfect in her world, but boy, can she make me laugh. She gets in silly moods and makes the funniest noises with her mouth, I know she is just trying to make us laugh, and I love it. I love my little 1 year old. It's not been the easiest year, I had to have a pretty big surgery when Maggie was just 8 weeks old, it took me almost 3 months to feel normal. Maggie has only been sleeping through the night for 2 weeks, and she doesn't like to nap. I gave up on having her on any sort of a schedule when she was 6 months old, I was getting too frustrated and decided that I needed to enjoy my little girl, like I said, she has a mind of her own. I still love being a Mom. I'm excited and nervous about having another girl in July, I'm hoping her 1st year will be just as great, maybe this next baby will sleep more, I'm not counting on it.
Maggie's Stats at 1 year:
Weight: 22 lbs
Height: 28 inches
Favorite Foods: Blueberries, Cheese, Mandarin oranges
Favorite Movie: Signing Time (she seriously loves it)
Favorite Activities: Going for walks and Bath time
Favorite Toy: Her giant stuffed Dog
First Word: Dadda
First Sign: Dog
# of Teeth: 7 (4 on top, 3 on bottom)