As first-time parents, I assume it’s expected that we should be surprised with the level of language comprehension and execution that our 17 month old has. To be fair, neither Brooke nor I have much experience with children of this age, so we don’t really know what Meg is supposed to be doing, aside from walking and playing. That said, it’s astounding to me the number of words Meg seems to know already. My Mom has marveled at this fact in the past, and her general feeling is that Meg wasn’t walking for so long that her language skills developed sooner instead (we’re convinced it was because of the ear infections, messing with her balance: she was walking within 4 days of getting ear tubes put in).
With all this in mind, I figured I should recount the words Meg knows. We aren’t really keeping much of a “baby book,” in favor of taking a ridiculous number of photos and videos, and writing things down on this blog, instead. Bear in mind that these are all words that Meg appears to know, most of which she can say, though it may not sound like we know it (and I have included her phrasing in parenthesis after each word). At the bottom, I’m also listing a series of body parts Meg knows. So far as we’ve read, this part is quite impressive, as she’s not really supposed to be able to do this for another year or so. She can only say a few of them, but she can point to each one reliably.
Words:
- Mom (“Mama”)
- Dad (“Da”)
- Meg (“Mee”)
- Edie (“Dih-di”)
- Banana (“Nana”)
- Apple (“Appo”)
- Juice (“Ju”)
- Car (“Doh”)
- Chicken (“Ba ba ba”)
- Sheep (“Bah”)
- Cow (“Mmm”)
- Outside (“Outside”)
- Elmo (“Emmo”)
- Abby (“Abbee”)
- That (“Da”) — [Note: This is what she says when she points at something…]
- Shirt (“Sit”)
- Shoes (“Soos”)
- No (“No”) — [Note: As in, “I don’t want to do that”]
- No? (“No no”) — [Note: As in, “I know I shouldn’t do this but I want to do it anyway…” :-)]
- Goodnight (“Night night”)
- Hi (“Hi”)
- Hello (“Ello”)
- Goodbye (“Buh bye”)
- Hat (“Hatta”)
- Star (“Tar”)
- Ball (“Bah”)
- More (“Mo”)
- Cat (“Didee”)
- Good morning (“Minning”)
- Uh oh (“oh-ohhh”)
- Whoa (“whoa”)
- Help, please (“Hep-eez”)
- Baby (“bee-bee”)
- All done (“aw done”)
- Close door (“ah doh”)
Body Parts:
- Nose (“no”)
- Eyes (“ay”)
- Ears
- Teeth
- Cheeks
- Knees (“Nee”)
- Feet
- Toes (“Dohs”)
- Belly
- Hair
While Morgan has generally been able to communicate what her words meant, once she had us stumped for weeks about a word she was using. “Tatones”. We couldn’t figure out what it meant. Apparently “Mommy put it in her purse.” We asked Morgan if it was tick tacks, a cell phone, and a host of other things. Then, some time later (a couple months, I think), we figured out she was talking about Crayons.
any wonder why we LOVE her so much!
Rachel, the speech pathologist I live with, says that once she knows about 50 words that she’ll start putting them together. Apparently this should happen at about two.
I am also completely unaware at what children should know / be able to do. We had a 19month old staying with us between a move, and that he could learn words so quickly amazed me. He knew “Bailey” in like two minutes.