Tess Vocabulary

Here's what Tess is saying at 19 months:

• Oaf = phone
• keys, shoes, and nurse are all pretty clear, but can also sound very similar to each other at times.
• Pee, tea, and bee are clear. She likes those words, because they are easy to pronounce.
• Up
• Juice (though this can sometimes mean water also)
• nanan for banana
• baba for grandpa, but then she also used it to say backpack this weekend. I notice that she'll cling to sounds that she knows like da-da or ba-ba and use them in various contexts for words that start with the "d" and "b" sounds.
• nigh-nigh for sleeping
• ba for ball (it's almost ball, but not quite)
• more (sounds like mah-r)
• eye
• arm
• oh, wow! (This one cracks me up. She must have heard me say this phrase.)
• mmannamm (she said this to mean her lamb)
• uh-oh

She does a lot of sound effects for words.

• for dog she says "woof"
• for car she says "beep, beep"
• for sneeze she says "aaa-choo"
• for cow, horse, duck, she makes their animal noise
• for train she says "choo-choo"
• whenever she hears a phone ring, she starts saying "hi! hi! hi!"

I feel like her understanding and communication level surpass her ability to articulate right now. So she has a very limited amount of sounds that she can reproduce, but she's communicating with the few sounds she has, gestures, and facial expressions pretty clearly. And her favorite method of communicating is still a high-pitched scream. It's very effective at getting people to look at her out-stretched hand.