Tess Vocabulary – at almost 21 months

Animal names continue to grow, though she still only identifies animals by their sound or some key aspect that she can identify. For example, for squirrels, she pretends that she's eating nuts, and that's her word for squirrel. For frogs, she says “jump, jump.” She grunts twice for a pig. “Eeee” is horse. She roars for lions and dinosaurs and bears. Butterflies and bees are both “bee.” And she'll clearly yell out, “a bee,” when she sees one. She can almost say “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Oh, and she can say, “owl” and "fish." (And she likes to mention that Baba (my dad) likes to fish.)

She loves animals. She will sit by herself and look through an animal picture book for a long time. I bought a magnetic board with lots of animal pieces for the wedding. It's a toy designed for 3 year olds, and I was a little concerned she wouldn't use it, but my hunch was correct. She doesn't use the toy as it's intended, but she will spend 20 minutes quietly pulling out the animal magnets and lining them up on the floor and then putting them back. It's her favorite toy right now.

Some other concepts are similar to the animal sounds one. Sleeping is called "nigh, nigh." Cameras are now called "cheeeese." "Bus," which she is super proud of herself for now being able to pronounce, can mean "play some music," because Wheels on the Bus was her favorite song for so long.

Just today, she started making more attempts to repeat words back to me. She said, “socks,” “bye” and she made a good attempt at “shirt.”

She has a very clear and adorable, "tank doo," which she offers at appropriate times without prompting. She doesn't understand "peeesss" as clearly, though she will repeat it when prompted.

She constantly walks around telling little stories. She'll talk about the coat she is wearing, and how it has a “hat” (hood) and how Mommy (I went from mama to mommy this month) has a hat, etc. Today when she was in her crib for her nap, she sat with her juice and pretended to offer it to other people, saying, “babble, babble, babble, juice.” And I swear it sounded as if she was saying, “do you want some juice?” She is very good at mimicking intonation, and so it often sounds like she is repeating a whole sentence back, though in reality, she's repeating the intonation and filling in whatever words she knows.

Her use of intonation makes her limited words very expressive. “da, da” means: daddy, bye-bye, driving, yes, and all done depending on her intonation.

She's still doing what I call speech dyslexia. Shoes are “ish.” Sit is “iss.” Phone is “oaf.” Jon is “na.” And there are a couple more that she consistently does that I can't recall right now. It's like she latches onto the sound she can clearly understand and then uses the vowel in front of it.

She cannot pronounce the “k” sound. So book is “boop.” I will just make the "k" sound for her, and she always makes a "t" sound when attempting to mimic it.

She learned the word "bow," though she pronounces it "bough," kind of like how you'd say "bow, wow, wow." She always points to her back when she says it, and then she tries to say "dress," because she got to wear a pretty dress with a bow.

She calls attention to actions or mistakes in books. She points out "booboo's" everywhere. She says, "uh-oh" when things aren't right. She'll say "whoosh" to retell how someone runs by. And she often will act out something to try and express to me what happened.

She learned the ABC song just last week from her new babysitter's kids. She LOVES this song now, and can actually sing a good part of it! She can clearly start “A, B, C” and then it gets fuzzier, but still recognizable up to about G. She knows S, and T, and when it comes to the “next time won't you sing with me,” she grunts something for each of the words and then chimes in with a crystal clear “me” at the end.

She acts and behaves as if everyone is going to understand her babble. She acts as if she's communicating, and laughs at her own jokes. She also mimics me in lots of little ways. When I put her to bed at night, I read my Iphone in the dark. So she has now started bringing a toy phone to bed, so that she can hold a phone while we nurse.

She's started to be interested in numbers. All numbers are "eee" for three. All letters are either "o" or "e." But she points them out and talks about them. She loves an I Spy book we inherited from Owen. She will sit with it by herself for a long time, and also loves to look at it with other adults. She's gotten good at playing the game, and I'm regularly amazed at the objects she will identify when I say, "I spy..."

In regard to other developmental changes, she is better at puzzles, though it really frustrates her when she can't get a piece to fit. She has a very low frustration level and will quickly erupt into screaming when something doesn't work. We have an on-going joke now about her shoes, because of this. 

When she first started trying to take her shoes off by herself, she would get so frustrated that she would scream out, and believe me when I say it was LOUD. I started saying, "keep trying Tess! You can do it, Tess!" in equally dramatic style. This would make her laugh and make her keep trying. Now she can easily get her shoes off, but she always stops right before pulling them off, looks at me, and makes a little scream. I respond with my line, and she laughs and pulls her shoes right off.

She's started to like coloring and painting a bit. She likes cleaning up from art projects more than doing them, but she will do them for a very short while. She doesn't like finger paint or getting her hands dirty.

We have been in a little soccer class for three weeks now. She is mildly interested in the activities, usually walking when everyone else runs. However, she loves the shirt with the ball on it, saying "ball" and insisting that she wear it whenever she can see it in her drawer. And she loves that she gets stickers when the class is over. After a lack luster class, she gets so excited when we sit down to sing the good-bye song and get stickers. She's the only kid doing all the motions for the song. I'm thinking maybe dance classes are in order when she's a little older.

She's extremely lovable and demonstrative right now. She loves to give hugs, kisses me all day long, offers kisses to friends whenever we say good-bye, offers kisses to dogs she sees on the street, and makes us laugh and smile whenever we are with her. (Except when she's driving us crazy, of course.) It's really a delightful age.