Taylor's Words.

If memory serves me correct, Taylor said her first words as early as four or five months. Her first babble … um … words were the ‘ol English standby “mum mum mum” and “da da da.” Yes. Despite the fact that since she had been six-months old when I began staying at-home with her her entire day while her mother was a work, she called for mommy first. At least I can brag that I heard her say it almost a full five days before Adrianne did. In addition, my version of this story is that she said “mum” first because I kept telling her that Mum was on her way home from work– forget that I incisively repeated “dad” everyday afterwards and she did not say repeat it for at least two more weeks.

By the time she was walking, around nine months, give or take a week, she was saying a few more single syllable words like “ca” for cat and “ou” for out. By twelve months, she had an impressive vocabulary. We all thought she would begin stringing words together by her sixteenth month, but that didn’t happen. In many ways, her language skills dropped off all together and she stopped saying many of the words she had been saying. The books I read all agreed that this was normal. Children at this age are rapidly developing fine and gross motor skills between the ages of 12 and 18 months and many times they stop speaking all together.

For months I have not paid too much attention to her vocabulary usage. I have been impressed by what she knows, what she can remember, and how well she follows directions, whether she can or chooses to verbalize what she is doing or not. However, the other day I spoke with three friends and family members over the phone. Each one asked the standard questions including “Is Taylor talking, yet?” My answer was and is “sort of.” She does know scores of words, and she even says quite a few. More importantly, she is beginning to string two or three words together. But what I did not know is how many words she actually knows.

A quick look online shows that between 12 to 18 months a child may be able to use upwards to twenty words. Incidentally, at 12 months a child may only know up to five words; at 14 months a child may only acquire two additional words into their vocabulary reservoir; but by 24 months a child may know up to 200 words, although they may only use 50 to 75 of their known words. Sufficed to say, I was thoroughly impressed when, over a two-day period, I wrote down every single word Taylor used and understood. For example, she knows the word “pacifier” but has yet to say it. Taylor’s word usage, as of January 16, 2009, is 125 words. For those keeping track, that’s well over the average 50 to 75 words suggested by the online site I quickly reviewed this afternoon, www.babycenter.com.

For posterity sake, here are the words in the order she said them to me over the two days: mom, dad, Simon, grandpa, grandma, stitchy (our cat), baby, out, go, up, wall, bottle, more, no, stop, kitty, candle, light, on, snow, pen, two, purple, blue, green, Taylor or “T”, meaning I or me; shoe, book, down, cold, socks, shirt, pants, diaper, shoes, jacket, hair, comb, hands, song, truck, van, chair, five, mickey, as in Mickey Mouse; nap, Mary, flower, leaf, fish, water, juice, pasta, milk, cracker, dog, cat, pig, guitar, sleep, train, mine, cup, boots, block, duck, car, octopus, bird, ball, lobster, bug, rat, man, camera, airplane, glasses, powder, boat, battery, broke, door, hat, turtle, lion (she says “roar” instead, but we know what she means), elephant, mittens, mouse, window, apple, watch, horse, bee, bear, owl, zipper, snap, egg, button, six, cheese, phone, popcorn, bib, pick, cold, poop, pee, bye-bye, put, rubber band, spoon, ruler, off, brush, Rody (her rocking horse), inside, away, sun, moon, yes, butt, toast, chocolate, and read.

It is important to note that she cannot correctly pronounce all the words on the list. For example, Taylor’s word for grandpa is “gra-pa,” short the “nd.” Just the same, she will only say “gra-pa” when she’s shown a picture of my father or when she answers the question, “Who made this for Taylor?”– referring to her wooden chair or wood-turned bowl or box.

Is Taylor speaking? Sort of. She’s close; she’s getting there. We’ll see what happens in a month or two.