Its no big secret we've got to go through speech therapy with our daughter. Kim, the lady who comes to the house and actually works with her for an hour each Thursday, has done a spectacular job so far. In fact, if we really wanted to no longer do therapy, there's a very good chance Evie would be fine, however they're afraid if she "fell through the cracks" and didn't continue, she may have a harder time communicating when she gets older.
So for the past week, anytime my daughter expresses a new word, I've taken to writing it down. I meticulously keep track, noting every single piece of her vocabulary, so that I can inform Kim when she stops by for the next session. Today I dropped about thirty new words on her, which blew her mind.
Progression continues.
The one thing I've noticed is, even though in the therapy sessions, Kim tries to get Evie to use sign language to express herself and associate motions with words, Evie only remembers one motion and one word: MORE.
How do I describe sign language? I don't have pictures here to illustrate this, so I'll just do what I can to describe what it looks like. Take your fingers, straiten them all out, and then try to touch all your finger tips to the tip of your thumb. Hold them there. Now, take your right hand in front of you and your left hand, and touch the finger tips of both hands together. Do this a few times while saying "more" and you've probably got it figured out.
If you do this around someone who actually knows sign language, and they laugh at you because you actually said something like, "Tomato Face," then I can't help you. You clearly read my perfect instructions incorrectly.
That's sarcasm dripping in that last sentence, by the way.
"More," my daughter says, along with the hand motions, when she wants more potato chips. More fries. More crayons. More Elmo on the t.v.
Greedy little booger.
With her vocabulary expanding, though, she doesn't even really use the sign language unless its during therapy. At home, with just me, Evie will say, "More" and point at what she wants.
If I were to imagine her thought process, it would probably go something like, "What's the word I get to make the big person do my bidding? Mow? Moe? Hmm... oh yeah. MORE!!!"
I typically oblige, but sometimes the jelly beans are mine. Now go sit down and finish your Sesame Street.
Not gonna lie here, I'm enjoying this. When she learns a new word, or a new sound, its like small trophies. The other day she brought me a plastic polar bear we bought her and said, "Ber. Roar."
I laughed. "Yep, ROAR!!!" And she mimicked it.
Here's the scary thing: a lot of the words she's saying? She's only heard them once.
Time to start spelling things...
