You're Welcome!

Audrey has amazed us all at her grasp of speech, words, and understanding language. For the past few months at first try, with almost no struggle, she can say almost any new word, big or small, that we ask her to repeat. We laugh & praise her when she says it correctly, and she lights up at the joy of learning something new. It's so fun to see. She makes us both amazed and laugh at all the new words she has learned and continues to add to her growing vocabulary.

One thing we had read when she was very little was the benefits of teaching babies sign language. At a very early age it can enable a youngster to "communicate" with their hands and gestures until they have the ability to use their little voices. I bought a great sign language video "My Baby Can Sign", and we've enjoyed it since Audrey was about 9 months old.

She quickly grasped certain helpful signs and some silly ones too:

please..more..help..diaper..all done..baby..apple

monkey..giraffe..Daddy..Mommy, etc..

By 15 months, among the 15 signs she knew she also had about 50+ actual words she was saying, which literally increased daily. I stopped writing them down halfway through 16 months since she was saying so many I could hardly keep up! Nowadays her sentences are getting longer and her word structures are making more sense. We have very little to compare her too, being that she is our first child, but from all the comments from family, friends, strangers and our own parental pride, we think she's a pretty smart girl already :) We are just so proud of her, and love that we are able to communicate with her more and more these days!

(Plus it makes us laugh daily at how much of a little person she has become!!)

Being that she can actually SAY so many words now, I have been trying to get her away from using some signs she still goes to. "Please" and "Thank You" are familiar signs to her and when asked to say either one, she will use the sign instead. It's great--she is using that as her way to communicate--but I really think now that she can SAY those things, she should try to. So lately, I have really been trying to switch over from signs to speech. The only problem is that she is sometimes too smart, and her understanding of how things are said, and what words are supposed to go together sometimes gets confused.

Here is a typical conversation between us these days that I wanted to put on record since it's so darn cute, and I know once she figures it out I might forget these precious little sayings of hers... For example:

Mom: "Do you want some fishy crackers?"

Audrey: "yeah"

Mom: "Can you say please?"

Audrey: does the sign for please...

Mom: "No can you say it? Say 'please!' "

Audrey: does the sign for please...then "peas!"

Mom: "Good job Audrey!! 'Please!' Ok, here you go....

Now can you say thank you? Say 'Thank you Mommy!' "

Audrey: "You're welcome!"

Haha...The thing is she says "You're Welcome!" so sweetly, and so matter-of-factly--usually as she's walking away--I think she truly believes she is helping Mommy in some way each time she says it. I hardly correct her it's so darn cute. :)