Monday, October 1

Julia’s vocabulary has outpaced her physiological ability to make different sounds, so as she says more and more things, it becomes more difficult to determine what she’s saying. She has 75 words as of the end of September. Many of her B and P words sound the same, so it is difficult to tell “bubbles” from “button,” “belly button,” “blueberry,” “pretzel,” and sometimes “baby.”

Saturday, October 6

Julia has said a number of new words in the past few days, mostly focusing on objects in her everyday environment, including “pen,” “book,” “paper,” “clothes,” “blocks,” “toys," “diaper,” “sand,” and “watch,” (the latter said out of the blue — we didn’t even know we’d used that word around her very much!) She is now adding about five new words each day. However, Josh and I are also learning new words. Today in the park, Julia saw an airplane fly overhead. She pointed at the plane and exclaimed “ah-DAY!” and when we replied, “airplane?” she repeated “ah-DAY!” We realized she had been saying this word for some time, but we had not known what it meant. At home later, she heard an airplane fly by, ran to the window and pointed up, saying “ah-DAY!” I replied “yes, you heard an airplane,” and she was so excited that she grabbed an airplane-shaped puzzle piece, ran over to me, held it up, and gleefully proclaimed, “ah-DAY!”  Julia was clearly delighted that her dumb parents had finally figured out what she’s been saying all this time. The same thing happened with Cheerios, which we finally realized were “DAH-dees.” 

Monday, October 8

Julia had her second trip to the emergency room yesterday (I think she’s now had as many ER trips in 15 months as I have in 33 years. Somebody call child services!) Although she does a number of dangerous things every day, she was doing none of them when she got injured; she tripped while walking around the living room and cut her face on a metal wastebasket. The cut was close to her eye, which was scary, but once we realized her eye was okay we were calm. Although it was not a large cut and was not bleeding profusely, it wasn’t closing up so we suspected she needed stitches if we wanted to avoid a scar. Julia was very brave during her trip to the ER, although she was pretty mad while receiving the three stitches, despite the rousing rendition of “Old MacDonald” Josh and I offered up.

Saturday, October 13

Julia has slowed down on new words somewhat, although she has been repeating a lot of words recently, so we think she’s processing what she’s learned and preparing for a new onslaught soon. She has a particular interest now in the people she knows. On Tuesday, she saw a picture of Nancy,  Jerry, and Josh and began pointing excitedly, saying “Ba-Pa! Ba-Pa!” I brought her over closer to the photo and she indicated Ba-Pa, Ba-Pa, and Daddy, so it seems she’s using Ba-Pa to mean both Grampa and Gramma at this point. She also happily echoes “Spike” (“Fite!”), “Annie” (“Ah-eee”), “Nick” (“Natc”), “Cheri” (“Shewwi”), “Nana,” and “Papa” when we talk about them. One of her favorite new games is to bring me her toy cell phone for a pretend call with one of her family members. I have an animated conversation with the person while Julia repeats their name happily, then she takes the phone to talk for a moment before handing it back to me for another call.

Thursday, October 19

Julia’s pronunciation of many words is improving. “Bunny” suddenly sounds like bunny, and I’m sad to report that the cows no longer say “meeeeee,” now they say “moo.” (“Meeeeee” was really cute, and I’m not sure we ever got it on tape.)

We also have clear evidence that she is a genius (as if we didn’t all know this already). In the park today, I was telling someone that Julia knows two numbers, two and five. She knows “two” because we count to three when she gets in the swing, pulling the swing back farther on each count before letting go on “three.” When you put Julia in the swing, she will say, “two ... two ... twooooo!” imitating my counting. She also knows “five” in the context of  “give me five,” and will hold up her hand saying, “five?” when she wants to play. When she was in the swing yesterday as I was talking to another mom about her two numbers, I thought I should show Julia the connection between the two. I counted to three, and then tacked on “four ... five.” Julia quickly added, “six!” as the other mom and I looked at each other in shock. I tested this a number of times throughout the day and confirmed that she clearly knew that six came after five. 

Unfortunately, I was unable to get this amazing feat on videotape, and it may be some time before I can get any decent video of Julia again. When I got out the video camera to film her, she immediately came towards it saying, “Baby? Baby?” She clearly wanted me to turn the view screen around so she could see herself. When I did, she moved right up to the camera to touch the image of herself. So no more video, except for close-ups of the left side of her head. Oh well.

Sunday, October 28

Julia’s vocabulary has doubled in the last month, hitting 150 words today! Recent additions include elephant, yucky, wallet, and pumpkin.