Oh The Irony

A mere 2 days after posting the Baby Sign Language entry, a huge changed happened in Kiernan. On the 7th he went to daycare, and that night I swear we did not bring home the same little boy. Suddenly, and without warning he went from saying a handful of words to trying to say almost anything we coached him on. I spent the entire weekend combing his "My First Word" books and getting him to try to say various things when the pictures were shown. It was so awesome!

If I thought it was like flipping a switch watching kids go from immobile to crawling and/or walking, it is absolutely nothing compared to when they gain the desire and capability to speak. He was (and still is) a virtual sponge. It is almost a struggle to satisfy his remarkable desire to learn new words.

At the same time it is the most amusing thing to listen to him try to pronounce some words. I never tire of hearing him attempt though. "Elalel" (elephant) etc. are quite the hoot! It seems as though a number of words he says backwards - sun is "nus" for instance and ant is "nat".

There are other words that are accompanied by various gestures. For instance with the word top he does this little song and dance. I have yet to discover where he picked that up from. Then there is the ever amusing "AIRPLANE!" with the arms thrown up into the air each time he says it. He came up with that all on his own too. I guess he just really loves airplanes. By far the cutest though, has to be wolf. In our kitchen is a picture of a wolf given to us one Christmas by a college friend. Since the time Kiernan was very little we would point at the picture and tell him the sound the wolf made. He would do his best to mimic the howl as he threw his head back. Today, anytime he sees a picture of a wolf (any picture, not just that one) he refuses to even attempt to say the word but instead throws his head back and issues a little howl. Very cute.

So back to my point, I was correct in my last post. I would have to say his vocabulary has dramatically expanded over the last two weeks and he is now starting to make attempts to talk in short sentences. I must say I am dying to know if the other boys who are baby sign language die-hards are talking as much yet. It will be very interesting to find out, very interesting indeed.