Language

Leah is a very perceptive talker. I tried cataloging all her words one day to see how big her vocabulary is and had gotten to 300 words before comprehensively listing foods, vehicles, animals, clothing, or body parts among other things. Since then I know she's learned even more new words. Recent vocabulary acquisitions include "badge," "n.aked," "stack," "hide," "fort," and the verb "match."

We've also observed Leah applying the rules of grammar. For example, I've overhead the following self-talk which shows she can change tenses: "Don't drop it. I dropped it. I'll get it. I got it." She can give posession to things (Mommy's shoes, Daddy's shoes, Leah's shoes), and I've even heard her say "It's mine's." She can differentiate between a singular and a plural: take the cereal Kix (which she sometimes pretends are meatballs). When she finds a single piece by itself she says "Look, a kick!"

She can conjugate verbs. She'll say "I want to color" followed by "Leah's drawing a picture." She has an imagination to go with it and identifies for me the things that she is drawing such as an egg, a tree, a fishy, etc., but that's a story for another day. While its obviously good that she can combine words into a sentance, what does it mean if she talks about herself using the third person?

One thing she hasn't quite gotten a grasp of is pronouns, as I'm sure is the case with most toddlers at this stage. Standing at the top of the stairs she says "Me to carry you," since she's heard me ask her a million times "Do you want me to carry you?" Another thing we've noticed recently is that she always asks for "This." What do you mean "this?" I then pull out a box of cheerios and say "Is it this?" No wonder we're all confused! Everything is "this!"

She can count to ten all by herself without skipping any numbers (for awhile, she always left out four and five for some reason) and then counts 12, 14, 16. And thanks to Mary Poppins, she can even count backwards from 5. She numbers things that are in pairs, such as "two shoes," but she doesn't actually count things above two accurately--instead she just points while reciting the numbers in order.

She can do the alphabet with assistance and pieces of it in the song format, and always identifies letters anywhere and of any kind by saying "Look! ABC's!" When I ask her what color something is, she picks a color and guesses. At least she know that blue, red, purple, green, pink, and yellow are colors!