Liam Talks

We've been waiting for it for a while now. I know you are not supposed to compare siblings, but Xander began speaking at 9 months, had 6 words at a year, and then spoke in sentences at 18 months. Liam is nigh onto 17 months and occasionally graces us with "kitty" and "duck". It's a shocking difference.

At 15 months, I signed him up for a speech evaluation. It takes 5-6 months to get in for the evaluation and then to start speech therapy, if it is needed. School starts at 4 years old here. Actual Kindergarten. So it is important to stay on top of these things. And I figured it was better to get to 20 months and have the appointment for the speech evaluation and not need it, than need it, decide at 20 months to get on the list, then not get an evaluation until he was past 2 years old.

Then yesterday he started to make animal sounds. We have a little chicken mask, and he thinks it is a riot to get us to put the mask on him, so he can meander around the house, laughing. Yesterday he started to cluck at us too. Every time Ray put the mask on Liam, he would say "buck, buck, buck" to Liam. Now Liam gets the mask on and HE says "buck, buck, buck."

Last night at bedtime Liam was rummaging through the stack of books and found one of the animal books. We paged through it, named the animals and made their sounds together. In the course of 10 minutes he picked up chicken (buck), duck (quack), pig (snorting sounds LOL), and sheep (baa). Which is more than he has said in his whole 16+ months of life...you know, if you discount the plethora of screaming and screeching. This morning he would go nowhere in the house without dragging that book with him.

Talking and reading, all in one swoop. Awesome!