Chatty Kathy

Savannah is becoming quite the little miss Chatty Kathy!  She has dozens of comprehensible words in her vocabulary and she attempts to mimic just about any word or sound she hears someone say.  It's really cute.  She'll study your mouth while you say a word and then she'll imitate the movement of the lips and tongue.  The cutest is when she's trying to make an "L" sound because she just ends up playing with her tongue!  

What has aided this learning process the most, I think, is placing alphabet letters all over the house.  We have a set of magnetic letters on the refrigerator that she plays with while I'm cooking/cleaning in the kitchen.  There's also a set of foam letters in the bathtub that stick to the wall when wet.  She'll hold up a letter, I'll say its name, and she'll repeat it.  It also helps that a few of her favorite books are alphabet books. (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Dr. Suess' ABC's, and an ABC Toddler Bible)  She can now identify, and verbalize about 85% of the alphabet!  I took this video a couple weeks ago, and she's improved a lot since then, but this is the best video I have...

Monday morning we hit a new milestone....stringing two words together!!!  I should have place a bet on "bye bye Daddy" being her first "sentence," because I just KNEW it would be!  Savannah and I wave goodbye to Matt every morning as he gets on his motorcycle to go to work, and she has been saying "bye bye" for forever.  Monday she took it to the next level and had me and Matt jumping up and down in excitement.

The challenge we're working on now is overcoming the oh-so-convenient-10-months-ago sign language.  Mostly it's just "please" and "thank you," which she has been signing since she was 8 months old or so.  When we ask her to say "please," she will sign it...and she just does not understand when we say we want her to use her mouth, or that we want to hear the words.  She will actually now sign the sign for "please" and then point to her mouth and say "mouth."  It's cute, but I can't help wondering how long it will take to break her of this habit.