1 Word = 1 M&M
The twins keep hitting new milestones. Tory has graduated to a crib. Ian would join his brother in the same crib but his bilirubin level requires him to stay under the lights and continue working on his tan by himself. They’re both eating from a bottle at every feeding. Their current ration is 35ccs per feeding. Ian consistently eats at least 30ccs by the bottle; Tory consistently takes at least 20ccs. The battle isn’t so much training them to eat by bottle anymore, it’s keeping them awake and energetic long enough to take their whole bottle every three hours. A few nurses are throwing around the “h” word, so hopefully they’ll soon be awake and energetic every three hours in our bedroom.
The twins aren’t the only ones hitting milestones though. Big sister Abbie just hit 18-months, the big one-point-five. She’s currently attacking the toughest milestone she’s faced yet: Speech. That one is taking her far too long to master, as opposed to say the milestone of throwing a temper tantrum, which she learned about and maximized its efficacy shortly after discovering that we keep the Wheat Thins on a shelf just out of her reach.
The doctor at her 18-month check-up gave us a handy sheet of milestones she should have achieved by now. It said she should be able to say at least four words right now. That is an absolute minimum for her age; most of her peers say more than that, and some say a lot more. I’ve heard stories from parents who swear their child was talking long before 12-months, and by 18-months could recite over 100 words referring to the family, common household objects, and every American president except James Buchanan because they’ll be dead in the cold hard ground before any child of theirs recognizes that amoral national disgrace. Abbie can’t do that, but she does hit the minimum, albeit barely, and then only if you count signs and don’t require her to say anything unprompted. Unlike most peers, her list of words is short enough to fill out a hastily written blog entry.
“More” and “book” are the only two spoken words she knows. She learned those months ago as they refer to the most important things in her life: Food, as in “more food,” and books, as in “read this book to me, and don’t force me to speak again you prick.”
Recently she added “uh-oh” to her repertoire, but I don’t think it qualifies as a spoken word because she doesn’t say it correctly. The “oh” sounds very accurate for a girl with a vocabulary I can count on my fingers, but her “uh” is an inhaled squeak. I’d be more thrilled about her learning this sound if it had any purpose in the English language, say if a local sports team changed its nickname to the Fighting Uhs. Still, she find plenty of use for the word, such as letting me know that she just threw food or a sippy cup on the floor for the 7,002,867th time in one meal. It’s a good thing that noise is cute or she’d annoy me at mealtime. Moreso.
Her signs are “kiss,” where she makes a kissing sound with her lips, “me,” where she points to herself, “dog,” where she pants, and “hair,” where she points to her hair. She even has her first homonyms, “up” and “hooray,” where she throws one or both hands in the air to mean either. We need to clarify those two. I might be able to count “clap,” where she claps her hands, and “bounce,” where she bounces on her bottom, but those seem more like commands for a rousing game of Simon Says than useful signs. Today she added “eat” to her signing vocabulary, where she brings a hand to her mouth like she’s eating something. I’d been trying to make her pick up this sign for months with no luck. Then today we tried making her sign before giving her M&M’s, and miraculously she learned to make that sign unprompted in about 41 seconds. Chocolate apparently motivates better than Tasteeos.
So in the broadest sense, she knows 11 words. All it took to reach this point was a lot of hard work, a little patience, and buckets of cash to buy learning aids and candy. I guess all children have to have something for their parents to fret over. Abbie is making us fret over her speech. Hopefully the twins won’t make us fret over when they come home. I’m getting too used to sleeping through the night.
The twins aren’t the only ones hitting milestones though. Big sister Abbie just hit 18-months, the big one-point-five. She’s currently attacking the toughest milestone she’s faced yet: Speech. That one is taking her far too long to master, as opposed to say the milestone of throwing a temper tantrum, which she learned about and maximized its efficacy shortly after discovering that we keep the Wheat Thins on a shelf just out of her reach.
The doctor at her 18-month check-up gave us a handy sheet of milestones she should have achieved by now. It said she should be able to say at least four words right now. That is an absolute minimum for her age; most of her peers say more than that, and some say a lot more. I’ve heard stories from parents who swear their child was talking long before 12-months, and by 18-months could recite over 100 words referring to the family, common household objects, and every American president except James Buchanan because they’ll be dead in the cold hard ground before any child of theirs recognizes that amoral national disgrace. Abbie can’t do that, but she does hit the minimum, albeit barely, and then only if you count signs and don’t require her to say anything unprompted. Unlike most peers, her list of words is short enough to fill out a hastily written blog entry.
“More” and “book” are the only two spoken words she knows. She learned those months ago as they refer to the most important things in her life: Food, as in “more food,” and books, as in “read this book to me, and don’t force me to speak again you prick.”
Recently she added “uh-oh” to her repertoire, but I don’t think it qualifies as a spoken word because she doesn’t say it correctly. The “oh” sounds very accurate for a girl with a vocabulary I can count on my fingers, but her “uh” is an inhaled squeak. I’d be more thrilled about her learning this sound if it had any purpose in the English language, say if a local sports team changed its nickname to the Fighting Uhs. Still, she find plenty of use for the word, such as letting me know that she just threw food or a sippy cup on the floor for the 7,002,867th time in one meal. It’s a good thing that noise is cute or she’d annoy me at mealtime. Moreso.
Her signs are “kiss,” where she makes a kissing sound with her lips, “me,” where she points to herself, “dog,” where she pants, and “hair,” where she points to her hair. She even has her first homonyms, “up” and “hooray,” where she throws one or both hands in the air to mean either. We need to clarify those two. I might be able to count “clap,” where she claps her hands, and “bounce,” where she bounces on her bottom, but those seem more like commands for a rousing game of Simon Says than useful signs. Today she added “eat” to her signing vocabulary, where she brings a hand to her mouth like she’s eating something. I’d been trying to make her pick up this sign for months with no luck. Then today we tried making her sign before giving her M&M’s, and miraculously she learned to make that sign unprompted in about 41 seconds. Chocolate apparently motivates better than Tasteeos.
So in the broadest sense, she knows 11 words. All it took to reach this point was a lot of hard work, a little patience, and buckets of cash to buy learning aids and candy. I guess all children have to have something for their parents to fret over. Abbie is making us fret over her speech. Hopefully the twins won’t make us fret over when they come home. I’m getting too used to sleeping through the night.
posted by Matt at
10:56 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, yes, the M&M trick. I also taught my 18 month olds "please" by withholding snacks until they said it. It sounds like "pls" (the word has no vowels for either of them) but they will say it for a pretzel.
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Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah, at 7:02 AM
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