a little update

"A-peeeeeeeeeee!" says Shoghi, pointing at the sky. Planes are such an object of fascination and discussion in his world lately.

Max has woken up from a deep sleep twice this week, sitting straight up and calling out: "Chickie!!" Ever since we went to our little buddy Lanny's second birthday party almost two months ago and saw their chickens, we have been subjected to endless chicken talk from Mr. Max. How I wish we could afford to put up a chicken coop in our yard this year - I think the boys would really love it.

Funny words this week:

Max
monkey: moogie
Shoghi: Shoggy (like soggy)
flowers: fwa-sis
Mama: Ma-mee
Elmo: Melmo
chicken: chickie
"ouchie" is also getting a lot of play this week...
"I go pee-pee" and "take a bath" were his first 3-word combinations that emerged this week.
what does the rooster say? "a-dicka-doo"

Here are Laurie, Max and me, prompting Max a bit - he had been playing this little game of 1) pour out water 2) stomp in water 3) say "oh no." It was too cute to let slip by without a video.



Shoghi
Elmo: ama
kitty: kidda or just "ca" for cat
juice: do
plane: pee
diaper: boo-boo
bird: boo
cereal: see-da
butterfly: fa-da (also the word for fly)
leaf: wee
turtle: doo-da

Here's Shoghi last week, naming animals with me:



I'm so glad I let them watch Signing Time... Shoghi's language development is so much harder to understand than Max's, but he's using a LOT of signs, and uses them to clarify his words for us. This week, he will just go through a litany of seemingly unrelated words: leaf, train, plane, auntie, orange, hair... he's really acquired so much new language in the past month, it's incredible. Still, he got a referral to see an audiologist, and I'm going to take him in at the end of April. He confuses the hearing of many similar words, like sky and cry, duck and dog. While that could be totally normal, I want to make sure. His hard vowel sounds are starting to emerge - "e" is his strongest vowel sound.

saying and signing "go"

I forgot to tell you all months ago that I did take Shoghi to Early Intervention... geez, it seems like forever ago. Was it all the way last fall?? I'm sure it was September or October. I was concerned at the time that he might have some sensory issues, and didn't realize that EI would just be evaluating for developmental delay, which wasn't a concern. So, he tested just fine. Truthfully, I am still watching him with a close eye. He is a kinesthetic learner, which has been clear to me since he was born, so it may simply be that the way he relates to the world is so different from the way I do. And it's not that I feel like anything is "wrong" - I just want to make sure I offer things to him in the best way possible.

Meanwhile, Max has turned into our latest biter, and unlike Shoghi's long, long stint of social biting when he was really a baby, this biting is aggressive. Max actually bites Shoghi specifically to get the adult's attention about half of the time, and the other half he's biting because he's angry or frustrated. We've been trying some very basic time-out strategies with no success. I'm going to keep on with it, though, because I know he understands. He looks at me and actually says "no biting"... little smartypants!

More later - we're justting back into shape after a week of sickness!