Kitty Stuff

Margot is a walker, not a talker. Actually, she's a walker, runner, pianist, jumper, screamer, sleeper, eater, player, drawer, and signer, not a talker. Basically, she does everything a normal almost-two-year-old does, aside from talk.

She's gotten very good at signing now. She's started putting three signs together at a time, singing "Daddy," "socks" and "all done" which translates roughly to, "Daddy, please take off my socks." I'm sure if we were still teaching her new signs, she'd come up even more interesting things to say.

We're not teaching her new signs because her doctor said that she may be relying on signing to communicate so she doesn't have to talk. Her signing vocabulary is adequate to communicate pretty much everything she needs, so we thought we'd leave her with the 40-50 signs she already knows until she starts talking.

Until this week, adequate seemed good enough. But through the sore throats and the running noses, it looks like we're getting some talking going. She's spoken about 15 words once or twice and then stopped, but now (in addition to "Mama" and "Dada") she says with regularity "Kitty" and "Stuff."

She speaks the word "Kitty" because cats fill her with such glee that signing alone cannot convey her joy when she sees one. That much is obvious. But I'm not sure why she says "stuff." Normally when you ask to say a word, any word regardless of consonants, vowels, or syllables, she says, "Dah." But when you ask her to say "stuff," she does (in her toddler way). I guess it is a pretty useful word.

So we're finally starting down the talking road. I know everyone says that once she starts we'll wish never had, but if I ever feel like that, I'll try and remember a time when we were afraid we'd have to put her in a special home for toddlers who refused to talk.