Language 'Splosion

When R decided to speak using words, it happened all at once. One day, a few weeks ago, she just started gushing out words. Her vocabulary tripled or quadrupled over night. It was crazy. Then a couple of weeks ago she started using sentences one day. Out of nowhere she was stringing words together. Somewhere in there she started describing things using adjectives. Last weekend I noticed her suddenly conjugating verbs. If we asked her what the dogs were doing, rather than saying, "Max run" or "Pru sit" as she had before, she started saying "Max running" or "Pru sitting."

Nothing is more amazing to me than her sudden ability to count. While we practice counting things as we put them away, we haven't actively worked on teaching R numbers. She's only 2, for Pete's sake. And for the past week she has enjoyed chanting, "One, two. One, two. One, two." We were never quite sure if she even knew those were numbers or if she was just practicing to be a drill sergeant or an aerobics instructor. Then, on Sunday morning, she and I were stacking blocks. In an attempt to stretch out the activity, I said we should count the blocks as we made a tower. R then counted along with me from one to ten. Thinking it was a fluke, after she destroyed the tower (she likes to ram them using just her belly, which is hilarious to watch), we did it again. And she counted again. Then we did it one more time.

Jeff had been at the dog park at the time, so when he and the canines returned, I asked R to tell him how many blocks we counted, not knowing if she would remember. She then started at three and proceeded to count correctly all the way to fourteen. We were blown away. Jeff had never heard her count beyond two before either. Apparently she isn't quite the zombie we thought she was when she watches Sesame Street.