Month Eight

This month we have witness an explosion of language which makes this Speech Therapist Mama proud!  Lottie uses signs to communicate with us, she signs 20-30 different signs regularly but knows at least 50 signs (mostly nouns- animals are her favorite). She understands most simple directions-"like get your shoes, where's Elmo? and let's go bye-bye" but until lately her only words were Elmo and Lola ( her grandma- although for the longest time she uses Lola to refer to phone- ha! tells you who Mama talks to all the time). 

Honestly, I was torn the Mama side of me felt she was making good progress and I didn't want to push her, but the Speech Therapist side of me was getting extremely nervous knowing her receptive language was improving but her expressive was severely delayed  

(like age appropriate of a 9-12 month old baby).  Of course we would expect a delay due to her cleft palate but we still would expect more babbling and attempts to use more verbal language.  We had heard her make sounds but she was not making the connection to use as speech.  All of these speech milestones are so important as little ones develop speech and language skills.

I am glad I followed my Mama instincts to give her some time, because sure enough it did come!  Lottie is now imitating and babbling many new sounds.  She is saying Elmo, Mama, Dada, Hello, Bye,  No, and More.  She is making more animal sounds- which is an important speech skills as well!  I am so proud of her! Hearing her use words especially hello and bye just makes my day!  I cannot wait until her palate is finally repaired and she will really be able to talk!  Something tells me given her outgoing, happy, and funny personality we are going to be hearing many funny stories in our future.