Language development

Henry's language development simply continues to amaze me. It seems to be all that I write about these days, but it is truly what is growing and changing so rapidly for us right now.

What I has intrigued with his language is the different ways he seems to add new words to his vocabulary. For a long time, he would watch very carefully as you would say a word he was interested in and try to imitate the exact movements of your lips or tongue in order to replicate the sound. Rarely, do I notice this intense watching now, sometimes he does it when we are singing, instead he just seems to say the sounds. He has built enough sounds into his memory well enough now I guess.

Now, the new words seem to come in one of two ways. Most of the time he will just repeat back a word you have just said, then it will be in his vocabulary for use. Occasionally, he will ask for the word to be repeated, it seems like a little reminder to him about the word and then he will say it.

The second way is for a word to just seem to appear in his vocabulary that he has never used before as if it has always been there. An example, is the word porch. We had never heard Henry say porch, but the other night at dinnertime, we asked him to set the table. We gave him forks and pointed to the dining room table and said to put them out. He took the forks and headed for the door saying porch. He wanted to eat on the porch and we did by the way. It is just amazing to me that he has been observing and then can just fill the appropriate word at the right time.

Enough of my talking here are the new words if anyone actually cares besides us:

window
shirt
porch
shave-sav
George
bus