Alternately titled:
20 Months!
So yes, my baby has entered her twenties. In a way it's more significant than 18 months because you hear 18, you think "1 1/2 year old." But when you hear 20, your mind jumps up to "2 year old." Or maybe not you, but it's true for me.
So what's Adel up to these days? She's having a whole hullabaloo with therapy... we are having one replaced, another one came back from maternity leave... so we are splitting the sessions between her and the replacement therapist two to one. Plus the standard summer schedule changes.
In the meantime, I've been teaching Adel all about socks. I ask, "Adi, do you have... soooocks??" and her fingers jump down to her feet to pinch her socks.
Now that it's summer and she doesn't always wear socks, I didn't just abandon the lesson. After I ask her if she has socks and she tries to find them, I say, "Noooo socks!"
When dressing her, I put one sock on and leave one off and then show her "socks" and "no socks."
Soon enough Adi began repeating, "
Ak-h." Do I even need to translate? And if she's not wearing them, she says, "
Nueee." She's not always on target. She could say "nue" when she's wearing the socks or "ak-h" when she is not. One time she even said, "Nue ak-h!" No socks! I guess it's a sentence, although she is just repeating. But for Adel, repeating is not "just!"
We're not sure (and by we, I mean I and the therapists) if Adel really understands the words "no" and "socks" and all the other words she was taught. It seems to us that she is just being conditioned to respond a certain way. When she hears the word "socks" she knows to pinch the sock and attempt to repeat the word, but does she really know that this object has a name, and that name is "sock," or did she merely learn: hear word = do action?
When I ask where her mouth is, she does an Indian call. Because that's what she was taught. Does she understand that the organ making the sound of the Indian call is called a mouth or does she know: hear word = do action?
Whatever the case may be, Adel is showing great signs of progress. Even if she does just point to body parts because she knows she has to, as opposed to knowing that they have titles, it's still a great start.
I've mentioned before that she is eating more and more solids. That's awesome! She's still not chewing, but she is choking less and less. I am now breaking the baby grain puff snacks into two pieces as opposed to four!
These photos of Adi aren't from 20 months... more like 18. But they were too cute not to post.
At that time it was still unusual and novel to see her standing happily. She'd usually scream when we stood her up- she couldn't get down herself (even now, it's difficult for her to transition down from standing.)
But this time she stayed up so happily in this beautiful setting, allowing me to snap a whole stream of lovely photos. This one was my favorite!
