words

It's been a while since I updated about the girls speech and other developments...so thought I'd do this list style. One list for each girl

Katelyn is really chatty. She can repeat/copy quite a few words back to us, and has a growing list of words she uses everyday.

• stop
• eat
• no
• all done
• baby
• nite nite
• baba (used for bottle or cup)
• bye bye
• mama/mommy & dadda
• hi
• owie (she says owie, no, owie when I want to change her clothes or diaper)
• uh oh
• mine
• shhhh (she loves to sush her siblings)
• whoa & weee
• taykoo (thank you)
• puppy
• key (kitty)
• bee bee (binky)

I'm sure there are a few more that I am leaving out. We are working on her saying Mady, she is getting good at saying mammy for Mady. And we try to get her to say Jacob & Aaron but she hasn't gotten it yet. Her language skills are developing more and more each day! There's a lot of gibberish that she says that I wish we could understand. She carries on and on sometimes in such a serious way, and nods her head and shrugs her little shoulders while in conversation. She still loves to yell, and scream and is very vocal while protesting to something. She also talks to her babies in the same gibberish, while feeding them babas and carrying them around all over the house. But I think her most favorite activity of all is trying to boss her sissy around. She thinks she's the boss, and yells at her and takes things away from her A LOT! And you can tell by her tone that she's trying to boss her around when they are talking in their own little language. It is very funny to hear them carry on in gibberish to one another, seemingly understanding each other's every word.

So now on to Madelyn. She has made some great speech developments in a pretty short amount of time. She's no longer silent that is for sure! She has gained so much sound, and so much volume to her little raspy voice.

• mommy/mama & dada
• baba
• no
• bye
• hi
• uh oh
• whoa
• takoo (thank you)
• nite

Most of her vocabulary still consists of mostly sounds rather than words. She has become fluent in gibberish, and really tries to make conversation (especially with Katelyn). We really believe that Mady would be even farther behind in her speech if she didn't have her sissy to converse with and teach her things. She has learned many sounds from listening to Katy. Her therapists also believe that Katelyn helps Madelyn with a lot of the developmental issues that we work on. It's actually quite therapeutic to have a twin to play and learn things with! Madelyn's personality has changed a bit over the past few months. She's no longer as quiet and reserved (at least around us). She now has become a bit of a bully, throwing things and hitting people. We are trying to teach her that kind of action is unkind, but it's like talking to...well a 2 year old! She's still very much a baby in so many ways that it really surprised us to see this kind of aggressive (very toddler) behavior. It's obviously a communication thing, and she does it out of frustration. In some small way it's nice to see her kind of fight back and not just take it when Katelyn knocks her over and takes her binky. We are actually working with her therapists to develop a visual type of communication for her. It will consists of pictures of needs and things that she can easily identify and point to, or bring us to communicate. Hopefully that will help her frustration with not being able to tell us what she wants or needs. So we are very excited to have that prepared and ready to implement during her next therapy visit.

We are also working on weaning both girls from the bottle. They are both drinking very well from a sippy cup, so now the only reason for a baba is for comfort. They are now having only 2 per day. One before nap, and one before bedtime. Soon we will cut the naptime one, but I think the bedtime bottles will be the hardest to cut out. They love to snuggle with us right before bed and drink their babas. So we will see how it goes. Binkys are a whole nother story. I'm in no rush to get rid of those things. And I am not ashamed!

MadyKaty

Well that's all I've got for now. Peace!