12 March 2014

I guess because Bobo has been so slow to talk, it's been really interesting to listen to him pick up more sounds one by one.  At first he was really good at 'b' words: baby and ball and bear and so on.  He learned to say his brother's name and then his parents' (although he still uses Mama and Papa interchangeably sometimes).  He picked up 'k' and said 'cat' instead of 'meow'.  He loves a book about an apple farmer we have, so he learned to say 'An' (Annie) and 'ap-em' (apple) and 'chuck' (truck).  Then he learned to say 'oo', as in 'moo' and 'ow', as in 'owl', and there's only been more and more sounds since then.  Yesterday he finally came out with a long 'oh' sound and came out with a name for his sister - now he can call her 'go-ko'. 

There are a lots of sounds that he still doesn't say - like 's'.  But he's learned to try to say anything, and we always encourage any effort on his part even if it doesn't really sound like anything.  He has enough sounds now that it's starting to be really rewarding, and he'll even try out some two-syllable words as well, like 'apron' (when he wants to help cook) and 'open' (this piece of candy).  He is great at repeating but we're still working on encouraging him to use his words that he's learning when he wants something.  Since he's learning so slowly, it's easy to see his progress step-by-step, and it's been so fun.