The usual update

We have a couple of things to relate since the last entry. First, Kathleen was bitten in daycare. She was trying to take a toy from another child when he bit her on the arm. To tell the truth, you can’t blame him: he had it first. We need to start teaching Kathleen about sharing. It’s an uphill battle at this age since they're still very self-focused, but better now than too late.

Her vocabulary is expanding. She’s been saying beep-beep for a short while now – ever since DH bought her the big pink, plastic car. It sounds like she’s saying baby, but it’s bee-beee, bee-beee, bee-beee whenever she’s in that car or rolling one of her smaller toy cars across the floor . . . like this morning. I had a hard time stopping her long enough to get her dressed for school.

Her other word is boat. She has two boat books she likes to read through. There’s also a big model boat in the state Capitol Building next to the visitors’ center that she loves. We were cutting through the Capitol on the way to the car yesterday to avoid the downpour outside when she began saying bo’, bo’ about halfway down the hall. She knew that boat was coming up and she wanted to see it. She elicited a few smiles and a couple of chuckles from the small crowd of people coming down the hall in the other direction. That normally would have sent her racing back to me at top toddler speed, but she was so intent on seeing that boat that she never noticed.

Now, this might have been my imagination, but I think she said her first simple sentences two evenings ago. You have to understand that some of the things she says sound like words in their proper context but they’re really not. But the other day . . . I don’t know.

The first incident was when we were leaving daycare. We were walking down the sidewalk by the flower bed. There’s a bunch of groundcover and a few weeds. She spied a bit of tall grass in the middle of it going to seed. She walked right up to it pointing, and I swear she said “What’s that?” as clear as day. I could well be wrong. It may have been a few nonsense syllables that sounds like the actual words, but she’s at the age where they’re supposed to start stringing words together.

Later that evening while we were eating pizza on the deck (DH and I were eating: Kathleen was too busy playing), she did it again. She ran to the railing and yelled “Hi, Tickles!” when she saw the neighbor’s dog bound into view. Again, I’m not positive that’s what she said. It’s such a coincidence, though. Unfortunately, DH just missed it. He only caught my amazed reaction when he was coming back outside with a few drinks.

So is our little girl speaking in sentences? I’m just thinking about it. I wrote that I suspected a possible developmental spurt in the last post and a few weeks back. She had a lot of the signs. Could this be the result?