Next up, Spanish!

In the last week, Lola's verbal vocabulary has expanded from about 6 words to 30. This is comforting to me because even though I know that the rate of verbal acquisition can widely vary from child to child, it is hard to not compare her among other children we know that are close to Lola's age. It just seemed like all the other toddlers we know were able to use many more words than Lola.

For months she has pointed out objects in illustrations, and used sign language to answer our questions and communicate with us. She babbled and sang little songs in her Lola language. But, she refused to say mama. Or dada. Only Bubba was worthy of her words.

Slight veer off subject: I feel like there is a lot of weight put on the mother to "know" if something is wrong with her child. Even though I believe in mother's intuition, I also believe in mother's paranoia, and oftentimes I am stuck in these mental battles of, "Is my child just developing at her own pace?" versus "Am I imagining that my child is developing at her own pace, when instead, she is behind?" Because we all know that the best intervention is early intervention, and god forbid, if my kid needs help she is getting help the day that I realize she needs help.

So you can only imagine my relief when she started using verbal words to describe things.

Forget "mama" and "dada," Lola prefers to use our proper names. (Thankfully, not our first names.)

In addition to "mommy" and "daddy" she can now say:

Gizmo
car
ball
Andy
hug
Amy
hi
hug
doggy
puppy
up
eat
eye
bee
spoon
Baby B
cock-a-doodle-do (I know this is an animal sound, but I just can't believe she can say this. I feel like this counts as four words.)

And of course, she still says, all day long:

Bubba
whoa
ut-oh
baby