I love hearing new sounds, words, inflections, anything come out of Ella’s mouth. She has mastered momma, da da, cat, bye bye, gone and ba ba. She also much too often uses her famed grunt to let us know that there is something that she wants right NOW! She is fascinated with language and really studies our faces and voices as we point out new words in her books or in everyday life. She’s growing into such a bright little person right before my eyes.

In the past few weeks or so Ella’s added a few new phrases to her repertoire. ‘Hat’ is announced along with a pat on the head whenever she sees someone wearing a hat or she wants to wear one herself. Her funniest new saying is ‘Whoah!’ She says this through a bared teeth, cheeky grin and it’s most often yelled as pieces of food are being flung from her high chair tray. Above all, I’m most impressed with her latest saying: ‘Thank You.’ We had been thinking she was trying to say it for a few days, but just this week she clearly uttered those two polite, darling little words. They were in response to being handed two chocolate chips (one for each hand, of course!)

Perhaps it’s because she has a loud mouthed mommy who narrates every step of the day, or perhaps she just has a natural knack for words. The sign that we taught her as an infant; the sign for ‘more’, is now done with more finesse and at appropriate times. I view that as just as impressive as new spoken words. She has also started stringing together sounds with different inflections, as if she were creating a sentence. Watching her develop is simply amazing. I really think that we’re going to have a little chatterbox on our hands!
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