It seems like, as soon as I wrote the last post about Apollo’s language skills, they took off exponentially. Or was he already further along than I had noticed? It reminded me of when I went into labor with him. I called my midwife; she asked me how far apart my contractions were; I told her that I guessed they were about 20 minutes apart. We hung up, and once I paid attention to their timing, I realized that they were more like 3-4 minutes apart. So, now, with Apollo. I remember that he actually spoke first word last June. My cousins, Gavin and Charlotte, were visiting from England. Charlotte offered him a banana, in her beautiful English accent. He said, “anana.” Fast-forward to the present. He now calls both his father and grandmother by name: Jonah is “papa” or “deh-deh;” my mother is “namama” or “nama.” Obviously we sometimes need context to determine whether he is saying nama or mama. The former is a derivative of Grandmama, which my niece Isabella calls my mother, and so we identify her to Apollo, for the sake of consistency. He also says “hot,” especially when telling us that food is too hot or asking if it might be too hot. It sounds like “height.” He has also been saying “dag,” Dutch for both hello and goodbye, while waving goodbye. And he loves to say “eyebrow”—ah-bwow. When we identify all his body parts, I say their names and he points to them, or vice versa, but whenever I say eyebrow, he repeats it.
The best thing is that this week he spoke his first sentence. It was bedtime. I was sitting on the bed, and he was standing beside it, enjoying his last moments of the day before climbing in. I said, “I love you.” He looked at me intensely and said, “Ah yuv you.”
Ah yuv you! His first sentence! What a nice first sentence for a lifetime, I think! What more do we need, really? Sure, I know that the content of that sentence is probably far too abstract for a 22 month baby to understand, and that he was likely mimicking form. That said, he is such a loving and affectionate little boy that it seems perfect that he would express with words at his earliest opportunity what he has expressed with hugs and kisses for so long.
He’s making many new sounds, carrying on long conversations with himself and his toys, and attempting to communicate verbally all the time. It has really taken off in the last week. He has also asserted his will more strongly than ever before. He knows what he wants, with great specificity, and tries very hard to make it happen. He turns bright red and screams or cries if it does not. This week I was reading a book about the brain. It mentioned that the left lobe of the brain is responsible for speech, and also for the assertion of will. It’s interesting that, in the week that his speech advances rapidly, his will does so as well.
Thanks for checking in. Ah yuv you!
What a perfect first sentence! Thinking of you and wishing you the best
Posted by: carosgram | April 13, 2009 at 11:14 AM