Talking at 10 Months

Gwen's language development has really impressed us over the past few weeks. At only 10 months old, she already knows several words. Sometimes she needs prompting, as you'll see from the video, but she says these words accurately and clearly enough on her own that Megan and I are confident that she not only can say the words, but also understand their meaning. For example, every time we're at the store and Gwen sees another baby, she points and says, "baby!" (even though it sounds a little more like "meemee.") When we walked outside this morning the first thing she did was look straight up, point to the moon, and say "moon!" When she sees a picture of a cow, she says "mmmm" which is as close as she can get to "moo." In one of her books there is a picture of a Dalmation, and Gwen will often say "mmmm" instead of "dog."

She's not always accurate (the worst is when she says, "baby" instead of "Dada,") and you'll see in the video that she doesn't quite get "ball," but we've been amazed with her verbal skills for a 10-month old.

I've been trying to teach her to play the note "C" on her piano. She hasn't done it yet, but she nearly nails it in this video (she hits the "B.") What she does do now, though, is to use her index finger to play a single note when I ask her to play "C."

pictures

One-handed walking

This is from about a week ago. She's getting close, I think.

Spring Gardening

This afternoon Gwen helped Megan clear out the winter crop and plant some tomatoes. (As a reminder, you can click on the photos to see a larger version.)

Birds

Nine-month-old Gwen is growing up too fast now for me to keep up with the blog postings. Her cognitive development and comprehension of language are very impressive. At least to her mom and dad. We're regularly blown away. She understands so many words now. Here are just a few of the things to which she responds successfully:
Can you clap?
Can you give mom/dad a hug? (we love this one!)
Can you kiss the _____? (she'll kiss just about any character in a book or stuffed animal, etc.)
Where is the sky? (she points)
Do you want to dance? (she bounces and cackles with excitement)
Do you want water/milk/broccoli/yogurt...? (she knows the names of the foods she eats)
and her latest favorite...
Do you see any birds?

Gwen seems to be taking after Pops with her fascination with birds. She loves to find birds in the sky and point at them. These are some pictures from Wednesday evening.

Gwen's latest

(8 months and 5 months)
Anyone else think she's starting to look a little more like Dad?




One of Gwen's newest tricks is to clap her hands when we say, "Can you clap?" She's been clapping for a while, but this week marked the first time she was doing it regularly without anyone modeling the clapping motion. I thought this was a very exciting development and an early indicator that Gwen probably understands a lot more of our language then we realize. Unfortunately, I don't have a good video of that, yet. She's been copying more sounds lately, though, so here's a short video of that, along with some new photos from this weekend.