I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Hannah’s posse, L-R:

• Mini Monkey – A gift when L.J. was born who is now minus most of his stuffing. (We still love him just the same.)
• Purple Hippo – A newer friend who became victim to an unfortunate spaghetti lunch at school and caused Mike to have a fit during pickup as a result. Oxiclean rescued our purple friend.
• Pinky (or Pinks) the elephant – A Christmas gift from Grandma and arguably Hannah’s favorite friend. Poor Pinks can never stay clean because she gets dragged everywhere.
• Raffi the Giraffe – L.J. picked out Raffi for Hannah before she was born. Raffi is the sentimental favorite and so well-loved the paci is half falling off.
• Polka Dot Giraffe – The newest friend in the bunch, welcomed with glee by Hannah and loved by me because polka dots.

Moving on: It turns out that 2 words may be “perfectly normal” at 17 months, but it’s abnormal at 18 months.

Our pediatrician said Hannah should have 10-15 words (or word attempts) at 18 months. At our appointment, Hannah had “Mama” and “Landon.” I added “Dada” even though she only says it occasionally. She also said that Hannah should be chattering to herself/her toys/other people even if it sounded like gibberish. She wasn’t doing that, either.

Her receptive speech is ahead of schedule. She understands most things, can follow 2-step directions and can identify some body parts – things the doctor said happen closer to age two.

She referred us to speech therapy for an evaluation, saying that they were probably going to laugh because Hannah clearly isn’t developmentally behind. However, as a precaution, we needed to make certain that Hannah’s expressive speech “delay” was because she wouldn’t talk and not because she couldn’t talk.

Our first step was to get rid of the paci except at nap and bedtime. Oy. Hannah wasn’t going to be any too keen to ditch her best buddies!

Her appointment was right before vacation, so our beach week also became “Operation Ditch the Pacis” week. Hannah did surprisingly well! As long as a.) they weren’t in sight and b.) she didn’t see us take them away, she was pretty ok with it. Whew! I think everything about vacation was enough of a distraction that she wasn’t thinking about them.

And as for expressive speech? She knocked it out of the park!!

She started chattering to herself and her toys, becoming a lot more vocal (though most unintelligible). And she said at least a dozen new words over the course of the week. I didn’t write down/remember most of them; was more keeping track that new words were coming. Among them were baby, ball, brother, duck, yellow, water, Grandma and dog.

‘Brother’ is my favorite and the one we now hear most often. So sweet!

So proud of our Sister Bear! I’m feeling hopeful that when I call the doctor’s office tomorrow we’ll get the all clear on the speech therapy referral.

(You better believe she loved on her buddies each time she got into her Pack ‘n Play!)

Also, for posterity’s sake, below is her preferred method of transporting her friends – one in her mouth, and one on each pointer finger: