Kuhgee, ugh and tee
Okay, maybe you didn’t get that title? Let me help you out a bit. Oscar threw me for a loop on Saturday when he gave me the greatest Christmas present ever. Not one, not two, but THREE – yes three! – brand spanking new words. All in about 45 minutes and all with the one common link that is almost guaranteed to keep my little guy trying to talk. Food. He is definitely my child.
We were lounging in bed late Saturday morning, which we almost never do, but I was exhausted because someone (you know who you are) lured me onto F@cebook and I stayed up far too late playing around there. Oscar crawled back into bed with me to tell me he was hungry (signing), so I asked him what he wanted to eat . . . “do you want scrambled eggs? can you say egg? I know you can say egg. . . “ You know, my standard drill, but for some reason something was different Saturday, and instead of pulling me toward the kitchen and grunting, he just looked at me with a sly smile and there it was – “ugh”. Egg!
Feeling a little cocky, I figured we would try for more. After some prompting, he gave me “kuhgee” (cookie) and when he was demanding to drink my tea, he came out with “tee.” After hearing the cheers in my bedroom for ughs, Nanny Norma joined us in the festivities, which I think helped in the motivation for saying cookie. Oscar is a bit of a ham and looooves the attention.
I’d love to say that he kept this up throughout the weekend, but we’re still stalled on the spontaneous speech front. He’ll say a few words (bye, ball, mama, no and oh no (when he’s scared; it’s really sad)) spontaneously, but usually his speech is just repetitive. But – he’s up to 22 words that he can say, which I think is awesome. The whole thing is really quite difficult, though. I’m starting to see why he doesn’t speak that much. It takes so much work to form a word. If I’m finding it mentally taxing, I can only imagine how difficult it is for him. He’s doing great, though. And even if we need to increase his signing ability to help us all on the communication front, I’m so happy each time I get to hear his sweet voice.
By the way, Kelley, thank you again (and again) for getting us started with signing last year. When Oscar went completely silent on me around the time he turned one and it seemed like he was never going to communicate, another mom of a little girl from Oscar’s orphanage encouraged me to start signing with him. I had thought the whole signing with infants thing was a little silly, but since I was scared he would never talk I thought I’d give it a try. He’s been signing for a long time now, but in the past six months or so it has become a truly effective means of communication in our house. I hate to think what our lives would be like if we had waited until Early Start suggested signing (in September of THIS year) to start doing it. Although I certainly hope we won’t face the same language issues with Baby Etta, we’ll be signing with her from the day we pick her up at the care center.
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