Lucas Speech Improves by Leaps and Bounds!

Lucas is just talking up a storm these days! His pediatrician seemed slightly concerned when at his 2 year well-visit, he wasn't really speaking in 2-3 word phrases. He would say phrases that he repeated after us - "Mama, where are you?" "baby night-night", etc. but he wasn't putting together phrases (verb and noun, or adjective and noun) on his own. She said we should give it two to three months and if we didn't see an improvement, we should consider speech therapy. Eric and I took this very seriously and immediately began changing the way we spoke to Lucas. Instead of asking questions that encouraged one-word answers, we began speaking to him and narrating in phrases. We also said that if we didn't see honest improvement within several weeks to one month, we would take the pediatrician's recommenation early so he didn't fall behind. And wouldn't you know - in true Lucas fashion - within 3 weeks he is truly creating his own phrases almost every time he speaks (which is basically all.the time.)! He has been learning many new verbs and adjectives lately, so we attribute some of his improvement to that. Today alone, some of the things he has told me - "Mailman gone" (after the mailman drove away), "Claire awake", "Light on", "Light off". One of the best "sentences" he stated a couple of days ago was, "Mimi take picture" while pointing to Grandma Connie's camera. He has also started to point out objects using their name plus a descriptive term - "yellow pepper", "pink flower", "two birds", etc. He amazes us every day!

Speaking of amazement - Lucas counted to 10 all by himself on Monday, 2/11!

And he now knows every letter of the alphabet by sight - both when you ask him, "what letter is this?" and "where is there an A, B, C, etc?" He also can tell you words that start with a certain letter. He knows that C is for Claire, P is for Pipal, L is for Lucas (he will sometimes say "my letter" when he sees an L too!). He has some funny associations with some letters too - if he sees an R, he'll tell you it's an R and then say "ring - Irene" (he must remember that my mom wears rings on her fingers). Lucas will also tell us the quanity of letters if he sees a sign or a book cover - one "L", two "A" (as long as the quantity doesn't go above 3!)

We could not be more proud of Lucas and his accomplishments with his speech, numbers, and letters! At this rate, he'll be reading at 3 years old, like his Daddy!!