Communication

So, when we went to Riley's 12 month checkup, Riley's pediatrician asked all sorts of stuff about Riley's development. Riley "passed" with flying colors, with the pediatrician only slightly concerned about Riley's communication skills. It seems that Riley had been so focused on developing other areas, that her communication was lagging. At the time, she really didn't say anything (ma-ma; da-da), nor did she point to something she wanted.

We weren't too worried though. As I said, Riley really focused on reaching milestones in other areas. She now has 11 (!) teeth and is walking up a storm... running is not too far behind! Just to see, we looked at this checklist for 12-14 month olds. In the areas of social development, fine motor skills, and gross motor skills, Riley met/exceeded all of the milestones. I say exceeded as well as met, because in the area of gross motor skills (which mainly dealt with walking), Riley had met those skills when she was about 9 months old. It didn't even ask any questions about walking unassisted.

Anyway, the pediatrician asked to work with Riley on having her try to communicate to us what she wants. It's been going pretty well. It sounds like Riley is saying ma-ma, da-da, and hi. She has also started pointing to objects.





Here you can see that she's ready to point to something at all times!


Now she will point to a picture in a book and ask us "That?"(albeit not very clearly). She understands a lot... we can ask her to sit down or to go get her ball and she will. She is also letting us know more and more when she wants us to do something for her, be it putting on her shoes, wanting a snack, etc. We haven't gotten a good video of that yet, but we're working on it! To tide you over, here's a clip of Riley "singing" and dancing, which is super cute. At the end you'll see Riley transferring washcloths into the top of the diaper champ, one of her favorite pasttimes.




So, that's about it. Riley's a little over 22 pounds at this point, and is probably somewhere around 31 inches in height. She's almost 3 feet tall! Yowza!