Evie has always been into music. She picks up lyrics at the drop of a hat (sometimes when you’d prefer she didn’t), and she sings snatches of songs pretty much nonstop. I wasn’t sure if this would encourage Oliver to sing, or discourage him from singing, since Evie kind of steals the show (what are big sisters for?).
Lately, however, Ollie has started to sing and pick up words to songs. It is so adorable! The thing that’s interesting is that he generally gets the tone exactly right, even as he is mumbling out some vaguely-word sounding noises that generally approximate the lyrics. So far his repertoire is mostly limited to “London Bridge” and “Hello” from music class, but he’ll randomly do snatches from other songs, usually related to whatever his big sister has been singing lately.
Oliver really loves music class, the way Evie did when she was his age (she’s sort of ambivalent towards it at this point). At the beginning they always sing the Hello song, and that’s what Oliver has really keyed in on. He even calls it, “Hello class.” He very frequently does the hand motions and sings, “Hello! Hello! Helllllooooooooo…Boom!” I never get tired of making him sing it.
In fact, his singing is just sort of indicative of his language growth in general. He surprises me at least once a day with a word that I didn’t know he knew. He keeps being more advanced than I give him credit for. For example, when the book has a picture with the label “sky” and Oliver points to it and says, “Clouds!” Or when he’s pointing to dog pictures and saying, “Doggie!” and then he points to a picture of a weinheimer and says, “Luna!” Has he even seen Aunt Rachael’s dog, or did someone just tell him once that the picture looked like Luna?
He’s also picked up one party trick, which we make him perform over and over again. We ask him, “Oliver, how old are you?” and he thrusts his finger into the air and shouts, “One! One!”
I’m not really sure how many words he knows now, but it’s definitely in the hundreds. You would think that with my vast adult experience, combined with being around Oliver all the time, I would always understand what he’s saying. However, Evie is the best Ollie interpreter. She often will explain something that I’m not quite getting. On the other hand, she’s very bad at interpreting things that he says very clearly, confusing him by repeating back the wrong word.
I’m sure there’s a research paper in there somewhere, but the moral of the story is, he’s talking like crazy (figuratively and literally, since most of his talking involves mumbling and referring to himself in the 3rd person).
Shane Halbach 