Lily is a month and a week past her second birthday, and it would be impossible to count the number of words she speaks, much less recognizes. Her ability to understand what you say makes it a tough age, because we are forced to censure what we say, even when her ability to comprehend isn't immediately obvious.
Her pronunciation can be rough. She says 'park' with a Boston accent - 'pawhk'. Words like blanket and blueberry can sound similar. Sometimes we just don't understand the word she's using -- typically because she has never said it before. She'll patiently repeat it, but has been forced to point out specifically what she's referring to, at times. It's because of this that we make it a point to repeat words, emphasizing sounds ('ch', for example) that she appears to have trouble pronouncing.
Her phonetic speaking ability is steadily improving. A suddenly clear 'F' sound for example - just happens overnight. One day she'll just start to use a word we have become familiar with in an updated, clearer form. So, 'o' became 'no' and 'Botha' becomes 'Brother'.
We don't just see her hone the speaking and fill up the vocabulary, but she also has begun to borrow mannerisms. So, the answer to a question isn't just 'yes'....it's 'ummm, yes'. It's hard not to laugh, because it's easy to hear us saying the same thing and Lily's rendition could almost be interpreted as satire (if she was capable of that).
The original multi-word combinations are probably the most impressive thing of all. She has combined words to create relatively complex sentences. So, she'll say "I want out of house mom" or "I want to ride [in] dadda's truck" or "Lily in daycare [and] Nate in [the] baby room".
None of this is really a surprise, because language is supposed to explode at this point. It is still a lot of fun to watch.
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