I thought it was time for a speech update (and in general, a Luca update). Speech has been going quite well for the last month or so. Luca has really taken to the private speech pathologist we visit once a week. She is quite firm with him, which has worked beautifully with his personality. He knows she doesn’t mess around and therefore he works to talk so he can play with the toys and receive snacks. Luca is a master bargainer and she gives him a run for his money.
So, here is what we now can do and what we are working on with speech. First, Luca has many more sounds. All of his vowel sounds are great! Woo Hoo! In addition, Luca can now say /m/, /n/, and /w/ sounds, in addition to the consonants he was saying in my original post. He can say each of these sounds with a vowel at the end. For example, “he,” “ha,” “ho,” “hu,” and “hi.”
Luca also has a handful of additional words that go along with these consonants. It is really exciting for him to utilize his words to talk. We practice his speech about once a day during snack time, but in general, Luca has been utilizing his new words throughout the day as well. Some of his favorite words right now are “blue” and “chick” for the King and Chick Hicks from Cars. He also loves to say “two” for Cars 2, his favorite movie. In addition, mama, dada, Pat, Sue, Tom, Be Bop (for cali), and mine are additional favorites. He can now count to three by saying “wa” “two” and “wee.” And he also has some additional words to help communicate his needs and wishes. And believe me, he communicates his needs and wishes!
We are currently working on words such as “daddy” and “mommy.” These words keep the same consonant, but change the vowel for the second syllable. Luca will often say these types of words, but skip the consonant on the second syllable. For instance, he will say “da ee” instead of “daddy.” Some words seem to come easier than others. Luca can say “purple” and “turtle” quite well (the l’s are silent, but usual for his age) but has trouble with many of the others words. We are also working on adding ending consonants to words. When Luca says “eat,” he actually only says “ea.” I didn’t even recognize this until we started working on this at speech. In fact, come to find out, I often skip the ending consonant when I talk as well. So, Luca and I are both improving this aspect of our speech.
And since Luca has made so many improvements, it has been fun to hear what he comes up with these days. For instance, the first week or two that he began saying “no,” he would say “no, no, no, no” in the most condescending tone I have ever heard. As if to say, “no mommy. How could you be so silly to think that I wanted this.” And my personal favorite has been his new phrase, “ahh shoo.” A few weeks ago I dropped something and said, “ahh shoot.” Luca, immediately responded with “ahh sheee.” Tyler and I couldn’t hold back our laughter. Here we are trying our hardest to get Luca to talk and he starts cussing. It was pretty hilarious. Since then, he now says “ahh shooo” and ironically in context. For example, we are currently in the process of redoing the floor in our kitchen. This weekend we had all of the chairs out of the room as we were pulling tile up. I asked Luca if he wanted to go upstairs and eat breakfast. He ran into the kitchen like he normally does, but then noticed his high chair was not there. He promptly stated, “ahh shooo.” Hahaha!
Here is Luca playing in the snow last week.
His favorite activity in the snow was making snow balls. Too bad that is Cali’s favorite activity as well. She kept eating his snow balls. It was a bit of a squabble between the two of them.
Cali had just as much fun as Luca in the snow.
