cupcakes and purple houses

huh??

These are the topics that Riley has been fixated on for the past week and the inspiration for his first 3-word sentences.

A little background... Up until a few months ago, Riley spoke only single words. With the help of his EI therapist, he began using some simple two-word combinations such as "Blue House", "More Bear" or "Ball Please". He didn't use these spontaneously, but would do so when prompted.

By the time his third birthday rolled around last month, he was using two word combinations without prompting. Usually these words were descriptive words -- and adjective and a noun such as "Big Mall" and his vocabulary seemed to increase by the week. We were very encouraged that he was on the brink of his speech explosion now that two word combos and two syllable words were coming out of his mouth throughout the day.

Well, ever since his birthday he has been talking about cupcakes -- a word that he says very well and enjoys saying (as well as eating!). He asks for them for breakfast, lunch and dinner on a regular basis and I remind him that they are for special occasions, such as birthdays.

Last Saturday, his friend CeCe was turning 4 and Riley was invited to her birthday party. I told him several days before that he would have cupcakes at CeCe's party. For the rest of the week he would say over and over "CeCe house cupcake!". When I realized later that the party would be at a local park he revised it to "CeCe park cupcake!". I'm pretty sure this is the first 3 word sentence that he's uttered. All it took was some sweet inspiration!

This sentence has given birth to others since then. We hung out at CeCe's house after the party and he made two observations that he has been talking about ever since. He noted that they had two A/C units ("CeCe A/C two!") and that her house is purple ("CeCe House Purple!"). I would answer back that yes, CeCe's house IS purple to try and help him complete the sentence structure. He answered back "Riley House Red!". Then he continued with "Mama car white!" and "Daddy car black!", so he's beginning to get an understanding of how to put words together in sentence form.

We're still working on the verbs as he is more interested in labeling with adjectives and nouns right now. But we're encouraged by all the words that he is spontaneously uttering and his willingness to try new words. After being such a quiet child, it's great to hear him talking all day long and to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

Besides counting things, he's getting into rhyming now. He came home from school about a week ago and started rhyming with words that end with the "op" sound: Hop, Pop, Cop, Mop, Stop. He'll start off with a word such as "bat", then pause and say "hat" and I'll add "mat" and he'll say "cat" and on and on. I can see him searching for consonant sounds to put with the "at" ending so his knowledge of the alphabet is coming in handy.

The other thing he's interested in now is opposites. He'll say "up/down", "top/bottom","front/back", "tall/short", "big/small" and his favorite: "inside/outside". I'm trying to think of others so he gets those relationships as he doesn't have a book that's specific to this topic... he's just figured it out recently and enjoys saying them back to back.

In closing, here's a short sample of the kind of things he's saying right now. He's naming off the members of our family and counting how many there are:

We love our talking boy!!

Shelby