Benjaminese

Around the time that Ben had tubes put in his ears, he started chattering a lot more.  Some of that chatter turned into words we could understand.  I had been keeping track of the words he used regularly on a memo board on our fridge.  It was slow-going for a long time.  Then it exploded.  Most of the words on it were written by Mike while I was in the states.  We stopped writing on it last week because we ran out of room and we can't really keep up with all the new words anyway.  He is continuing to see a speech therapist who is happy with his progress.  He is getting better at using his words to communicate instead of pulling on us, grunting, or pointing.  Some of his words are a little mixed up; he either leaves off the last sound of a word altogether ("all done" comes out "all duh") or he puts that last sound at the beginning of a word ("eat" comes out "tea").  The speech therapist said this isn't uncommon and gave us some strategies for dealing with it.  He is really trying.  For example, when he sees a dog, he says "gaw".  Then I say "duh, duh, dog".  Then he says "duh, duh, gaw".  So close.  We are so happy that he is talking more, even when we can't understand what he's saying.  Oh, and as far as we can tell he's had no problems since his surgery.  It was a really fast recovery.

He had been sucking on his thumb (a rare sight) and when I went to get the camera he shoved all his fingers in there.  Then he got distracted by his video...

and started saying the names of letters on the screen.  This picture makes me giggle.

Action shot of Ben and Monkey.  This is the monkey that's a backpack with a leash.  Ben still asks to wear it on his back sometimes.

Remember that big block he ran into in last week's post?  They met again.

P.S. Laurie, sorry it took so long for an update on the surgery!