So many words and sounds have started to pour out of Abigail's mouth. At 17 months, she is putting 2 to 3 words together to construct sentences. For the last two weeks we had the following exchange a few times:

"Outside?"

"You want to go outside?"

"Go...outside...snow."

"Yes, snow. Brrr."

"Brrr."

"You have to put on a coat first."

"Mine coat." [points at my coat] "Mama coat."

"Yes, I will put on my coat too."

Abby's latest favorite game has been identifying what's mine and what's hers. I take her lion and say, "Mama's lion!" and hug him close. She grabs him from me and says, "No. Mine La-La." She has not learned "my," but she picked up "mine" from daycare, obviously. But it's neat to see her using it as a possessive pronoun, replacing "my," rather than solely as a direct object that "mine" is.

90% of her language progress I attribute to daycare. She is quite a bit behind her classmates, many of whom are closer to 2 years old, so they are very verbal and I know Abby is trying to mimic and catch up.

Of the nonstop words and sounds that come out of Abby's mouth, though, we can only understand 10-15%, yet it's obvious when she looks at us that she expects we should understand 100%.

Oh, an interesting story about Abby finding different ways to get her ideas across....she came to me in the kitchen last weekend and very clearly said, "Juice?"

I understood her, but was just stunned for a second because it was the first time she had used it. I didn't react immediately.

We blinked at each other for a couple more seconds. Thinking I probably didn't understand her, she repeated it louder, "Juice?!" This time, adding the sign language for "juice."

"Oh, you want juice?" As I opened the fridge, she chuckled like Woody Woodpecker, telling me she was satisfied that her message had been clearly understood.