The Voice

I've consulted one of our neighbors, who happens to be a speech therapist, about Jack's lack of talking.  His little girlfriends are speaking in full and complete understandable sentences...  Evana (2 weeks younger than Jack) says, "Amy loves you too!" and Meghan (4 months older than Jack) says things like, "Thank you for having us over, Mrs. Austin," (they're both so stinkin' cute I can't stand it!).  But Jack has been stuck on "na na" and "mama" and "dada" for what feels like forever.

I had hoped that when the girls were in school all day he would start speaking more out of necessity.  The process has still been a lot slower than I had hoped, but we're finally starting to see progress.

Our neighbor suggested that I talk to him all the time, so I've been making more of an effort to talk to him constantly the way I did with MG when she was a baby.  This morning we were getting ready to go, and I said, "Jack, where's your cup?"

"I don't know," he replied.

I looked at him, startled, and he had his hands his hands up, palms toward the ceiling, in that universal "Beats me" gesture.  I could have died laughing.  It was so cute.  I'll try to get it on video tomorrow.

This brings the Lexicon of Jack up to the following words and phrases:

Mama

Dada

Papa

Dog

Kitty

Tweet/Tree (these sound the same)

Moo

Woof

Oink (this one's actually a snort)

Up

Off

Go

No

That (which is more like "dat")

Cheese

Apple

Ice (which sounds like "ein")

Num

Nana

Choo choo

Vroom Vroom

Bad dog.

I don't know.

Today he actually said, "Choo choo.  Off," when he wanted me to uncouple his trains.  So he's starting to put phrases together into simple sentences.  I think the problem is that the words and phrases above really manage to convey everything he cares about right now.  He just isn't motivated to say much more.  I mean, all of the vowel sounds are represented up there...  Most of the consonants.  There's no reason why he can't put them together...  He just doesn't need to yet, I guess.

In other news, I broke the washing machine this afternoon.  It made a bad grinding noise, so I fast forwarded it to the end of a different cycle and walked away (mistake).  I walked past the laundry room on the hallway carpet and went SQUISH.  At first I thought the dog had an accident, and I was getting ready to beat her, when I noticed that the liquid was an inch deep and 10 feet across - much too big of a puddle for even the heartiest bladder.  I unplugged everything, covered the floor with every towel we have, and called BJ for help.

He came home and took it apart.  At first I thought that the seal had gone bad between the tub and the top, but when he took it apart we realized that there's no seal there.  We did some other stuff to try to figure out what was going on, and long story short the pump has gone bad.

Guess who got a new washer and dryer for Christmas?  Thanks again, Santa!

I think I'm going to put the old dryer, which still works even though it's really inefficient, on Craigslist for $100, or $75 if the same person takes the dryer too!