Working on Sounds

It's a dark, rainy day here and I am enjoying some good cuddles with my munchkin. We are practicing our sounds and she's just jabbering away. Have I ever mentioned that li'bub loves to sing? No words or anything, but when she hears music or hears us sing, she does kind of a funny drawn-out humming thing. I think she is going to be a good singer like her daddy someday...I am always reminding Bub the hub how his singing career really took off after his junior high leading role in a musical version of "Scrooge." He really hates when I bring this up, which is hilarious to me of course. I am sure some of you out there even remember or might have witnessed this performance. I wish someone would even dig up a video somewhere so we could really embarrass my silly hub. Just kidding hunny! Although I know Avery would be impressed.

So back to making sounds, we are working really hard with lil'bub's speech therapist to get her jaw stronger and encourage her to make "front of mouth" sounds. This is something I am positive that most people have probably never had to think about, but as babies we all first start making back-of-mouth sounds like "gagaga" (Avery's fav). Then we eventually progress to making sounds with the front of our mouths, which leads to consonants like "bbb" and "mmmm." And that leads to our first words. Lil'bub tends to favor the back-of-mouth stuff and even though she does use front-of-mouth sounds occasionally, it's not as much as we would like. So that means lots of practicing and mimicking (which is what she was doing in this video post). We use special teething toys and sour sprays and even my really sticky lipgloss to get her to put her mouth together more and make those sounds. Here she is working on it...

I think she really is progressing, just not as fast as we may like. I know kids at this age aren't exactly communicating that efficiently, but it's hard for Bub the hub and I to be patient for the time when she is using sounds/words for "mom" and "dad" and other simple things. That certainly will be one sweet day ;).