What is Maia up to lately?

From September 7

I (Brian) would say that Maia has had a pretty great language explosion over the last several months. Now, in her 21st month, we have stopped recording words as she is able to mimic everything we say. To what extent she understands what we mimic is unknown, but the effect is obvious -- we have a talking toddler who has a lot to say!

The fun thing about this is that she has no filter between her brain and her mouth. She says everything that she thinks of. We might be in the car, driving down the highway, and Maia will just blurt out "Sailboat! Lake! Swim!"... obviously thinking of our vacation for whatever reason. The other day at lunch, Maia was eating carrots and blurted out "Horses!" -- she fed baby carrots to the horses the last time she saw them.

In similar ways, she is adding words to her sentences such as "too" and "more". If we are eating a cracker, Maia will say "Maia Too!" and if she sees more than one black horse in a picture, she is likely to say "More Black Horses!"

As a funny anecdote, she refers to her Grandparents (my side) as Grandpa and More Grandpa. The subtle differences between GrandPA and GrandMA are too difficult for her now, so she figured out a way to compensate and differentiate the two Grandparents. Just this morning, we were eating blueberries and Maia blurted out "Grandpa!" -- Grandma G was eating blueberries with her the last time they visited.

All of this is really a lot of fun. With her new language explosion, she has been able to tell us what she wants between two options (Book Store or Home, when deciding where to go next on our bike). She is also able to tell us when she is really excited about something ("Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!! Pet Store!" when I tell her we are going to the pet store.)

I don't know how else to end this post, so I just stop writing.