I'll never forget one of our visits to Finaghty's, where the bartender was talking to us about his daughter, about a year older than Simon. He said that once she started talking, all of this personality came out, and while she never shut up, he didn't want her to. I feel like Simon is just on the edge of reaching that point.
Simon's vocabulary and speech has been a concern for us, in part because we know a lot of kids about his age and know where they are in terms of communication, and he's behind them. Lately, he seems to be upping his game a little. We were surprised, for example, a few weeks ago when we went to Great Wolf and he pointed at the waterfall and said, "wa wa." Since that time, we ask him to say stuff, and he gives it a try. Some things he gets, like "knee" and "hoo hoo" (owl noises). Other things come out as a mess of sounds, but often with at least the cadence and accent of a word. We try to praise him as much as possible when this happens.
On the flip side, he also engages in a lot of negative behavior, I'm sure because he wants to test boundaries. Hitting has been a problem on and off. It's hard not to react emotionally when he smacks you in the face, but we're getting pretty good at putting him in a corner or the hall or somewhere and having him stay there for a timeout. He throws a tantrum, and eventually if we ask him to, he'll say something that sounds roughly like, "I'm sorry."
It's really fascinating to see all of this personality coming out. You have to take some bad with the good, but when I think about how he could barely walk just a year ago, it's pretty amazing. I mean, this is a tiny person who one day may have kids of his own. It's hard to wrap your head around that!
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