In the beginning -- well, back when the girls were around 11 months old -- there was "Dah!" meaning dog, (or pretty much anything with four legs) and it was good. About a month later came "nana" (banana, then any food), and soon after that it was "cah" (car) and "shizz" (shoes) and so on. But it seemed like each time a new word was acquired, the old one suddenly fell out of fashion and they'd rarely if ever say it. (Dah? What's a dah? Come on, Mommy, let's talk about shizz!)
There are definitely still word "fads" around here -- "babies" is the big one this week -- but in the last month or so it seems like finally the girls are hanging onto multiple words, and employing them with increasing accuracy. Clio is the more verbal of the two; she tends to use more words (and signs) than Elsa, and is eager to learn new ones. Elsa, meanwhile, is more interested in honing her gross motor skills (i.e. climbing, pillaging, plundering, ransacking). Of course, we suspected all along that this might be the case. Elsa was always ahead physically, but Clio started cooing and babbling well before she did. Ah, yes, I remember it well.....(Flashback! Wavy screen....)
Ha -- at the time, this seemed incredibly impressive and interactive to us. It's all relative, ain't it?
Anyway, we're having fun seeing both girls add more words to their vocabularies. I'd say between them they have maybe 10 or so in all, and they obviously understand much more than that. But the real language "explosion" that I hear people talk about hasn't come yet. In fact, I think in general E & C are a little behind the curve in their language acquisition skills. I'm not worried, though. It's supposedly normal for twins to talk later than singleton kids. It can be due in part to premature birth (not the case here, as ours were born at a healthy 37 weeks, at 5 pounds each), but can also be a result of the way caregivers communicate and interact with twins. It's a little sad, actually: twins don't get as much one-on-one time with parents or caregivers, so they don't get as many opportunities to learn and practice verbal communication. And because wrangling twins can be stressful and tiring, caregivers tend to talk to their kids a little less and use more quick directives ("drink your milk," "don't take your sister's book," "come here," etc.). Apparently this is why second children sometimes talk later, too.
Then there's the "Twin talk" theory; that twins communicate with each other in their own "language," so they're slower to learn the language of us big people. I haven't really seen much evidence of this between Elsa and Clio, unless you count stealing toys or food away from each other causing the other to scream and cry as some special form of "communication." Or, maybe their twin talk is so secret and sophisticated that I don't even notice it. Maybe they send telepathic messages to each other: "Hey, mom's trying to get us ready to go out somewhere in the cah. Let's both poop!"
I'm curious to hear from readers -- especially moms of twins -- when did the language thing really "take off" for your kids?
