We always knew she was brilliant...

Of course, every parent thinks their child is gifted, brilliant, excellent at something. Also, we get used to our child and take things for granted. Now Pumpkin was rather a late crawler and walker, but she's always been fairly quick with her fine motor skills, and seemed to catch language fairly easily. We're used to all the things she can say, but during my visit, we were around the child of a cousin of mine. Now this child is only a month or so younger than Pumpkin, but he wasn't talking yet that I heard. Just "mama"s and "uh" combined with pointing. Sure, he's probably a little on the later end of developing speech, but it really highlighted to me Pumpkin's huge vocabulary. Also, the family that I met while waiting for the plane had a daughter two months younger than Pumpkin. She was certainly babbling, but I could only understand a few words; I'm certain her parents could understand more, but still... quite different from what I hear from our girl.

So, yesterday, I got out a notebook and started writing down all the words I could think of that she uses.

I had no idea how many to expect, but when I looked at the length of my list, I had to find some reference points. Here are a couple links, but in general, the range was from 50-200 by the age of 2 and from 200-500 by the time a child reaches 3.

http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/growth/
communication/comm_2_to_3.html

http://www.babycentre.co.uk/toddler/
development/speechandlanguage/milestonetalking/

Well, my list of Pumpkin's words, at 23 months old? 383

I was amazed. I guess she is ahead of the curve on that one anyway.


('Course, that probably is a precursor to large phone bills when she's a teen, but still...)

Yay, Pumpkin!