Update

Ruby's speech has come oh-so far in the last six months. Even the last three months. That girl is talking SO much and saying up to 4 words in a 'sentence', spontaneously (as in, not repeating after me) very consistently at home. As with any language explosion, her articulation has suffered because she is in such a rush to say all of the new things she can say that her mouth can't quite catch up. Especially because she has to work so hard to correctly make those sounds anyway.

One of the areas Ruby has always excelled with speech has been her receptive language. Basically that means what she's able to understand as it is spoken to her. Now that she's giving us so much more in the expressive speech world (what she actually says), we can see all that she's been learning and holding on to.

Prime example: she knows her name and how to spell it and loves to tell you. This is something she's been doing for a little while, but this video from the other night just brings it home. Check out this chatterbox! (Gobble, Gobble)

So many times we see our kids work really hard on something they are struggling with. With my typical kids, I have definitely seen them struggle and sometimes not succeed, whether it's with a sport or an academic milestone. But most of the time, they got to their goal or the goal was not one that was required for every day life (like a new sport). With Ruby and her peers, we see our kids work hard - SO hard - day in and day out. On everything. Not many things arise in their day that they don't have to work on, from social skills to physically maneuvering their world to speaking. And what I didn't realize before I had Ruby was that many times this hard work goes 'unrewarded'. That is, they don't always see the fruits of their labor. So many times Ruby will work on a skill for months on end before mastering it. Or, we will work on it for a solid year and still not have mastered it. This video has been a good reminder to me to reward the hard work even when the result is not video-worthy.