Careful what you wish for

When Ellie was eighteen months old, she didn't have much to say. She appeared to understand everything that we said to her, and she responded to commands and questions, but she had only about three words and five baby signs. Even Ellie's tantrums were silent; if she was truly upset, she would lie face down on the floor and stay there until she was over it. (I can't tell you how long it took for me to realize that these episodes actually represented tantrums.) As a result, our house was nice and quiet. It was quiet enough to worry my husband, who kept wishing that our daughter would start to talk.

Just after her second birthday, we enrolled her in a preschool class. It's only three mornings a week, and during the summer term the class size is quite small. I don't think we've ever seen more than six or seven other kids in her classroom on any given day. But just two months of preschool have turned her into a whole new child.

Ellie now has a vocabulary of over 100 words, and regularly links three or four words in complete sentences. Her articulation is still poor, but it's improving. She can now say "coffee" instead of "co-hmm", and Jason and I are now Mommy and Daddy rather than mama and dada. She puts concepts together, so when I tell her that I'm taking her to school, she'll say "Mommy take cool, Daddy pick up noon" since her father always picks her up at noon. And she's always making comments, like "Daddy make eggs" or "Daddy play video game". Her favorite sentence is "Today is Saturday!"

However, the biggest development has been in Ellie's personality. The child who was once easygoing and acquiescent and, yes, quiet now has something to say about everything. She's become a drama princess (not quite a drama queen). God forbid I should ask her to drink some milk. "Noooo! Noooo! Noooo!" she'll say, putting her hands up to her face and writhing around hysterically. She's bossy now as well. One night during dinner, I left the table to get something from the kitchen. My little tyrant pointed at me and said, sternly, "Mommy! Sit chair, eat broppy!" Yeah, kid, I'll eat my broccoli. But the funniest (and most aggravating) development has been a spice of pre-teen attitude. Her father told her one day that she should stop crying, because good girls don't cry over their milk. She thought that one over for a minute, then told him, "Carl cries." That's one of her friends at preschool. Jason was dumbfounded by this, so Ellie seized the moment to list all her school friends. "Ally cries too. Jordan cries too. Tejas cries too." It's a line of reasoning that will likely come back to haunt us, I'd guess around middle school.

I think it's safe to say that we have no more worries about Ellie's speech. In fact, just the other day Jason told me, "I miss 'Quiet Ellie'."

The moral of the story: be careful what you wish for.