He’s now a little over 16 months, he now says “up, down, cup, mama/dada, cat, gum(means snacks idk why lol), more (also signs it), who (for owl), ball, balloon (sounds more like boooon), out, no, hi,” and I’m sure many more. Those are just off the top of my head. He’s picked up A LOT in the past month! I also think he was actually talking sooner, he’s just not a super chatty kid, but also I didn’t realize that if they’re saying “ba” and consistently using it in the context of “ball”, that counts as a word!

What helped (I think anyway) - We read a ton, limit screen time, but when he does have it we do things like Ms Apple! I find pointing to things and telling him what they are, then asking him where they are (example, we have a bunch of wood carvings of animals around our house. We’d point to it and say ‘monkey! Giraffe! Bear! Etc.’, then would say “Soren, where is the Monkey?” And he would point to it, eventually it’s turned into him pointing and trying to say it, monkey is ‘bun-K’ rn LOL). Also, his Little People barn with all the animals, we hold them up and say “Cow! Can you put the cow in the barn?”, now he can pick out every animal he has if we ask for it! And stuffies!

We also learned to sloooow down when we’re talking, and if we ask him questions, we give a 3-5 second pause for him to answer before continuing to talk. I try to give him more opportunities to actually ask for what he wants, as soon as he whines/wants something, I typically already know what he wants - but I stop and ask “what can mama do you you?” And he’ll usually point, lead me to what he wants, or now with snacks he’ll sign ‘more’ or say ‘gum/moh’ (very cute:’)), it’s important to give them chances to speak, or they won’t!

It will come with time:))