Talk, talk, TALK!

I have never had to talk so much until I had a baby.

As long as the people around me understood me, I have always spent a lot of time in my head, only talking and expressing my thoughts verbally when absolutely necessary. Which isn't that much anyway, according to my husband. It is much easier to express myself in written words, texts, or music. I did plenty of those. I enjoy listening to others talk though, and I love being with my friends. So as you can imagine, my closest friends are rather talkative in a good sense. Lovable extroverts.

When Sophie came, I had to turn into a talking machine. At least, whenever she's around. I started making the effort to talk to her while she was still inside my tummy. It was hard and exhausting, and I am sure that she heard more music, singing, and preaching than her mother speaking personally to her, but by the time she was born, I had kinda gotten the knack of it. Conditioned to talk.

It is all for the sake of her language acquisition.

Talk to your baby, the experts said.
Two-way communication. 
Limit baby-talk. Talk about real, meaningful things. Use complicated words once in a while.
Narrate your way through the day. Give a running commentary. 
Expand the concepts she knows. Say "Ball? Yes, this is a ball. See, the ball can bounce. Boing, boing, boing! Should I throw it over to you?"
Read books. Tell stories. Sing songs. 
Don't correct too much. 
Model the right pronunciation and words in the context of your conversations and... 
don't swear. Don't curse. Not that I do these, but just saying.

More than 15 months has passed by.

My 15-month-old toddler demonstrates clear understanding of what we say - questions, sentences, and instructions. She signs some. She makes ducky and doggy sounds whenever she plays with Duckie or our friend's dog. She also points to the right objects, alphabets, body parts, shapes, and etc. whenever we refer to them. However, she doesn't really think that it is necessary to talk. Despite my encouraging her to speak words (and she does speak her version of some words at times), she still prefers to just grunt and point or sign.

She gets frustrated when I pretend not to understand, so I don't do that too much. Because I myself understand how frustrating it is.  

I hope that this is a phase.