Words with Bells

***Clarification-- Who  or what is Bells?? Well...Somewhere along the way, Ella's name basically became Bells when Brent and I are talking about her.  "How was Bells today?"  "Did Bells take a nap?"  "That's a Bells for you."  Pretty standard now. I think it came from calling her Ells Bells and we dropped the Ells and kept the Bells...don't really remember when that happened. Of course, we call her Ella when we are communicating to her so she learns her name, but when it's just Brent and me, it's typically Bells.

Here's a little fact about me...I LOVE Words With Friends (WWF).  For those of you who don't know, WWF is like an electronic Scrabble game you play with friends and family (I think you can play random opponents too, but I just play with people I know).   My understanding it is that it can only be played through apps on smart phones, iPods, and iPads. I don't play with a ton of people, but I have 3 very competitive games going with Eddie aka Papa,  4 games going with The Wanagers, and one game a piece with Misty and Caitlin.  My mom is obsessed with Scrabble and I keep begging her to get a smart phone because I know she'd love it and know we would enjoy a friendly WWF rivalry.  I love the competition, especially when games are really close.  WWF is great because it pulls up on your phone and you can do it whenever you have a second, wherever you are!  So, I love a good game of Words With Friends.

I also play a different game every day of the week more than once a day and that's Words With Bells.  It consists of saying and identifying all the words Ella knows and then she says them back to me!  My mom told me that at my 1st Birthday party I was already stringing many words together.  I told her "I want juice."  This doesn't surprise me.  If you know me well, you know I am very verbal and not shy to talk.  But on Ella's 1st Birthday she could *somewhat* say dada, ba for Baxter, and ba ba for bottle.  But, that's okay!  Everyone is different :)

The other night I got into a conversation with our friend, Erin Spence, who is a Speech Language Pathologist and Teacher of the Year at her school in Alpharetta. Go Erin!  I was asking her about language development and how I thought Ella had a tiny lag (nothing we're too worried about, just more of an observation).  She informed me that Ella would be a month behind because of her early delivery for a while.  She also told me that by 12 months, babies should have 20 "words" that they utilize in their vocabularies.  *Example--a  baby calls his or her shoe "goo" consistently...this counts as a word committed to memory.

So I started thinking...how many words does Ella know??  20 seemed like a ton...so here's the list I compiled.

1. Daddy
2. Ma--*only when she's very upset will she scream this...I rarely hear my name when she's happy :(
3. Dolce-- duh chey
4. Ball
5. Bye or Buh-bye..she told the postman bye really loud yesterday...it was so cute!
6. Yay-- accompanied by a clap
7. Duck- pronounced "dook"
8. kitty-- pronounced similar to "titty"
9. baba--bottle
10. maaaaaaa- for more food
11. ah-ah-ah--for "I want that"
12. Ba-- Baxter
13. uh-oh
14. baby
15. thank you...Mimi and Papa taught her this one and she she will say it from time to time.  Sounds like "day-you"

We have a little ways to go to reach 20, but we're gaining a lot of ground over the past  couple  of weeks.  I must say, I was pretty proud of Ella when I looked at the list!  I feel like she's really learning!  She knows a lot of words and I can tell her to go get Mouse, or Mama Duck, or the Ball, or point to the bird and she can do all that, so I know she is comprehending language.  It's exciting to watch her learn more words.  She wants to communicate and I hope this curiosity continues to assist in her acquisition of language.

So, Words With Bells is a fun game that can be played at home, in the car, in the store, on a walk, anywhere really...hopefully it's helping cement the words she knows and adding some new ones to her vocabulary.  We learned kitty this week!