18-month appointment today!

Austin has his 18-month dr. appt this afternoon at 4. He usually does really well at these appointments, so I'm not worried! I know they dr. will ask us how the talking is coming along, so last night, Nick and I attempted to make a list of words Austin says. We weren't sure if we had to include ONLY words he initiates (for example, he really won't say "knee" on his own, but when we talk about parts of the body and I ask him "Where's your knee knee knee?" he'll point to it and say, "Knee knee knee!"), so we left those out. We're erring on the side of less words. Even doing this, guess how many we came up with?

About 61 words! Wow!

The "typical" number of words kids can say at 19-24 months seems to be around 50-70 words, so our boy is there already! Go Austin! Just like his mommy...

I did a quick search for this topic, because I wanted to see what the average number for 18 months is, and I found these posts by other moms in a discussion of what is "right" for 18 month olds:

• "Our doctor said between 4-10 single words at 18 months is normal."
• "At her Parents as Teacher evaluation and 18 mo ckup they both said around 5-10 is great..."
• "What to expect ... the toddler years" says they should be able to use 3 single words.
• "My pediatrician said he likes to see them have 6-8 words. But in the same breathe, told me if they don't have exactly that many not to worry about it too much as long as I see them trying."

I guess we're okay, then!