Thursday, October 18 was a big milestone in Simon's life. On Thursday Simon replaced a sign for a spoken word. Before that day he had about 25 words that he said and another 30 or so signs that he used, but the list of words signed and words spoken did not overlap. Earlier that week there was a slight overlap with 'bye bye', a sign and word pairing that are done together, but for the most part he either signed or spoke. From the first spoken word he started moving the scale from sign to the ultimate goal of speech and in replacing a sign the scale has tipped and now it'll be a long run down as he gathers vocabulary lists. Just to push that home, Monday he looked at me and said More while he signed it to me.
He still doesn't have the fine motor control to say the wide variety of words that he understands (speech is considered a fine motor skill), so we will continue to use and expand his sign vocabulary as his world and understanding grows. But this was another big step, in so many he's had this year, to building the man he will become.
Now that he can say the word, instead of saying and signing when we talk to him, we will just say 'all done' or 'more' to him as normal speech. And instead of waiting for him to sign to us we will encourage him to vocalize... which I'm sure won't be a problem because he loves saying all done and more!
PS He also learned to shake his head no this weekend. So if you ask him a yes/no question you will get a nod or a shake response.
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