Kitty! Ear! Baby! Banana!

All of the above, I discovered today, are words that my daughter knows. Not words that she can say, but words that she knows the meaning of.

We were slowly looking through her color book together; it's a great board book with few words and lots of photographs. Experimentally, I started asking her to point to things, to point to the "kitty-cat", to the "ear", to the "baby", to the "banana". And she did! On occasion she'd point to MY ear, rather than the ear in the illustration, but she almost always got it right. Either that, or she'd lose interest and want to turn the page.

I was surprised. I know that comprehension proceeds speech, but I didn't know how large her listening vocabulary was. As Christa pointed out, it's got to be pretty frustrating to know it and not be able to say it.

-Jess