  So Santa brought the Feighery family verbal developments, and he came a little early. A few weeks ago we noticed for the first time Aidan making blatant, gross grammatical errors.
Believe it or not, we celebrated this as the newest in Aidan's constant and impressive line of developments. When a child does this, it indicates they no longer parrot language, but instead their brain has acknowledged that language is made up of rules and begun experimenting with the application of those rules.
He says things these days like "she gots a apple" and we couldn't be more tickled! Not wanting to be outdone by her brother's developments, Ella has experienced her own explosion. One of our favorite developmental writers is Dr. Stanley Greenspan. He measures development in his writing by the existence, frequency, and number of "back and forths" a child has. A back and forth is an exchange of communication. Until recently, Ella's back and forths have been primarily non-verbal, gesture or sign language based.
Her verbal communication was primarily one sided, on her side. But now, she verbally responds to us. The first sign was last week's bye in response to the teacher's bye, and now everything you say to her is quickly replied to, even if we can't understand what it is she's replying! 
