You know what’s more fun than anything in the world? Dealing with an insurance company AFTER being on hold for 27 minutes with hold music that’s enhanced with static and repetitive interruptions about “longer than usual wait times.” Now THAT’S how I like to spend a Thursday morning. Why was I calling our insurance company? I had to find out about coverage for speech therapy.

Right now, our Maddie is very chatty, but her language sounds more like Nell’s “tay inna win” instead of recitations of Shakespeare sonnets. I wouldn’t care so much if Madelyn was pulling in Jodie Foster dollars for her “words,” but she’s not. So that’s that.

At her 15-month check up on Tuesday, the pediatrician said she’d like Madelyn to have at least 10 or so words by now. She is speaking tons, but none of it in English or even symbolic baby-English. I’m not particularly worried and neither is the doctor. She is hitting all other milestones perfectly and definitely shows no red flags to worry about. She’s social (she loves attention from friends and strangers). She isn’t sensitive to sounds or textures (she can sleep through anything and loves to get her hands dirty in her food). She loves music (she bounces up and down as soon as she hears a melody). She understands our directions and words (she looks down at her feet when we say the word “shoes.” She looks to the floor when we say “Princeton.” She brings us the remote after she’s stolen it when we ask her to). Her receptive language is fantastic (she reacts to our words and tones of voice, including disciplinary ones). She probably has words on the tip of her tongue and is having trouble expressing them. If it’s frustrating for us as parents, I’m sure she’s beyond frustrated, which may be the source of some of her (albeit, rare) toddler meltdowns.

So, a speech evaluation will help us with methods to help give Madelyn that push to producing language. And in case there is some sort of developmental delay, it’s better to get on the ball now and save time.

Still, though, Madelyn continues to entertain us with her extra special Madelyn language. If she picks up anything with printed words, she immediately looks down at the paper and “reads” it. She even moves her head and eyes to “scan” the words and her inflection changes to narrate her story. It’s unbelievably cute and makes me even more excited to hear her speak in her own language that we understand.

We go for our first speech evaluation next week. I know 15 months is still incredibly young, which is why we’re not worried. More than anything, we’re fascinated with the process and will follow doctor’s orders as long as it can’t hurt and won’t cost us anything (both true).

In the meantime, we’ll still continue to giggle over Madelyn’s babbling that sounds like a mix of Hebrew and Swedish that we like to call Swebrewsh. Here’s a classic Madelyn that puts Chaucer to shame called The Maddiebury Tales.