Some Things I'll want to Remember

Sydney is 14 months old right now. I was telling Rob this morning that Syd got a phone call yesterday from the Vanderbilt University Language Learning Lab inviting her to participate in a research study (she's participated in 2 other studies at the Infant Learning Lab- I'm all about helping students with their research). As we were talking about that, and where she is, language-wise, Rob encouraged me that I need to write and post it all here. This is my journal for our family, after all.
I think Sydney's language is awesome! She signs more than she speaks to communicate, but hey- I don't have a problem with that. That's why we're teaching her to sign. Verbally, she says hi (her most frequent word), dada (her second most frequent word), hey, and bye-bye. We know that she can also say- because she has in the past- but doesn't regularly say mama, book, uh-oh, baby and night-night. She signs, on her own, more, eat, milk, please, thank-you, all done and waves.
She communicates "eat please" when she's hungry. When she's thirsty, she stands at the refrigerator and signs "milk". If we walk into a dark room, she points to the light switch. When we're playing in her room before naptime and she's ready to go to sleep, she'll point to the light switch and then tug on the bumper on her bed. She gets her message across, with or without words.
Her receptive language is also really good- much better than we probably give her credit for. If I ask her if she's tired and wants to go take a nap, she immediately goes to the stairs (same for bath). If I tell her we're going somewhere, she'll pick-up whatever she's playing with and go straight to the back door saying "Bye-bye" all the way there. She can retrieve her cup, baby doll, and some books (by name!) from another room. If we tell her mommy & daddy are leaving, she begins to cry.
She just seems to have come so far in a short time! I don't know that it's anything exceptional for her age, but Rob & I think she's brilliant and we love that our communication with Sydney is no longer one-sided.