I don't remember when she actually started to talk, since she is just quieter in general, but well before 1 year, she would put her hands out in front of her, like in a pushing away gesture and say, what sounded like "monkey shoes". DH and I both noticed, then realized it was her way of saying she was done with something so we accepted it...eventually, her ability caught up with her intellect and we realized she had been saying "No thank you".
Lol. This reminds me...
One of DD's first combination of words was "Mimi (spoken,) Girl (spoken,) Boat (signed,) Hat (signed)" She would go through this combination every time she saw a particular picture in one of her books. It was a picture of a little African American girl wearing a hat with a bow on it. (Mimi was a character from another book that was a monkey the exact same color as this little girl.) So this was her way of describing this girl. Signing boat was a good enough approximation for "bow" in her mind, and well, it worked. This was at about 15 months old.
For weeks she kept saying what we thought was "mimi girl" in the car all. the. time. We just thought she really liked the picture of the little girl. Weeks and weeks went by, maybe even a month, until her speech cleared up enough to start hearing "Green means go." She was saying this phrase every time she saw a green light.
