when Butter was maybe as young as 10 months (DH says younger) she would make a hand motion like waving both hands in front of her or pushing the spoon, etc away and say, what sounded like "monkey shoes". We would laugh and after a while, we realized this was her communicating that she didn't want any more of whatever it was. Fast forward to maybe 18 mo when her physical ability to move her mouth caught up to herr brain and we realized that she had been saying "no thank you" that whole time! And of course we thought this was some kind of fluke...
The Diva would have quite a conversation of two or even three words together "red ball play" or "pretty dolly" by 15 mo or so. By around 2yrs I almost crashed the car when she said "look, in the blue sky, an airplane" from the backseat.
I've since learned this is not "average". Most 12mo I've come across don't have much more than purposeful babble, maybe mama, dada and one other word like ball or cat (if they have a pet)...and Butter, even though she had plenty of words, would NOT, under most circumstances, SHARE them with other people.
