Oli, As far as your questions on what is normal, I have no ideal, I thought the baby books were to make other parents good too.
So maybe another thing to look for is, do other parents/stangers tell you that your child is advanced/smart? I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me starting at when my now DD6 was 2-2 1/2 year old, to the point I started wondering, how do they know? There was one time she just said a sentence and then sat down at a table and a parent came up to me and asked me if she was academically advanced. At a store standing in line to pay for something, my girls always start convesations with whoever is in line, and I also get the "I hope you realize how smart these girls are comment" As parents of course we think our children are the smartest, best looking and so on, that's part of our love for them. But when stangers/friends/family keep pointing out something we might already suspect, maybe there's more to it than we realize. Best wishes
