Wow! Lots of food for thought! After reading the comments on the other thread, it sounds like if we do decide we need to get dd evaluated, we'd do better to use dd's Medicaid and ask her doctor if she thinks dd would benefit from referrals for speech therapy, and also if she thinks we should have her evaluated for auditory-sensory processing disorder.
MsChatsAlot -- my dd also seems to be doing things on her own schedule. For the longest time, I thought she was so quiet and nowhere as active as her big sister ...
At 9 months, she was quite happy to sit close to me (often against me) and play with toys on the floor. Though her contentment may have been partially due to her getting to live vicariously by watching her older sister's antics (of course, there was also the head-banging and the shaking her head to make herself dizzy that I've talked about in the thread I linked to).
As she neared her first birthday, she got more active, and started pulling herself up on stuff. Then at 14 1/2 months she took her first independent steps, and got more and more active from there. It was so different than with dd1, who was walking at 9 1/2 months, but dd2 is also a heavier body-build than dd1 (but has slimmed down a lot due to her activity), and now she's a rambunctious little daredevil like her sister.
And whereas dd1 spoke fluently at age 1, dd2 started saying a few words when she was 2, but still didn't say much 'til just before her 3rd birthday. But she's kind of had a language explosion since then. And is doing all this imaginary play, where she gathers various toys or pictures or objects around herself (she's asked me to get some pictures off of our wall and mantle for her to do this), and all these different items have conversations with one another.
And her speech is a lot more clear than it was ... she's also starting to enjoy my storytelling, and even sometimes likes for me to read books to her now. She used to grab the books out of my hand (though she was always very interested in studying the pictures in books), or fuss for me to stop if I started telling her a story, which was very different from her sister ...
I didn't push her on this, but of course since dd1 enjoys books and stories, she was still exposed to it indirectly, and recently it struck a spark with her and she started loving it too.
So maybe she is just on her own clock. I'll admit that part of my reason for thinking about evaluation is, drumroll, that hotline call I can't seem to stop alluding to. The social worker had asked about dd's speech, and I'd said I'd look into speech therapy if it didn't start getting more clear soon. I'm sure this was one of the "concerns" my sister brought up when she made the report on me (yes, we've found out for sure that it was her who made the call) ...
Anyhow, I've had this dream that Children's Services showed up at our house again, which has me a little paranoid because occasionally my dreams have seemed to become actualities ... So I'm almost wondering if having dd evaluated could be some protection in the event that my relatives fabricate some reason to make another call (it would have to be total fabrication this time, as they no longer have any opportunity to observe our children).
Wow, what an earful I'm giving you guys! Dd has some dental work coming up toward the end of January, so maybe I'll just give it a few weeks, and once we're through the dental work, dh and I can see how we feel about this then.