Goosie Cards make me smile!

At 19 months old, Little AG says one word, and one word only. Duck. I don't know why she chose duck, and why it's not Mama or Dada, or even ball, but Duck is her word of choice. She picked it rather arbitrarily, if you ask me. It wasn't one of the things she sees every day -- not her Tigger, not a dog or a cat. We were simply flipping through a book, and she would point at words and I would tell her what the item was. She pointed at a rubber duck, I told her what it was, and without warning, she turned around, looked at me, smiled and said "DUCK!". Clear. As. Day.

Uh, hello? At 15 months old, we brought her to speech therapy to make sure nothing was wrong with her. At that point she spoke no words, which was a milestone she had missed. We wanted to be sure there wasn't a problem that needed our attention. Well, she went through a session with flying colors. She learned objects, obeyed commands, and engaged in pretend play. She just refused to talk. We were sent away with quite a hefty bill, and the proclamation that she just wasn't interested in talking yet. We had to bide our time.

I recently recieved an email introducing me to Goosie Cards. These are the first fully customizeable Flash Cards ever made. The founder/owner of Goosie Cards, Jennifer Marchetti, created them for her son when she wanted to teach him about their family through pictures. Realizing there weren't any products like this on the market, she set out to create Goosie Cards and to make them accessible to everyone who wanted them.

These cards are fantastic. They are bigger than I expected them to be (4.5 inches wide, 7.5 inches long) -- they are tall and sturdy -- probably twice the size of a typical flashcard. This means Little AG can hold on to them with ease. Since they are heavily laminated, she can also bite them, throw them, lick them, and try to feed them to our dogs without them suffering any damage (and don't worry, they are non-toxic!). We have a set of 26 that goes through the entire alphabet. The pictures and words are nice and big, and Little AG always goes "Mmmm" when we get to cupcake and ice cream (she is SO my child!). Even though she isn't speaking any of the words, she will identify the items if I give her choices, which I feel like is really helping her language skills.

Of course, you can also create your own Goosie Cards, with pictures of your family, places in your town, historical monuments, etc -- really the options are limited by your imagination. I was really impressed at how much Little AG enjoys flipping through these. She doesn't enjoy sitting still to read a book -- she squirms around and out of my arms -- but she will sit still to go through these with me.

Check out Goosie Cards and take a trial run of making a set for your kids. You don't have to purchase them until you've designed them all, so you can experiment with a bunch of different options. You can make custom cards in sets of 10, 20, or 26! Prices start at $34.

PS -- Brad and Angelina recently got some Goosie Cards for the twins! Wonder if I could get away with saying "When I was in France last month, Angie told me about these fabulous flash cards that she got for the twins...."