Speech Development - 17 months and not really talking - Advice please!

[santaspregnantlittlehelper]

My ds is just coming up on 17 months old. He says daddy and a couple of other words, but mainly sounds and doesn't appear to have the vocab range that he's "supposed" to have by now.

He can understand instructions well - like "swap hands" when he's holding something up, "standing up please" when he decides to have a bit of a crawl, "bring mummy the...." etc. He picks these up very quickly as well so I think he is understanding well, I'm just concerned that he should be saying more.

We have read to him since a few months old, and talk to him a lot, properly and very descriptively.

Is there anything I should / could be doing that I'm just missing???

My DS didn't really start until 23 months or so. He's still behind compared to his peers (now 2.4) - he has a lot of words and combines them but they're not that clear yet. When I see others his age singing, in tune, entire songs I get all worried. But he's just a bit later in starting.

I did ask the HV about it all and she spoke to the speech therapist who said that if there were no words at age 2 then it's worth checking him out. But that it's not unusual. And as long as there's progress when things o happen it's not a huge worry.