I don’t know when different language skills are supposed to develop, but I”m constantly amazed by my son. Lately he’s been using similes.

» He bit the front leg off an animal cracker and said, “It’s like a drill.”
» I blew a raspberry on his belly and he said, “It’s like a lawnmower.”
» He crumpled his napkin and said, “It’s like a shovel.”

Okay, I don’t know what that last one meant, but 2 out of 3 is pretty good for a 25 month old.

Lillian has started waving and clapping. She says something like “Hi Da Da.” Which sounds a lot like “Bye Da Da.” So that’s what she does every time I leave the house and every time I come home.

She’s also finally over her “I only love mommy” phase, so I get to play with her a lot more now.

I was away on a retreat this weekend, and when I got home, I discovered I missed two very important milestones in my children’s lives.

1) Lillian learned how to crawl.

2) Isaac learned that it’s funny to spray people with the water hose.

Within the last week Lillian has started “talking.” She’s been cooing and squealing for months, but all of a sudden she’s showing off her verbal dexterity. She’s using “B’s” “D’s” and “G’s.”

Her and Isaac are getting along fabulously. Her cooing makes Isaac laugh which makes Lillian laugh, and the whole scene makes me laugh. . .being a dad is great.

Isaac and I had our first conversation this morning at breakfast. Here’s how it went:

Isaac: “More cereal, please.”

Doug: “Okay”

Isaac: “Thank you. Daddy cereal?” (He offered me some).

Doug: “Thank you.”

Isaac: “Welcome. Ummm”

I think he realized we had just done something special but he didn’t quite understand what it was, so he kept offering me more cereal to try and recapture the moment. It was great.

Our Parents As Teachers did his 18month “test” and she asked “Does he know 8 words yet.” So I decided to count the number of words he 1) used without being prompted and 2) used correctly

all-done
all-gone
alligator
Apple
arm
baby
back pack
ball
balloon
banana
bath
bathroom
bear
becky
bed
bee
belly
belly-button
big
bike
bird
blanket
blocks
bob (as in bob the tomato)
book
bottle
brush
bubble
bucket
bug
bulldozer
bunny
candle
car
cat
cd
cereal
chair
cheese
christie
circle
coat
Coffee
cold
color
come on
cow
cracker
crayon
cup
daddy
dark
diaper change
dig
dog
door
down
duck
ears
elephant
eyes
finger
fish
flashlight
foot
fork
frog
go
grandma (grandpa)
hand
hat
head
heater
help
hillary
hot
hungry
hurt
isaac
jesus
jimmy
jr (from veggie tales)
juice
keys
kick
larry
leg
lillian
lion
little
mary
mcqueen (from Cars)
milk
mommy
monkey
moon
more
mouth
nail (as in finger nail)
nap
nemo
no
nose
okay
outside
owl
pen
pencil
phone
picture
pillow
pizza
please
potty
rock
sad
sheep
shirt
shoes
shovel
sister
sleeping
slide
snake
socks
sorry
spider
Spoon
star
straw
strawberry
stroller
sun
swing
table
teeth
thank you
throw
tickle
toes
towel
toy
train
tree
truck
turtle
tv
Uh-oh!
up
watch
water
wee!
Yes
yogurt

Here are the cute, new things Isaac is doing:

Cute stuff:

• He can walk backwards
• He does the classic bye, bye.
• He gives people kisses. . . he also gives his stuffed animals kisses too, then he bites them.

Words he understands but can’t say:
I don’t actually know how many words he understand, I just know it’s a lot. He surprises me all the time. After he was done eating, he had a chunk of something stuck to his nose and Gina asked him, “What do you have on your nose?” and Isaac pointed to his nose! We haven’t really tried to teach him body parts yet, but he has somehow picked up ear, nose, and foot/feet.

We’ve also told him to do random things and he has listed to us, such as “Put the keys down.” and “Go tickle daddy.” (Gina is especially proud of that one.) He started curling and uncurling his index finger then walked over and put his finger on my foot while giggling.

Signs:
Yep, we taught him to sign . . . the three words we know:

• Eat
• More (as in ‘more food please’)
• Done (as in ‘I’m done eating’)

They are extremely handy signs for him to know, and he has actually started saying ‘more’ and ‘done’ because he learned the sign first. Makes me wish I wasn’t such a lazy bum. If I weren’t, I’d go learn more signs to teach him. He pick those three up almost instantly!

New Words:

• Down, which he pronounced “Dowwwwwww”
• Keys
• Go
• Bear
• Blanket (he has two favorite blankets)
• Bottle (I’m trying to teach him the sign for milk, but it is too similar to way babies wave for him to catch on quickly)
• Bunny
• Dog (which used to mean dog but now means any furry animal)
• Hi (He said “Hi” to me on the phone today while I was at work)
• Bye, bye
• Cracker
• Juice
• Kiss

That’s all I can remember right now, but I think there are more.

New Sounds:

• He can’t say “bulldozer” but he has a favorite book that is about bulldozers and he says “rumbel, rumble, rumble” whenever he sees a bulldozer, hears the word bulldozer, or is reading the book. I have a video that I’ll post when I get it edited.
• “Woof, woof, woof.” When he sees a dog . . . or any other harry, four-legged animal. He makes his whole body lunge forward each time he says, “woof.”
• “Choo, choo.” for the little wooden train at Grandpa and Grandma Puglis’s house.
• He makes an funny elephant sound. But “funny elephant sound” might be redundant because most humans sound funny when they try to make an elephant sound. Go ahead and try.
• He will open and close his hand and say “Raw, raw.” When he sees an alegator
• “Zoom, zoom, zoom.” and “Burrrrrr” for cars

Misc:

• He has two of his bottom molars coming in.
• He sleeps between 9 and 10 hours a night!
• He’s trying to run, and can walk super fast. He tries to pick up his knees in order to run, but hasn’t quite figured out the motion yet, so he kind of run/walks.
• Tomatoes and Mac-n-cheese are his favorite foods. When he is done eating, he likes to put the left over food in his hair.
• I’m teaching him the steamroller game I used to play with Jon and Mike (my younger brothers). It’s a pretty simple game. I’m the steamroller and I run over him while he tries to roll away. The trick is to do a fake roll over him kind of like you can fake step on someone when you’re really jumping over them. So now he will roll and say “burrrr” like he is the steamroller.
• He loves books! It’s cute when the three of us are all sitting in the living room reading books. Sometimes we’re all reading the same book; sometimes we’re all reading different books.

Here are two shots of Isaac walking. He is 11 months old.

That last post reminded me of something that happened this weekend. My wife went to Notre Dame with her sister, so it was just me and Isaac hanging out together. Saturday night I was lying on the living room floor reading when Isaac crawled over my book and handed me a book about baby faces. Then he turned, backed into my shoulder and sat down so our faces could be side by side while I read him his book . . .

:’ )

Here is the other shirt I made for Isaac. I thought he could be a ninja Cardinal.

I tried to make some scones yesterday. They look delicious, but taste like poo. I accidentally added 800% too much salt! Barf.

The recipe called for 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Well, I got confused. I realized what I had done as soon as I dumped the second teaspoon of salt, but what could I do? The salt, baking powder and flower were all white. I though I would go ahead and finish baking the scones to see what happened. Well . . . they are almost as bitter as the Cardinal’s season.