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.
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 has used the potty all by himself three times now. That’s awesome. It actually takes more work for me to help him get undressed, clean up the potty, and get him dressed again, but it is totally worth it. And he’s only 20months. We aren’t even trying to teach him how to use the potty yet, he just wants to. Sweet!
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
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.
He has mastered the words that used to be on his “understand-but-won’t-say” list:
–His favorite word is “outside”
–He is also using book, and bath. Although most of his “B” words sound the same - “Baa” - you can tell the difference by where he goes when he says the word.
New words:
–Car (which is associated with his favorite word - Outside)
–This morning he saw a bird and said “Birr.” But that was the first time I heard him say that, so we’ll have to wait to see if it sticks.
He lost his favorite toy - a weeble wobble - for almost two weeks. I found it yesterday between the cushions on the couch, and laughed. He likes to cram stuff inside bags, under the fridge, between cushions, etc. (He has pretty good control over the blue/red Tupperware sphere thing that has yellow shapes.) I can picture him there all by himself - we’ll assume Gina and I were in the kitchen washing dishes - and he was there cramming the weeble wobble in to the cushion, pulling it back out, cramming it back it, over and over until he realized that we weren’t right behind him. Then he gave up his game, and came searching for us and completely forgot about the toy.
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July 31, 2008 
