I made a list of all the words that Alex knew last weekend, and it’s already out of date. He’s learning so fast that I can’t keep up.

Words He Could Say On Saturday

• Bye
• Ball (he can spot one a mile off)
• Nana (banana)
• Boo
• Cheek (while pointing to his cheek, very cute)
• Shoe
• Row, row (meaning, shake me all about)
• All gone (OK, it sounds like Caw Cah, but it means all gone)
• Vroom, vroom (when he wants to pretend to drive a car)
• Jes (his teddy bear)
• Ta (as in thanks – but he says it when giving things away)
• Mama (still a bit vague on who this is, but he pronounces it clearly enough)
• Dada (likewise)
• Yay (usually accompanied by clapping)
• Up (more Uh, but the meaning is clear)
• Down (OK, Duh, but he knows what he means)
• [Uh-oh] (very cute)

New Words This Week

• Peas (he caught sight of them cooking on the stove)
• [Noo-noo] (his pronunciation is weak on this one)

Words he Understands

All of the above, plus:

• Go outside (one of his earliest, and the signal to go stand by the front door. If he were a dog, he’d have his leash in his mouth.)
• Nose
• Ear
• Eye
• Tummy (he lifts his shirt and points, with a secret, confiding smile)
• Head (he pats it)
• Mouth
• Knee (very ticklish)
• Foot
• No (understands, yes. obeys, no.)
• Big Hug (he pats you on the back when he hugs you. There, there…)
• Clap, clap
• Splash, splash

He doesn’t use them in the midst of a stream of private-language words the way his cousin Tom did. His words tend to be stand-alone affairs, interspersed with discrete sections of babbling.

What fun!

Yesterday and this evening, when I was rocking Alex to sleep I sang him one of his favourite little songs: “Row, row, row your boat…”. We often do this when he sits in our laps. We’ll grab him by the hands and row him back in forth to the time of the song. He loves this.

But in the dark, with him well on his way to sleepyland, I just sang the song without the actions. He lay in my lap, with his head in the crook of my arm. And then he reached up and grabbed my hand with both of his. He clenched it tightly, then started pulling my hand towards him, and pushing it way. Row, row…

And then he started singing behind his noo-noo: “Voo… voo… bow… seeeah!” His eyes were closed, but by the yellow glow of the nightlight I could see that his brow was all furrowed in concentration.

He sang to me!

And he’s getting many more words now. He seems to be reaching the point where he will hear a word and try to imitate it. He doesn’t do this consistently yet, but he has given it a couple of tries. He now knows all about his cheeks (“zhee”), his feet (“foo”) and his shoes (“zhu”). And he’s getting better with “dada”, too. 🙂