One of the coolest things about being with Elijah all the time is watching/hearing his movement into language. He absolutely talks all the time, we just don't know what he's saying yet. When he picks something up he jabbers away at it, and when he's mad he says "Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo," or lately "Nay, nay, nay, nay, nay, mama." He says "mama" very clearly now, usually when he's sad or angry. He also says "dada" but that often still comes out as "dadadadadadada" noise.
One thing that makes me happy is that he still does his air-talking, which I thought might be all gone by now. I think I've written here about this before, about how when he's very intent or happy he'll talk in a little gasping whisper and say "Taa, paa, too, pah, taa, daa, tee, pah" etc. It is amazingly cute. Also amazingly amazingly almost heartbtreakingly cute is his new thing of going "bbbbbbbbbbbbbb" where his lips vibrate and tickle his nose. We "talk" in bbbbbbbbb together. One of us starts it and the other responds. His pudgy little face is awesome vibrating to his quick bbbbbbb lips. I love it.
Anyway, I am writing today because I'm pretty sure he's said his first non-mama-dada word. It is . . . . drum roll . . . kitty cat. Big surprise. It's cool too because his noise for "k" is like bush-man clicking. He makes the click twice and says, sorta, kee ka, kee ka, whenever he sees Spangley. Rad.
He also knows, for sure, these words (besides Mama, Dada, and Kitty cat, of course):
ball
giraffe
banana head (pictured above)
shoes
foot
book
touch
inside/outside
Elijah
These are all things he will point to or go to if I ask him to. (For touch, he'll touch if I say to touch; and we play inside/outside games where he lowers a toy into a container and I say inside and he brings it out when I say outside, etc. Over and over. He thinks it's great fun.) There are probably others I'm not thinking of. It's fun and I wish I could be more philosophical about it, but he is cranking out and crawling away and I have to gooooooooooooooooo
