Chatterbox

What can I say? As Clay's verbal skills expand, he's becoming a little chatterbox! (That's our man at left, enjoying the current exhibit at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.) He's got enough words in his vocabulary now that he can pretty much ask for what he wants - milk, juice, eat, eggs, "Jack" (Jack's Big Music Show, the show he likes to watch on TV), outside (We get this one ALOT.), shoes, my (I think he means "mine," and, yes, this is becoming a frequent word.), fork, cup, no, mama, daddy, please (He cocks his head to the side and smiles when he says this one; soooo cute!), cookie, night-night, cat, book (He asks for some books by name - "words" for the My First Words book, "hop" for Hop on Pop, "ham" for Green Eggs and Ham, "moon" for Goodnight Moon, etc.), gamma, pawpaw, lovey - basically all the essentials.

He's even started to put a few words together now. The other day, he came up to me, pointed to his diaper, and said, "Diaper change." Sure enough, he was toting a load in there. I guess I should be glad he felt he needed to tell me about it, right?

He gets really frustrated when he asks for something and we don't understand what he's trying to tell us. We do the best we can, and we figure it out most of the time.

He can pretty much identify all his colors now - red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and purple (He loves purple.). He has some trouble with brown and black, but I think he's gotten the hang of white now. He's also pretty good at identifying pictures of things in his books - household items, different toys, fruits and vegetables, etc. He knows the sounds that lots of animals make (sheep, cows, horses, ducks, chickens, etc.), and he will recreate them to hilarious effect. We love asking him to roar like a lion or a tiger; he even shakes his little head back and forth, trying clearly to be as menacing as possible!

It has been really gratifying to communicate with him verbally. He's clearly very pleased when he asks for something specific, and we understand him. It's been fun to watch him learn more about words and see him enjoy the payoff in talking instead of hollering!

He is climbing like crazy now, and he's gotten pretty smart about pulling up a chair or something so he can climb on it to reach a higher surface. Very few tabletops/counters/etc. are safe anymore! We spend alot of time outside to help him blow off steam. We run all over the back yard, loll in the (now-falling-apart) hammock (gotta replace that thing), dig in the dirt with his little hand fork, climb all over the patio furniture, and swing the the back yard swing. We also peep through the slats in the fence to look at the dogs in the yards on either side of us. (Though he backs up pretty fast if they start barking!)

Brian and I spend a fair amount of time talking about how brilliant he is and patting ourselves on the back for creating such a wonder of the human species. For the remainder of the day, we try to keep him fed, clean (It's debatable at this point if this is even possible.), and otherwise tended to. But, geez, it's pretty dang worth it. I love that kid.