Look Who's Talking

As I sit here typing, Theo is fast asleep behind me, exhausted from a hard day of helping me with laundry, going shopping and of course, playing at the playground. I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the sentences he's been producing lately.

Up until recently, Theo would just name the thing he wanted. Mommy, milk! Mommy, bread! Cheese! He knew the phrases I want and Give me, but only used them when prompted. He also knew how to ask for more of something by simply saying the word "more."

Now suddenly, almost out of the blue, he seems to be putting all of these elements together. "Mommy, I want more cereal." Actually, he says, "hey mommy." It's really cute, he's been going through a phrase of prefacing things with hey. "Hey, mommy, hey daddy, hey Bruce..etc.

The other day, on Sunday morning, we were all lying in bed. Joe wanted to get Theo's attention to tell him something so he said, "Theo." Theo very unexpectedly replied, "Yes, daddy." I think our jaws both dropped! We looked at each other and then hugged the hell out of Theo. He has such a cute little voice to boot!

Yesterday, we were in PC Richard exchanging our vaccuum. Obviously, Theo got bored quickly. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard him say, "Hey mommy, I want to go, peese." He scrunched up his face and whined the words again. To validate what I'd heard, the sales guy said, does he want to go to the bathroom or leave? I laughed and said he wants to leave. I was so thrilled that someone else besides the biased mommy understood the very clear sentence! Theo said it again today in another store. He's very polite with his demands. I want to go, please. Hysterical.

In addition to the sentence structure, his vocabulary is expanding...I almost want to say rapidly. He's understanding and saying more than he ever has. It's getting to the point where we're having mini conversations. That may be exaggerating, but definitely little exchanges.

Some things he says:
"I don't want it"
"No thank you"
"Turn around"
"Move over"
"Get up"

And much, much more. I'm feeling pretty encouraged. I will be visiting school once he's back from spring break, and I'm hoping he talks there the way he does with me. I know school and the people who work with him get tons of credit, of course.

My next goal for him is to really understand stories I read to him. He still doesn't understand an actual story that's being told to him, he just points out some pictures in his books. It's great that he's picked up language he needs to function - as you can see from above, most of what he knows are commands, ways of expressing his needs. Now, I'd like for him to discover how much more there is to speaking, like hearing a story and understanding what's going on in it. Like I said, though, I'm encouraged, since this seems to be the natural progression of learning language.