Words

I'm a bit sad to not have been more diligent with recording some of the recent happenings with little guy over here.  It seems like in the last month he's really growing into a full-on toddler, and each day brings some new little surprise.  Most noteworthy is his talking.  As we all know, he's never been shy about expressing himself, and he has certainly been talking in his own language for a very long time, but recently he's been very clearly and specifically trying to say some of our words. I think his first set of words really was "dis", "dat" and "der", but he soon moved on to many more.
This is what they sound like:
Ah daaar
Ah taar
Ah dooh
Ah dawh
It's sometimes quite tricky to know what he's talking about.  We use indicators like what he's pointing at, or the noise he makes after to make the most educated guess we can.  We now know that the words above refer to a car (well any moving vehicle really), a door, or a dog.  They can seem interchangeable at times, but more often than not they refer to cars - his new obsession.  It really came out of nowhere but all of a sudden he's thrilled with cars and plays with them all the time.  We hear him exclaim: "Oh! Taah!" All the time, often followed by: "brrroom, vrroom" noises.  He also talks about dogs and then does a small high pitched bark to follow.

Besides these words, he says Mama, but with a real intonation, and more recently, he says: "da-oow!" - ciao - and gives a little wave.  He also says "bifis" sometimes referring to breakfast, or he indicates he's hungry by clicking his tongue and saying "nana".  "Nana" also can be banana, in which case he is more likely to say "anana".  For a while now he has been saying "dirt" for dirty and uses it whenever he's trying to touch garbage cans, or outside if he's picking something off the ground.  If I tell him something is dirty he follows it by saying "dontush", meaning don't touch.  A child after my own heart!
In just the past week he's started saying "bah" for ball, "booh" for book, and "ah dah" for all done.  He also sometimes says the name of his favorite sleep companion Bertie (he says Bert).  He can also frequently be heard saying "oh yisss", or his favorite alternative: "oh, no!"
It's quite astonishing how quickly all this is coming about!