From the mouths of babes

Will is definitely excelling beyond his age level in vocabulary right now. Since he turned 18 months, it is like his brain flipped a switch and he just blossomed with words. He shocks me frequently with words he remembers or has heard us say. Our little parrot repeats quite a lot of what he hears. (Don't worry... I'm not about to tell a story of a cursing 19 month old.)

So the other day, I was reading his tractor book from Aunt Kelly and we got to a page with a big yellow tractor on it. He knows the word yellow and that it is a color, so I was saying to him "yellow tractor". Well he kept repeating something that sounded like "com-bye". I could not figure out what that was, mainly because I wasn't expecting him to know what KIND of tractor it was. But he was saying it very well... he was trying to tell me it was a COMBINE! I was totally shocked! Craig says he probably learned it from Grandpa Riedeman or from the millions of times that book has been read to him. Well I thought, maybe he thinks all yellow tractors are combines. So I found a page with lots of different tractors on it including 2 yellow ones that were NOT combines, and I asked him "where's the combine?" HE POINTED RIGHT TO IT!!! My kid's a genius. :)

It is so much fun to be able to communicate with him. And he understands much more than he speaks too. He still loves books and farm animals and cars - those are the favorites. Now he can voice when he's thirsty (usually "milk", "wawa", or "cup") or a specific food he wants ("gape"/grape, "appo"/apple, "caca"/cracker, "ray-ree"/rasin, etc. or he'll just say "bite?" or "peas?" if we're eating something he wants to taste). Will knows the names of all his close family members as well as the babysitter and some friends at the sitters. He knows there's a baby in mommy's belly and now calls her "Sophie" instead of "Sofa".

Other new favorites include "jump" (when daddy tosses him in the air), "towel" (for bath), "eat", "coat", "hat", "bus", "airpane", "tut" (truck), "pie" (pray), "toys", "play", "hippo", "monkey", "pretty", "pizza", "paper", "yight" (light), etc. etc.

I love this age.