This morning I realized he really has gotten his three word 'sentences' down now. He will say 'good morning Jersey' to the dog, and 'good morning choochoo' to the train. When I beg him, he'll say 'good morning momma'. Silly guy. He says 'i'm gonna catch you' and 'here you go' all the time. His newest addition is 'I got it'. He really likes to address the dogs a lot, so when we leave the house he will say 'bye Jersey, bye doggy'. He can't manage to say Guinness so the dogs are now called Jersey and Doggy (by Calvin). Nearly every morning he says to me 'where's Daddy?'. Then we search the house to prove to him that Daddy really went to work.
Last week he came up and said 'love you' and hugged me out of the blue. First time he had said 'love you' without one of us asking him to say it. That gave me a whole day of a warm heart!
We saw a snake on our front step a few weeks ago, and as we pointed it out to him, it slithered away into a hole under the front porch (that is in the stair). Every single time we go in and out of the house, we have to stop now and he will point out the 'snake' hole by saying 'hisssssssssssssssss'. Once in a while he'll say snake.
He surprised me just the other day when we did a very heavy reading day. He seems to go in phases of wanting to do nothing but read all day once in a while. That day he picked a book we hadn't looked at since he was a baby. It is the alphabet, with a real picture of an item starting with each letter (as opposed to a cartoon or drawing picture). He immediately started pointing to pictures and saying what it was. I was thrilled! He pointed out a lot of things that I knew he knew and a few that I didn't know he could say yet. These small leaps are pretty exciting to me as raising him is my full time gig.
In order to keep me guessing though, he isn't working on any new food words other than 'cookie'. We gave in finally to giving him some food that I would rather he didn't eat. Such as french fries and toddler cookies. Both of which he loves passionately. He is especially fond of cookies. He even remembers to try saying 'please' to see if that will convince me to stop holding out and give him cookies for breakfast. [Doesn't work in case you wondered]. His palate has really changed from the easy-going piglet he was a year ago. Now he is very particular and would be much happier if I stopped trying to feed him a variety of good things and just let him subside on yogurt, bananas, cookies and the occasional bit of walnut pieces. He will begrudgingly eat broccoli if he can smear it in ketchup, but no other veggie will go down. Considering my (obsessive) desire to feed him healthful foods this has been trying on me. I realize I have to give it up and just let him eat 3 bananas a day and some oatmeal if that's what he wants to eat, but I will eventually give myself an ulcer with worry. Can you imagine what I'll be like when he's out all night with my car when he turns 19? I may have to take up drinking adult beverages.
He's finally started to try singing. Not much comes out, but you can hear him make an effort to sing Happy Birthday and Itsy Bitsy Spider. He tries to count, and he really thinks he's saying 'one, two, three' but it doesn't sound like that at all. He'll also start the alphabet once in a while, but again it doesn't sound anything like A, B, C. The effort and desire are there, so it's only a matter of time before I can finally say 'well, what DO you want to eat?' and he'll be able to tell me (hopefully something other than cookies!).