Chatty

Language development is really interesting, particularly when it’s your own kid and you can see all the changes first hand. Owen is getting more vocal (more on this in a moment). He’s always been very observant and seemed to understand a lot of what we were saying. Now that includes ‘Go get your Brown Bear book’ or ‘Go find George’, which he’ll toddle off to do.

Yesterday, Travis and I discovered that he understands a lot more than that (and no it’s not b/c Owen started cussing). We were discussing how much Owen likes his lion Halloween costume. In particular, two Saturday mornings in a row, he’s wanted to put on his lion costume and look at himself in the mirror in our guest bedroom, admiring his mane and tail. Yesterday, Owen heard us discussing this, and he went and started banging on his bedroom door. When we let him in, he went to get his Halloween costume and cried until we put it on him, then promptly went to the guest room door so we could open it and he could look in the mirror. He also roars like a lion when he’s wearing it, which is pretty cute. So it seems that he understood our conversation and it reminded him that he wanted to go play with his costume. I guess it’s time to start spelling things in front of him.

He also talks more – more babbling in O-gibberish, more successful mimicking of words we say, and more words of his own. From his favorite word ‘up’, to bubbles, apple, truck, dog, cat, and my favorite - stinky (to refer to his diaper) he’s getting quite a vocabulary.

My favorite language development that he's had is that he's starting to learn animal sounds, thanks to Sandra Boynton's book 'Moo, Baa, La La La'. Now when I read the book to Owen, he'll fill in some of the animal sounds i.e.
K: A cow says
O: mooo (in a soft cute baby voice)
K: A shee says
O: baaaaa (same voice)
K: 3 singing pigs say
O: ah ah ah (or la la la, depending on how the mood strikes him)

He realizes that real cows say moo, also, as we discovered when we took him to the petting farm last weekend.

It seem like just yesterday that he would scream like he's being eaten by a bear every time he wanted to communicate. Hmm... How times change.