New Words
Robin now says “wheeee!” when pushed on the swings or going down the slide. He also says “mmm-MAH!” when giving kisses, which he does frequently, both directly and by proxy. What I mean by the latter is that he’ll often come up to us with a stuffed animal (or sometimes the fuzzy pig slippers that The Anti-Sara gave him) and press them into our faces while making the kiss noise. He isn’t satisfied until we kiss them back.
He can also imitate most of the animal noises in his talking farm toy, and when we make the sounds he can press the right (corresponding) animal.
He’s working on “hi!” and “bye.” He never says “bye” but he knows what “bye-bye” means: sometimes he’ll wave if he doesn’t mind leaving or being left by the person in question; otherwise he’ll start crying. He usually only says “hi” when Sam gets home, but then he’ll run to the door gleefully shouting “hi dada!”
I never get a “hi, mama!” He still almost never says “mama” at all—only when he’s tired or or hurt or wants something. It’s obvious that daddy is a source of fun and excitement, while mommy is the source of comfort and solace. And most of the time I’m just there, so there’s no need to refer to me by name.
Most of what he says is still baby babble, but he understands quite a bit. He can follow simple instructions, like “bring me your plate” or “give that to your Daddy,” and yesterday at the park when I asked him if he wanted to swing, he turned at once and trotted off to the swingset.
But his best new trick isn’t linguistic, it’s his “jazz hands.” When he likes the music he’ll start dancing by waving his hands around in the air. It’s unutterably cute.
