"Wat DAT!?"

Not the best video, but for months now we have been saying we need to get a video of RUS saying his favorite thing in the whole world, "WAT DAT??" He said it at dinner one evening so I grabbed the camera and tried to get him to say it again. He does, but not exactly the way he normally says it. But, close enough. I've been remiss about recording videos of him talking and it's one of my goals since everyone says his talk is so cute. Especially since it took him so long to really get going with it.

He said "puppy"!!

I have been working with RUS on saying all kinds of things lately and tonight he clearly and distinctly said "puppy" and pointed to his big soft puppy that Santa brought him for Christmas! He is seriously on the verge of some kind of explosion language-wise because he is so so close to saying all kinds of things.

It's Just a Phrase

Life in Toddlerland is quite a bit different from parenting a baby. Of course there are the ubiquitous battle of wills and the "I can do it" moments. To offset these, there seem to be fewer recognizable milestones. It's not exactly about firsts anymore. First words, steps, foods, etc. are things of the past. Who records "first jump" or "first mean face" in the baby book anyway? But there really are fantastic new moments happening all the time. We just don't realize what she's doing, or we assume that she's been doing that thing for a while and we just hadn't seen it. (A lot of things she picks up these days S and I tend to look at each other and say, "She must have got that from daycare")

Anyway, I do want to go on record here to say that R has been saying plenty of phrases lately. I don't know if I'd count them as sentences yet, but she's really getting across a lot more ideas by putting different sounds together. Some examples of what she said today:

coat on
daddy go
mommy sleeping
Stop it!

While giving her a bath tonight, S was chewing on some gum. Lately, R has been chewing her tongue a lot from teething, making it seem like she has something in her mouth (other than food). When she noticed her mommy's gum, she became interested and started saying "open mouth. Ahhh." A near perfect immitation of me asking her to open her mouth and say ahh when looking for lint or old food picked up off the floor.

Even when only using one word, she tends to be pretty good about making her meaning clear. "Downstairs" accompanied by pointing down and getting her face right in yours and nodding leaves little doubt that she wants to go downstairs. Pulling your arm and then patting at a particular spot on the floor while saying only "sit" gets its meaning across too. I even heard a story from her daycare teacher that she repeated instructions to a friend to "walk away" while pulling her along behind her. She repeated it for us later that day too. "N, walk away. N, walk away."

As you see from examples, she is very comfortable giving commands. Not only do we have a great communicator on our hands, but a budding future dictator.

Elbow

My parents taught R to say "elbow" while on the webcam this afternoon. After that conversation, she spent a lot of time walking around saying "elmo" and trying to point in the general vicinity of her elbow, although she was usually pointing at her wrist or the inside of her arm.

Later, all throughout her bath, we heard "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!" and then, after J and I repeated the word with some serious emphasis on the "b", "El-BA" a few times.

EDITED TO ADD: By the way, even though R has never seen Elmo on TV, she has seen Elmo Live! (the toy) and absolutely loves him. When you test him out in the store he does a little routine that ends with him blowing three or four kisses-- MWAH, MWAH, MWAH!-- and every time we watched it, R blew kisses right back at him. It was the cutest thing ever.