Brothers

Sometime in the past few days (I first heard it yesterday, Marli says she heard it a few days previous) Kenshin learned to call his brother by his name.

For quite some time now (a few months at least), Kenshin has been able to point at Daigoro when asked "Where's Daigoro", but he's never actually called him "Daigoro".

Yesterday and today he's been calling him Daigoro.

Also, another milestone for Kenshin - on Saturday we left the children with their ba-chan and gi-chan for the day. When we arrived at the door Saturday evening, he said quite clearly, looking from one to the other of us, "Hi Daddy, hi mummy."

Once again, pretty run-of-the-mill for most parents of two and a half-year-olds, fairly substantial progress for Kenshin.

Ts-icken Little

After months of glacial progress, Kenshin has suddenly started leaping forward in vocabulary.

Added recently:

"I would like..."

"...milk."

"...water."

"...noodles." (President's Choice White Cheddar Macaroni seems to be his favourite meal at the moment. That kid can pack the stuff away like there's no tomorrow.

"Don't want." (pretty much the answer to anything that isn't meat of some kind or PC white cheddar macaroni)

He's learned his colours and the first five numbers with a great deal of help from nightly sessions with Fisher-Price board books. His pronunciation of the word "pink" is darling.

He also likes to watch the small chickens in the child-friendly faming-based video game "Harvest Moon" and say "chicken in" or "chicken out" (of the henhouse). Only when he says it, it comes out "ts-icken in" "ts-icken owwt".

Daigoro began half-days of kindergarten, although as mentioned below, it wasn't really the same jarring transition it might have been, since he was already spending part of the day with the kindergarten class in his daycare class. He continues to be a gentle, loving and very considerate young boy, if a little spazzy at times. He surprised me the other day with a question about stars and falling stars, asking if the far away stars are suns, and if they are suns, how could you catch a falling star? I suppose he had heard or seen something which had involved catching a falling star.

Two weeks ago was my brother's wedding, which was an absolutely fabulous affair. Daigoro looked handsome beside his father the groomsman and his uncle the groom in the wedding party as the ring bearer. I'm not sure what is quite so adorable about children dressed up in formal wear or uniforms, but it sure is cute.

There's all sorts of other things about Kenshin's progress which I probably should document, but it's all happening so fast it's hard to keep track. I'll have to ask Marli for some input. More later.

Breakneck Acceleration into Speech Country

Yes, it's been a while. No, I have no good excuse, except that Kenshin hasn't been doing a lot of progressing. Until the last few weeks.

Somehow, for whatever reason, the spoken word switch seems to have suddenly flicked on for Kenshin. He's now actively asking use to "read book" (or even more impressively "read Sandra Boynton"), "I think I want to watch [Wall-E, Bolt, I Spy]" and dozens of other sentence fragments and individual words. He says "look, plane!" or "look, noodle!" appropriately when pointing at those respective objects.

This really must sound like "yeah, so what?" territory for many parents of 30 month old kids, but for Kenshin to be speaking at this level (~24 months) is a big leap forward in a very short amount of time. For the past six months previous to this latest development spurt, Kenshin had been speaking around a year-old level, well behind his age. Fortunately, as mentioned in previous posts, developmental assessment indicated that he wasn't too far behind in other aspects.

He's beginning to talk without prompting, excitedly describing things he wants or has seen. This, paired with his increasing comprehension of our commands to him ("come upstairs", "let's brush your teeth", "time to change diaper", etc.) has made it a little easier to deal with him.

Strangely, as I say this, he's actually not generally troublesome in the sense that he's actively causing mischief - it's just that due to his slow comprehension of verbal commands, he's generally indifferent or ignorant of what we want him to do, which makes him seem very uncontrollable except by pulling him about or physically sitting him where he needs to be (on the couch, in his chair, in bed, and so on). He's not drawing on walls because he wants attention - he just doesn't know any better.

Daigoro, by contrast, was speaking fairly clearly at this point in his development, albeit still in sentence fragments.

We took them to African Lion Safari this past Labour Day weekend. Surprisingly better than I was expecting, though I have to say I thought the kids would be more interested in animals roaming just outside the car windows than they ended up being. Kenshin in particular was more interested in his toys than the baby zebra frolicking about four feet away.

Daigoro and I had an interesting duel of wills a month or two back - I need to document that, but not tonight. Just wanted to get a record in while I had a spare moment.

[edit] OK, I have a spare moment.

I was instructing Daigoro to do something - what exactly I can't remember.

I was getting frustrated and I said, "Daigoro, it makes me very angry when you don't listen to me. Please do what I say."

To which Daigoro replied, "Why do I have to do what you want when you don't listen to what I want?"

I replied (in a somewhat taken aback manner), "Daigoro, children have to to what their parents want so that they stay safe and learn from what their parents know. Sometimes children don't know the right things to do yet."

That seemed to fly, but I have to say I wasn't expecting the teenage rebellion angle for at least another eight years.

Lawn Shovelling

Daigoro loves to shovel snow. He'll actually get upset when he sees that the plows have been really efficient at clearing the highways - he was on the brink of tears when he was describing to me in the car how "the trucks with the shovels were clearing all the roads."

So tonight he got to stay with his ba-chan and gi-chan and shovel snow to his heart's content. He shovelled the walkway, the driveway and, in a little bit of overzealousness, started to shovel my parents' lawn as well.

Kenshin is experiencing something which is disrupting his sleep and making him wake up in the night again. Judging by the redness in his cheeks and his running nose, we're thinking its something to do with his teeth again (apple-red cheeks and runny noses seem to herald teething quite clearly for Kenshin). He's also developed a scaly, reddish rash on his calves and thighs which appear to be eczema, though we're not entirely sure.

Yesterday Daigoro was thrown into fits of laughter when he started putting on my battered brown fedora and Marli and my mom would say, "hey, it's daddy," and then when he took it off again they'd say, "oh, it's Daigoro again." Later, he found my father's slippers and they'd say, "oh, now it's gi-chan!" He thought this was hilarious, but when he put on both the slippers and the fedora, the women would say, "oh no, now we don't know who it is - is it daddy or gi-chan?"

Daigoro thought this was the height of modern comedy and repeated it for about ten minutes.

Kenshin is learning certain verbal cues for things - "a doi doi doi doi" is "I want that."

"Amaaaa." is "here, take this thing which I am giving to you.

"Uh-huh, uh huh!" (accompanied by head-nodding) is "yes, I am doing what I want to be doing," or "yes, I like what I now have in my hands."

"Uh-ohhh," is "something has fallen/broken" or "I think I have done something wrong".

"Nah!" (accompanied by twisting his head and body violently away from a proferred food item) is, of course, "no, I don't want this; how can you possibly think to offer this to me?"

He also seems to be increasingly happy to interact with Daigoro - the two of them thumping around the house chasing each other while laughing delightedly is a great joy for me.

Daigoro has been a bit of trouble lately at suppertime. He's become more and more squirmy and fidgety at meals, which obviously reduces the amount of food we manage to get into him. Today we reached the limit of our tolerance and buckled him into his booster with the warning that we will now buckle him in every time he squirms and does not sit properly in his seat. We'll see how effectively this solves this problem, if at all.

Out of the Mouth of Parents, Part the Second

So, short little post, but I thought this one was funny enough to share.

I occasionally buy Daigoro and I a 10-pack of Tim Horton's Timbits. He seems to enjoy them and as long as we limit him to two or three (and share the rest with Marli), it's a relatively harmless and cheap snack.

The other day he was digging through the pack and he picked out a chocolate frosted one. I guess it was only lightly coated, because I think he thought it was a plain chocolate Timbit (no coating). So, he starts to get sugar coating on his hands, to which he reacts by saying,

"Oh! My hands are dirty,"

and scrubbing harder at them, using his Timbit like a sponge. This of course leads to more icing coming off on his hands and further consternation at the defilement of his fingers. To which I reply, without considering the absurdity of the statement,

"Please stop cleaning your hands with a Timbit, Daigoro."

Ah, parenthood. Dadaism got nothin' on you.

Wagging Tongues

This past weekend (August 25-26), Kenshin has started to babble. He's previously been making noises; cooing and gurgling and squawking, but hasn't been stringing them together into a sequence of connected sounds. Now he's "bah-bah-bah"-ing and "goo-goo-goo"-ing with the best of them.

It was funny to observe him work up to this level. On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, I noticed that he was working his jaw open and shut in a sort of silent version of babbling - not making any noise. At the time I commented to Marli that it'd be funny to just overdub a video of him with some sort of voice track.

Then, after three days or so of this, he connected the idea of opening and closing his mouth with making sound at the same time and voilà, he had made the leap to babbling.

At the same time, in the past three weeks while we were on vacation and the week since, he's steadily improved his ability to push up and roll over, to the point that we have to be careful of putting him down on couches and chairs without a healthy padding of pillows to prevent him rolling off and onto the floor.

He's developed a cute habit which will probably pass quite quickly; he occasionally sticks his tongue (a tiny, pointed red-pink flag tip) out one side of his mouth or the other. It's almost too cute, but the fact that he's doing it without prompting or self-consciousness keeps it from slipping into the saccharine.

On the Daigoro front, he's still testing the limits of saying no to various commands, suggestions or requests. It can be wearisome at times, to say the least, and I feel for Marli for having to deal with him all day long. Fortunately these episodes are not so frequent as to make dealing with him a constant chore.

We've been able to "upgrade" his sleeping arrangements into a small cot without much fuss. He rolls about quite a bit at night, so we didn't want to put him into a full size bed yet for fear of the dreaded "thunk" in the middle of the night (as has happened once or twice when he's been left to sleep in full-size beds. Marli made the observation (and I agree) that it's curious that Daigoro hasn't formed strong attachments to single objects or routines. He doesn't really have a favourite toy or stuffed animal; he didn't protest at all when we stopped putting him in the crib and started him sleeping in the cot; he doesn't seem to bat an eye when our routine is shifted slightly or we do something out of the ordinary. In one sense I am grateful, in another I wonder if there is something to the idea of children having strong attachments. I guess he would make a good Buddhist. Well, in this one sense, anyway.

While on vacation, my in-laws made helpful suggestions about higher levels of discipline and obedience. Though I feel we've made a good effort along these lines, I admit that we can do better. In the larger spectrum, I know that Daigoro is actually quite a bit better in terms of obedience and temper tantrums than many children, but it's easy to bristle at correction from elders, even if meant with the best of intentions. So, I think Marli and I will be working a little harder on the concept of obedience with Daigoro over the next few months. My in-laws certainly have valuable experience on the subject.

Our efforts at potty training are so far met with sporadic success. He's managed to let us know on a few occasions now, but his successes are far fewer than his accidents. Nothing to worry about yet, of course; just unfortunate that he hasn't gotten the knack of yet, considering how well he seems to catch onto other activities.

Daigoro's dietary preferences have narrowed to an even thinner range of carbs and sweets, a development which does not please us. There are nights when he eats quite well, on many others he is getting a less than optimal balance. We are spending some time and discipline on this - future health depends a lot on his learned habits now.

The stresses of childcare continue to put strains on the time Marli and I spend together. Fortunately we are learning to adapt both our activities and our expectations and I am thankful for a partner who is willing to discuss issues before they become deep-rooted problems.

We took the children to visit my sister this weekend - she lives in a very nice apartment building with a penthouse level swimming pool. Both Daigoro and Kenshin seemed to enjoy their time in the water, though Daigoro is still reluctant about floating and kicking, preferring instead to be passed from one adult to another.

There are a number of stories from our vacation on Manitoulin Island that I should also relate, many of them very fond memories, but I should sign off for now and save them for another entry.

Small Firsts

Yesterday, while playing with Marli in the evening, Kenshin laughed for the first time (I at least while I have heard him). He has giggled in his sleep, but I haven't heard him laugh while fully conscious before. I think Marli has heard him laugh before, but I'm not sure.

A good milestone to mark - another step in the beginnings of humour.

Daigoro's language continues to blossom. He's speaking in very good sentences (for a toddler) most of the time.

Marli commented the other day that Daigoro also evidenced a fairly advanced concept (in terms of two years and four months development levels). He was watching TV and saw a commercial for Ontario Place. He pointed and said "I want to go there."

Marli, with much more formal child psychology training than I (well, with me having none, that wouldn't be hard, but she actually has some) says that being able to identify a conceptual place (such as an image from a book or a commercial) and then intuiting that a real place exists based on that image is "advanced".

Makes sense to me.

Not much time to wax eloquent these days, so just trying to mark milestones as they come.

Things to Make Your Heart Go "Pitta-pat"

Yesterday my elder son, in the midst of running in and out of the space formed by a sidewalk sandwich board-style advertisement, stopped, looked at me and said quite clearly:

"Happy Father's Day, Daddy!"

He had been coached by Marli as well as his aunt and uncle on Saturday and Sunday, but he said it to me quite independently of coaching or prompting. I'm sure he still doesn't know what it means, but it was nice to hear him say it, even if his only motivation was to make me happy.

Back around the 7th of this month (+/- five days), Daigoro figured out how to climb out of his crib. He's a nimble little guy. It's quite a strange feeling, once you're used to lifting your child out of a crib, to hear him come plodding down the hallway when you know that no one has lifted him out. Sort of creepy at first.

He's becoming a little more contrary - he's quite frequently saying "no" or ignoring our various requests ("come here", "please eat", "no shouting", etc.). We're still holding to the firm but fair model of punishment and discipline - currently we're using about 30 seconds of enforced sitting still as a mild punishment. He obeys maybe 40% of the time when he's otherwise occupied or interested in what he's doing. That number goes up sometimes when he's tired (generally more compliant) and goes down when he's exhausted (generally more cranky). It's a balancing act for sure.

In the afternoon of Father's Day, I took Daigoro to a local outdoor swimming pool. He hasn't quite gotten used to full body immersion yet. Unlike his father, he appears to be a little uncomfortable in water. We'll have to get him used to it slowly.

Kenshin seems to enjoy standing up with assistance. He's quite capable of pushing up with his legs while Marli helps him to stand.

Circle Game

I've recently invested some time in transferring parts of my moderate-sized CD collection into MP3 format for use on my iPod 30GB. Yes, I'm officially about five or six years behind the curve in terms of this technology, but I've never been a big "music guy". I enjoy music, but it doesn't seem to define my life in the same sense that it does for many people.

In any case, I was bopping along on shuffle mode when Joni Mitchell's song "Circle Game" came up. My pace slowed a bit as I paused to listen to the lyrics. Here they are reproduced in part:

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

I almost stopped in my tracks. I was really getting choked up listening to the lyrics. I don't know if most parents do - I suspect so. Same thing probably happens to men who listen to "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin. It's horrendously cliché, I know, but it's hard not to be affected by the enormity of the passage of time and the cyclical nature of parenthood/fatherhood.

So I'm trudging along thinking about how I could possibly be getting more out of the experience of fatherhood, "savouring" more, as it were, as well as putting more into it for Daigoro's sake. As it goes, I think I'm doing pretty well - but we'll see.

Not really anything to do with Daigoro, to be honest, but certainly made me take a moment mentally and think about exactly what this whole business of being a father means. It reminds me of what I debt I owe to both my parents for giving me a loving and nurturing childhood. Not entirely without strife or darkness, of course (that would be pretty damaging in itself) but by and large, a excellent foundation for my own turn as a parent. When Daigoro smiles and hugs us, it feels like warm sunshine embodied in a little squirmy package. There are definitely perks to being a father.

I'm nostalgic by nature - I tend to really become attached to places and memories, probably more so than is good for me. The song makes me think ahead to moments when Daigoro won't look at me with the same shining love in his eyes, to times where he'll hate me or fear me in turn. The passage of time for a parent is both stunningly quick (when considering it in retrospect) and occasionally agonizingly slow (when trying to endure another fifteen minutes of a cranky toddler).

Daigoro is starting to use more words to express more of his opinion.

"Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!!!" (general emphatic disagreement with what we're asking him to do)

"No, thank you." (in response to bathtime or the need to get ready for church)

I'm starting to ramble a little now... perhaps I'll edit this entry later. I just wanted to capture my feeling on hearing this song and thinking about Daigoro and the upcoming addition to our family.

Out of the Mouth of Parents

There are some combinations of words and concepts in the English language that one simply does not expect to use in one's lifetime.

For example:

"Please stop stabbing me with that slice of bread."

Yet, in the wonderful world of proto-toddlerhood, such fantastical amalgams are not only likely, they are downright practical.

I suppose it may come as no surprise to people experienced with children that, having no societal norms to draw upon, a toddler will do things which are somewhat unexpected - such as poking one's parent repeatedly with a otherwise innocuous slice of whole grain goodness. Hence the phrase, "Please stop stabbing me with that slice of bread."

Nonetheless, hearing such lines actually spoken often takes me somewhat aback.

Other off-the-cuff statements inspired by Daigoro's antics:

"The kitty's poop is not for playing with."

"Why is your airplane kissing the baby doll?"

"Please don't use daddy's groin as a springboard."

Toddler motivation often has its own internal logic. Poking someone with bread is funny, it was at hand, and didn't get the same sort of negative response as he would if were poking mommy with something harder or more sharp. The kitty litter box is dark, mysterious and resembles to some degree a playground sandbox. If inanimate baby dolls can be hugged and kissed, why not inanimate model airplanes? Why shouldn't they express affection for each other? As for jumping on daddy's groin, well, he tends to jump all over other parts of my body, the groin just is more sensitive, right?

"Apple juice does not improve the flavour of your peas."

Mushmouth

Say what you will about his recent (alleged) indiscretions or how his work has gone downhill over the years, in his heyday, Bill Cosby was a comedic genius. My father had a lot of vinyl records of various comedy sets that Cosby did (his tamer, family-friendly ones, at least) and I spent a lot of time just listening to them with headphones on, laughing away to myself at the antics of the Fat Albert Gang playing "buck buck" or the Chicken Heart which ate New York City (if you haven't heard that one, pick up a copy of "Wonderfulness" sometime).

A little less entertaining was Cosby's "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" show, a pleasant enough animated series featuring some of the characters from the old Fat Albert Gang plus a few new ones. One of the many eccentric characters in that series was "Mushmouth", a gangly speech-challenged kid who spoke in a strange gibberish language apparently called Ubbi Dubbi.

Daigoro is currently going through a "Mushmouth" phase. It's not exactly "Ubbi Dubbi" of course, but it's reminiscent of the same sort of gibberish. For example:

Me: "Daigoro, how are you today?"

Daigoro: "Train eshawna bayja wassa dursha train?"

Me: "Is that so? You want a train?"

Daigoro: "Ashla sho shasha truck unpalla shaw juice? Okay, mahi sholla nishaa kitty?"

Me: "Oh, something about the truck and juice and kitty?"

Daigoro (emphatic): "Yes." (nods head) "Sholla dursha ma shasha truck insh shasha truck rana shisha truck."

Now, this may sound like gibberish, but it's apparent (or at least it's a good fake) that Daigoro thinks he knows what he's saying. I haven't read or learned about child development enough to know what this is called, but I'm sure it's normal (it's pretty cute to boot). It's also apparent that Daigoro has a bit of a truck fixation, but that's another story.

When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that children can pick up speech at all. Of course nearly everyone does it naturally (some developmentally challenged children and other mental and physical impairments being obvious exceptions) - we're evolutionarily hard-wired for it. Take a moment to think about it, though. How many thousands of words do you know now? How many did you know, even as a young child? Think about how complex a concept even simple-to-say words like "love" or "afraid" can represent.

Right now, Daigoro strings together words like beads on a string of (apparently) meaningless syllables. What do those syllables mean to him, if anything? Or are they just practice, to give his tongue and his brain's speech centre the workout they need to wrap themselves around doozies like "she sells sea shells", "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick" or (many years from now, hopefully) "pheasant plucker".

I had a slight speech impediment when I was young - it was hard for me to get through certain words. Even today, I have to concentrate a little to say the word "synthesize". Speech is an amazing gift - not available to everyone. Fortunately, communication, in some form or another, usually is. Even as I smile a little inwardly at Daigoro's humorous "mushmouth" phrases, I have to marvel a little at the astounding complexity of human communication.

Enter Daigoro

(Note: If you're reading this blog for the first time, be sure to read the inaugural post, "The (Little) Middle Way" first)

What (or more accurately, who) is Daigoro?

Daigoro was the name of the fictional character Kozure Okami's son, who accompanied him in his epic adventures across Feudal Japan. I've chosen to use Daigoro as a pseudonym for my son - it's an obvious choice given my choice of nickname.

This Daigoro, my Daigoro, entered into this world in the early hours of the first week of April, 2005. My wife (who as yet lacks a pseudonym and will thus go nameless for the time being) had convinced me of the benefits of a home birth, and we had planned together for the event. Being a first time father, I was nervous, of course, but I was also well prepared by the patient and well-informed coaching of my wife, who has quite a bit of knowledge in childbirth from her medical-related education.

While she had been experiencing symptoms of early labour since that morning, she was convinced that she had some time yet to wait even as I arrived home from work around 6:30 that evening. We had taken a short course in so-called "self-hypnosis", a method of inducing a trance-like state which assisted in reducing both the perception of pain and making time seem to go by more quickly when feeling discomfort. It's actually a none-too-complex method, but it requires practice and preparation.

I suggested that she should being the early steps of going into a light state of self-hypnosis so that once labour began in earnest, she'd be prepared, but she declined, thinking she had plenty of time yet. She even went so far as to start doing laundry. By 9:30, though, she realized that perhaps this was proceeding a little faster than she expected and we paged the midwives. I believe they arrived sometime around 10:30, but my recollection of events is somewhat skewed.

Things proceeded quickly after that. The midwives were wonderful and my wife was brave (albeit understandably unreasonable at times) and my son was delivered without drugs (the term "natural childbirth" always seems a little snobbish to me) shortly before 3 AM. I am proud to say that I had enough of my wits about me to be in a position to "catch" the baby - as he emerged, he was cradled in my hands first.

Perhaps in some future post, I'll try to better capture the details of the birth, but it was first and foremost a whirlwind experience. I can barely remember details - helping my wife, comforting her, trying to play host to our midwives - it all seemed to happen so fast. One thing I will always remember, however, is the moment of pure joy as I held my son for the first time and wrapped him in blankets to give to his mother.

As it happened, we had been expecting a girl. During a routine ultrasound, my wife overheard the technician describing "girl parts" in medical lingo that my wife could understand. So, as the baby emerged and I saw that it was a boy, I was both happy for the health of a new child, but also surprised that it would be a son and not a daughter.

I suppose it is somewhat of a throwback in today's society to want a son as your first born, but I would be dishonest to say I wasn't hoping for one. Patrilinear primogeniture is a sexist concept, but it dies hard in the male mind.

Despite it being a relatively fast labour, it understandably left my wife quite drained. We bustled about for a little while, made a few phone calls and after thanking the midwives, we tumbled into bed. Thus ended Daigoro's first night on earth.

Since I'm starting this blog belatedly about 21.5 months into Daigoro's development, I'll have to bounce back and forth between current accounts of him and what happened in the past. I hope you will forgive me any temporal confusion this may create.

Daigoro today is a healthy and vigorous young toddler, with a wry, scrunched up smile and a ready laugh. His eyes, sometimes describes as "snapping black" are indeed so dark brown as to be nearly black. He has a mop of wavy light brown hair when it hasn't been cut short (as his mother prefers) and is pretty average-sized for a child his age. He is long-bodied and short limbed, like both his parents, and though not quite stocky, he is certainly solidly built. His current speed settings seem to be "running" and "running faster" but if he interested in something, he will sit down to contemplate it quite thoroughly.

While generally quite happy and pleasant, he also has a meditative and contemplative nature at times, looking very serious when he beetles his lightly toned eyebrows and simply gazes about curiously.

His passions are currently trucks, cars and trains, a trait which I imagine he shares with 80% or more of North American boys. His first word was "shoe", learned because he so enjoys going outside; putting on his shoes meant going there. His current vocabulary is thus (rendered here in no particular order other than the ones that spring first to mind, and by no means comprehensive):

shoe, car, mommy, mom, momma, dada, daddy, kitty, bib, cookie, no, down, up (sometimes up and down get reversed), outside, door, open, hockey, stick, broken, doggie, gi-chan (Japanese familiar term for "grandfather"), truck, plane, train, come, please, thank-you, welcome, juice, water, key, pooh, bama (banana), cracker, cookie, yes (also "yup" and "yeah"), ow, bath, wet, ball, go, one-two-three (said mostly by rote when "counting" something, not always actually related to the number being counted and often restarted), pizza (well, "pida", but close enough), bread, toast, jam, cereal, apple (applies to all round, reddish or red-orange fruits), orange, sock, fish(y), cow, horse, pig, chicken, bird, play, dance, snow, cold, hot, baby, treat(s), tree, wheee, okay, tee (TV), pooh (as in the bear, not the body function), light, diaper, corn, book, jacket, pants, shirt, mitten(s), bike + various names of family members and fellow homecare children.

There are a number of other words he seems to understand without necessarily being able to repeat them to us - our instruction to be "gentle" for example. Taking a moment to write down these words, it's interesting to note what he's learned and what he hasn't learned by this point.

In some cases ("thank you", "please"), I'm quite happy he's learned the words. In others ("pooh", "tee"), I'm not quite as proud.

No one said this path would be easy.