Parenting Month 17: We have a talker in the house

This month Tai has been a big babbler. Lots of things to talk about. His favorite thing to talk about: food. He likes to eat 'ananas (and lets everyone in the grocery know it). 'pples and 'yoyo are also reliable favorites. We have no problem with this boy not eating. He will always eat bananas and cherios on any given day while everything else rotates in and out of his diet without notice. Peppers, sweat peas, asparagus, chicken, eggs, soup, noodles, melons, oranges, zha jiang mien and other things have had their day on the menu.

He knows other words as well. The prize for words-that-gets-repeated is 'ah-ohh'. In the beginning of the month this was two distinct syllables, now it is clearly a single word. Used whenever something falls on the floor.

He knows the word 'no' (of course, he is a toddler), but he also knows the word 'yeah'. Actually 'yeah' is his goto word when it is clearly the time for him to respond to something, but he really does not know what we just said. Other words that he has learned from reading include 'yum', guo-guo (dog), gone (used after draining sinks or finishing everything in his bowl/bottle/cup), there (as in, I want to go there), down, bao-bao (pick me up), dee-dee (the sound a car makes)

He likes to read. There is the book 'Little Pea' and we have him trace the parts where little pea is moving around. He likes to stop on the page that describes seven types of candy. And there is a page where Little Pea is eating spinach and says 'Yum!' that T likes to read out. And then there is 'Moo, baa, lalala' and when we read it we say the name of the animal and T says the sound. The funniest one is about three singing pigs. After T says 'lalala', he immediately says 'nonono', because that is what is on the next page. A new book is about counting. T holds the book when we read, and he can tell when a book is upside down, so he'll turn it the right way before we start. One of the pages in the counting book is of possums, hanging from a tree. Very confusing as he turns the book around and around to try to get it right-side-up.

Various toys are in use. Lego (Duplo) and wooden blocks are stand-byes. We have wooden cars and an airplane (although he does not play this as much now that he can walk, it was a lot of fun when he was crawling). He has finally mastered the stacking toys. We try to maintain a daily piano session.

All in all this was a fun month. My mom has been here these past few weeks so she gets to enjoy it too.