Words words and more words

Next week, Holden has his 18 mth doctor's appointment, where the physician will undoubtedly ask us how many words he knows, and the truth is--we have no idea, because we've lost count. From morning until night Holden's a labeling machine, beginning with his bed sheets, which feature a "turtle," "tree" and "owl." He has cute little mispronunciations (blanket is "behbeh," hello is "hewwo"), but overall his pronunciations are getting much better. Dog, for example, used to be "na" (why? I'll never know). Now it's pretty close to the actually word.

Here's a few of my (and his) favorite words and phrases he's been using:

VERBS: play, read, walk, eat, roll
-He's known "walk" and "eat" for a while, but "play" and "roll" have recently come into the regular rotation of words. And he uses the sign for play too, especially when he wants out of his highchair to go have some fun.

"Da, Two, Tre...Eight"
-To encourage him to head up to bed time we count our stairs. And now he count stairs, sort of, in a sing-songy rhythm of "da." But he has TWO and EIGHT down perfectly. :)

"A-B-B-D"
-This is brand new. He's starting to learn the process of singing, and when we sing the ABC song, he starts with us.

"Truck," "Van," "Bus" - Name your transport, he probably knows it.
-Since we're city peeps who have to drive through traffic to work, Holden sees a lot of vehicles. And he's very good at differentiating them. He's currently obsessed with "vans," but a couple of weeks ago it was the metro "train" that goes his daycare, and before that it was trucks and buses. And better yet, he knows "tractor." Thus, when we go up to my parents' farm he'll be prepared to play the label game.

Also, incidentally, every so often sentences pop out, like "that's a ball." They're clear as day, but he doesn't say them regularly, so they always surprise us. But it seems like there's something new every day.