The Word

At this stage in his little toddler life, Holden's brain seems to be on fire. He's just processing so much, and trying to communicate more and more each day. In the past few weeks, he has definitely begun to understand a lot more that we are saying, too. And he's constantly working on new words and new sounds. And that brings me to tonight's word ... or words, rather.

The past couple of days, Holden has two big words that he has been working on. The first one is "blackberries." For quite some time now, this has been one of his favorite foods ... and they've been on sale at the grocery stores, which is even better. He can shovel down about half a package of blackberries at one sitting, even when the berries are really sour (aka "out of season"). Tonight at dinner, he decided this was his new favorite word. Except, when he says it, it sounds more like "bla-ba's," but he points feverishly at the blackberry package. He probably said it more than a dozen times this evening while he was eating the last of our blackberries, and then he got so mad when they were all gone.

The second word that Holden has been working on this week is "Isla" (pronounced "eye-la," although Holden makes it sound more like "yay-ya"). This is our friend Kimberly's daughter, Isla, who is just a bit younger than Holden. They go to the same daycare, and used to be in adjacent classrooms -- although I'm not sure how often they see each other at daycare these days, with Holden moved to the toddler room. Last weekend, Kimberly and Dave (and Isla) invited us over for brunch, and Holden was practicing saying "Isla" before our visit. And ever since then, whenever he sees the picture of Isla that is on our fridge (from their holiday card), Holden gets super excited and starts saying "yay-ya," "yay-ya" in his best attempt to say "Isla."

So, Holden's definitely continuing to work on his words, now making valiant attempts at much more complicated words like "blackberries" and "Isla." He's been doing a really good job recently with simpler words like "ball," "book," "done," "more," and even taking a stab at "water" (which is "wa" or "wa-wa") ... and this is all on top of the sign language he uses on a constant basis. But this all means that he's comprehending a much larger vocabulary, and then trying to make some of these new sounds on his own. Like I said, his brain is on fire.

10 Months

Time has started to blur (as I hear it often does after a baby turns 6 months), and Holden is making the transition from infant to toddler whether we're ready for it or not. This past month has been a bit rough on the little guy, who took his first big vacation, experienced his first real cold/fever last week, and whose been stalled out on teeth number 5 and 6, both of which have caused him woe for weeks. And to top it all off, tomorrow he starts Day Care. In general, though, he's handled these experiences well, and seems to be healthy and ready for his big day tomorrow.

Suddenly the guy has a full head of hair, can speed crawl, and occasionally even braves standing on his own (without help) for little bits of time. He's been cruising along the furniture, chasing cats around the house, and has taken to telling us animated stories in his own infant language. He's also mastered a few signs ("more," "eat" and "milk," of course) that we had been working on teaching him for weeks. And...we think he's picked up a word or two, mainly "daddy," which he's seems to have started saying with purpose. Of course, he also says dadadada all the time, so do what you want with that one!