There are so many times during the day when I stare at Elijah and wonder what he’s thinking. He jabbers all the time, but what is he telling us? He picked up some baby sign language pretty early on (“more”, “all done”, “milk”) but now he’s building up his verbal vocabulary too. Here’s a list of what he has under his belt so far:
| no | apple | cracker |
| thank you | juice | water |
| two | hi | car |
| truck | tractor | trash |
| diaper | bye bye | uh oh |
| oh no | shoes | cheese |
| slide | ball | keys |
| eye | Jesus | What’s that? |
| tree | Ike |
In fairness, some of these words are only distinguishable in context by Tyla and I but others are decipherable by the general public.
The list of words he understands is much bigger. I’m always talking to him, and sometimes I’m amazed at the complicated instructions he can actually follow. For example, one day I said, “Can you please pick up this piece of paper and throw it into the trash can?” I turned my back not expecting him to do it and when I looked again, he was toddling over to the trash can across the room. One of our favorites is that he understand “May I please have a hug?” Sometimes he’ll say “No”, but that’s fine because it just makes the hugs more enjoyable.
No “airplane”?
“Airplane” is usually pointing at the sky and making an “ehhh? ehh?” sound. It’s the same sound he makes whenever he’s doing sign language and trying to get our attention.