Monkey House

The Monkey is rolling right into the world of language and communication. For those of you not exposed to my proud daddy enthusiasm all the time, here are some of the highlights:

“CAT!” — We don’t own a cat, but as I think I reported a few blog posts ago, he started using this word to describe any 4-legged creature. This is good (according to some random source I can’t validate) because it shows he’s CATegorizing things. *groan*.

“Zhsuz..?” — This one was awesome. I’m sitting at the bottom of the stairwell leading upstairs, watching Cole who is farting around in the front entrance. He grabs his frocs, brings them to me and says, “Zhsuz?” (the word “shoes”, but more smooshed together and forced out of his mouth… and with z sounds). I enthusiastically reply, “Yes! Those are Cole’s shoes! Hooray for Cole!” A moment of thought later, I venture, “Can you bring daddy’s shoes?” With only a split-second pause to process the request, he turned around, went back and retrieved my shoes from the front entrance. No flippin’ way! With nothing to lose, I ask, “What about mommy’s shoes?” Sure enough, off he went, and brought back Alie’s sandals. So, not only did he understand the words, but he identified the correct matches for each of us, and understood that he was being asked for something. That was pretty awesome.

“More? More!” — Actually, this one is more like “Mo’”. All it took was one day at his new daycare, and he came home able to ask for “more” food. He complements this with sign language, which is perhaps even more impressive! Sometimes “Mo” could just be a random sound, but when he makes the sign for “More”, there’s no mistaking what he wants. Currently, what this REALLY means for him is “Food. I want food” (he’ll ask for “more” even if he hasn’t just finished some food). But that’s pretty neat. And when he’s a bit fussy at food time, he’ll be able to tell us that he wants more.

Head-shaking — I noticed that he’ll shake his head ‘no’ at appropriate times. I was out for a walk with him the other day, and he was acting a bit cranky at one moment, so I asked, “Do you want some more snack?” to which he shook his head. I thought it might be coincidence, so I brought the snacks closer anyhow, but he shook his head again and pushed the snack container away. Neat!

Baw — Ah yes, another multi-functional word. It can mean “ball”. Sometimes it means “book” even though that one is usually “buh”. But more often than not, it means…. BANANA! Just gotta get him to learn a few more syllables to clarify on that one. Even if he ends up with “Bawbawbaw” we’ll keep working on it.

Simple Identification Questions — When asked what a dog says, he responds with “vuff.” When asked what a cat says, he responds with “mau” or a long string of “mau-mau-mau-mau-mau”. Then a really fun one came up while looking through a farmyard-based book. On a page with some pigs, he pointed and said, “PIH!” I’m pretty sure many of us have shown him pigs before and talked about pigs, but it was cool that he did this one without much extra prompting.

There are a few others, and before long he’ll be exploding with vocabulary (so there won’t be any point trying to catalog it), but let’s just say that this is a really fun period. Watching him not only mimic words, but actually process questions and provide answers is something special. And there’s no shortage of love for books right now (though his attention span is still too short to sit through them most times) so here’s hoping he decides to become a good reader!