Jonah the Jabberbox

In the past months, Jonah's vocabulary has expanded tremendously. Even if we wanted to inventory the number of words he knows at this point, I'm sure we would miss many, particularly as he learns new words and concepts every single day. He repeats words and phrases that he hears us say, "sings" simple songs, can complete couplets from books that are a part of the regular reading rotation, and pretty regularly uses 4-6 word sentences (sometimes longer). He does now use some prepositions and articles, such as "the," but he does not generally employ pronouns yet (for the most part, he still refers to himself as Jonah rather than using I or me or mine). He creates regular plurals without a problem and has started to use some past tense as well.

For the most part, he is pretty understandable, and his words sound like they are supposed to, though we've heard some changes in how he uses the letter "s" and "p" at the beginning of words: "school bus" now sounds like "cool bus;" "spoon" now sounds like "foon;" "pancakes" now sounds like "cancakes," and "police car" sounds like "colice car." We're not sure what is going on there, as he used to say these words without a problem. Perhaps some of the younger kids in his room are influencing his speech patterns??

While we often wish that he didn't wake up quite so early in the morning (pretty much between 5:45 and 6:15 each day), Jonah is generally pretty happy to stay in his crib and jabber to himself. It's amazing to listen to him across the baby monitor, and we often wish we knew what exactly he is thinking and how he moves from one idea to another. Sometimes the "transitions" seem logical, but more often than not, we have no idea how he gets from Idea A to Idea B.

Last week, Jonah was particularly talkative at bedtimes. On Thursday - Uncle David's birthday, as well as that of our friend Kristin - he went on saying "happy birthday to you" ad nauseam, mixed in with some other concepts and ideas, for nearly an hour. I set my phone to create a voice memo via the baby monitor in order to capture some of his jabbering for posterity's sake. Here's a sample from that with a fairly recent picture as backdrop so I could actually upload it to YouTube (Grandpa Gregg should be glad to hear some references in there to Popperville!).

Please, thank you, and other words

What a difference a year makes! When 2011 started, Jonah was working on sitting up on his own on a regular basis. As we roll into 2012, he walks, talks, and knows how to unlock the dishwasher and open the door. If only he could reach to put the dishes away!

We already knew Jonah could recognize words and was saying some words (Michelle recently wrote on his growing understanding of colors), but in the past few weeks, he has really started to use words and to better understand the meaning behind them. He still has some of the "mine" and "no" in him, but we are encouraging him to use his words to better communicate what he wants, and to ask when he wants something instead of just saying "mine!"

With this in mind, he is learning to say please with things. He is especially cute because he signs with it when he says it, but sometimes using both hands (which is closer to "bath" in sign language). We used to have to say "More what?" or "Up what?" to squeeze the "pleash (please)" out of him, but he is starting to put the words together on his own with greater frequency. 

His requests themselves are becoming a little more accurate, too (except when it comes to food - he still thinks we are fishing for a "please" when we ask him what he would like "more" of...). He asks to "read please" or to turn a light or toy "on please" or to "open please" or "mik (milk) please." The request for turning a toy on is actually pretty rare, because one of the first things he does with any toy seems to be to figure out how to turn it on and off. He has a new toy where a knob sticks a little, though, so he has some trouble with it.

Even more fun, especially during Christmas-time, was that he started to learn "thank you." It was just something where one of us said "Can you say thank you, Jonah?" and he shocked us by actually doing it! With this new found word, he was able to personally thank everyone for his Christmas gifts. Sometimes he even surprises us by using it on his own without prompting when a request has been filled for "more" or "up." Sure, it comes out more like "dangkyu," but its meaning is certainly clear.

A grateful little guy

On top of the polite words, Jonah is also starting try some larger words. Usually this is just repeating us, but it is so cute to see him working on words like "alligator" (as part of an Eric Carle animal flash card set or the Nuchi animal train set his Auntie Julie got him for Christmas).

One of our new favorites, though, is a simple word: "yeah." We used to ask what book he wants to read and go through a stack. He would say no, no, no... until we got to the one he wanted, and he would just grab it. Now he says, "yeah!" We can also ask him things like "do you need a diaper change?" or "do you want some milk?" and he will say "yeah."

One of my favorite uses so far was tonight. After reading a bedtime story, I told him "I had a really good day with you today, Jonah. Did you have a good day?"

Snuggling his head into my shoulder, he said "Yeah!"