Baby babble

Now that Josiah is a year-and-a-half old, he's feeling the need to express himself. As much as I thought we would be skipping the tantrum phase with our mild-mannered son, my memory of Lucy at 17 and 18 months came back very quickly when Joey decided that life was so hard he was going to just lie down on the floor and scream about it for a few minutes. It was pretty cute, actually, as he glanced at me every few seconds to make sure I was paying attention. And his little pouty lower lip was plain old adorable and irresistible.

Seems like at the core of this lovely phase of toddlerhood is the desire to communicate coupled with the inability to do so. At least effectively. But in these last few weeks we've really seen Joey improve in the sign language that we've been working on teaching him for months. He's been consistent with a few signs, but now he's starting to truly understand, as if a light bulb went on and he's thinking, "Oh, so that's what these silly hand motions are for! Mommy and Daddy don't just do them to make me giggle, they actually mean something!"

Besides the increased sign language, he's really showing a desire to speak and learn to say words. He has had mama, dada, ball, hi, baby, and water mastered for a while (or at least that's what we know he's saying). With John's parents in town he has also gotten quite good at nana and papa.

This last week he seemed to have a vocabulary explosion, associating his new-found vocal sounds with bath, bubble, spoon, moose, bear, shoe, eye, dirty, stop, book, balloon ("boon"), blueberry, potty, cracker, car, buddy, up and down.

Of course, none of this compared to bedtime when John asked for a hug and a kiss. He said to Joey, "I love you, buddy." And Joey leaned in, touching his forehead to John's, and replied in his precious voice: "Yah yoo."

And yes, I cried.