For the longest time, Timothy's vocabulary was more or less comprised of six words: Mama, Dadda, Uff (his plush dog), yellow, coffee, and dako (brother). Around his second birthday, he started picking up two or three new words every day. By now, he is stringing them together, so you can almost have a conversation with him - provided you understand his pronunciation. "Bobble, itch one, tuck" meant there was a marble, an orange one, stuck in his booster seat. When he wants my attention he says, "Watch this, Mama!"
Today on the way to preschool, he was talking about the traffic lights, and said "Red, go." He chuckled at his joke, and said "noooo." And then I'm almost positive I heard him say "just kidding."
Over and over, I realize I have been underestimating how much Timothy knows and understands, simply because he couldn't tell me about it. For example, he showed me a raisin and said "oval." Since when do you know what an oval is, kiddo? And what goes on in that little head? Are two-year-olds constantly sorting and naming things, in their attempt to make sense of the world?
Now a month later, we are hearing sentences, with grammar to make an English teacher proud. It's as if all this language was filling up and up inside TJ's brain, until it spilled over the dam.
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