Because I haven’t written about the escapades of the Z-man in nearly a week, I felt that a post was overdo.
It seems like the Z-man’s language is expanding in some Hubble-like function. I picked him up from school earlier in the week and his teacher told me that he is constantly saying “Please” when he wants something. This is my fault. I say fault because the Little Man quickly learned that Kelly and I find it adorable when he says, “Peeeez!” He understands quite well that he is virtually irresistible and we will usually cave in to his request. We only do this, you understand, to reinforce his good manners. Yes, that. In addition, his teacher told me that he also says, “Thank you,” which was new to me. But sure enough, I’ve heard him say it a couple of times.
Granted, when he says “Thank you” it comes out more like “Cha-Choo!” but the context is right. His teacher also told me that he’s constantly saying, “Daddy at work” which was also new to me for a number of reasons. I don’t think I’d heard him utter a 3-word sentence. Kelly later told me that they were working on that Monday when they both had the day off and I was stuck in the office. All of his little friends will think I’m a workaholic.
Beyond that, he has really got his animals down. He says, “animal” when he’s not sure what else to call it. (Of course, it comes out as “amimal.”) But he can say “puppy” and “lion” very clearly. And if you ask him what a lion says, he’ll say “ROOOOAR!” He can say “kitty”, “duck”, “bird”, and “elle” which is his was of saying “elephant”. He can say essential words like “cookie”, “candy”, “soda”, and “juice”. (Really, he does have a healthy diet, vocabulary to the contrary.) He knows just about everything in the house, “door”, “window”, “kitchen”, “bathroom”, “bedroom”, “shower”.
Recognizing all of these words is one things, but he has been putting them together into sentences. And not only that, he’s going from abstractions to the real thing. For instance, there is a painting of a flower at one end of the upstairs hallway. When we walk up to his room, we name all kinds of items we pass by and a few months ago, I pointed to the picture and said, “Flower”. Since then, when I point to it he’s gotten very good at saying “flower” very clearly. Last Sunday I picked up some roses at the grocery store for Kelly and she put them in a vase. When the Z-man saw them on the kitchen table, he pointed at them and said, “Flower!” That impressed me considering they don’t look much like the picture of the flower on the wall.
Other than that, he is his usual jovial, fun-loving self. He can say “TV”, “Spongebob”, “Mickey”, “Timmy” and name other cast members of the shows he likes to watch. He is very big on all kinds of vehicles: cars, trains, planes, boats. Watching a replay of the shuttle launch last night, he grabbed my hand, pointed to the TV and said, “Daddy, eh-pane! EH-PANE! Eeeeerrrrrrrr!” I read to him every night and at this point, I can hardly wait to start reading some simple science fiction stories to him. There are lots of “eh-panes” in those yarns!
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