Cole- Speak

One particularly fun aspect of having a toddler who is just barely learning to speak is hearing what sounds he's able to make. Cole has a few choice words in his young vocabulary. The first, and perhaps most endearing, is "dog" which he first pronounced as "doooooooo" and has now morphed to "daaaaw." Progress, don't you think? Of course, I must note that any animal that has fur, 4 legs and a tail is a dog in Cole's mind. So, when he sees pictures of cows or pigs or horses or ferrets or cats, he without fail loudly exclaims, "DAAAAW!" It really is cute.

He has recently learned to say bird. It's more "burr" (as if he's chilly), but hey, it's close right? Any person he cares about is "mama" (yes, I am annoyed). Occasionally, he says "dada" when Raleigh is around, but he's usually "mama" too. He says "ma?" (with the lifted inflection at the end as if he's asking a question) for both milk and more. Can be confusing at times. We live on a busy street and perhaps the only benefit of that is that Cole immensely enjoys looking out our windows or sitting on the front stoop watching the traffic go by. He waves at everyone (he's the future mayor, apparently) which is heartbreakingly cute. He also points out the trucks ("ya-ya" in Cole speak). I once pointed to a white van passing by and said "truck" in the hopes he would imitate me. Raleigh chided me saying that he was trying to help Cole differentiate vans from trucks and would I please help his cause by saying van for vans and truck for trucks. Uh....ok.

At one point or other, Cole has also uttered flower (thanks to Aunt Susan!), thank you, book, and yes. All great words. Bottom line is that on a daily basis he seems to be learning new words or improving the pronunciation of the words he already knows. It's very, very cool to witness, I must say. Especially being a writer, songwriter, avid talker and all-around lover of words, I find it most interesting and enjoyable to take part in his verbal development. It's wonderful to have a child who loves making funny noises with his mouth and loves wildly exclaiming at the top of his voice "DAAAW" or "YA-YA". What more could I ask?