Point to Daddy's nose

When you've got a curious baby, everthing starts to become a teaching moment.

David's been taking advantage of William's newfound fondness for pointing. He's teaching William to point to his nose when David says "nose." Here's a photo of William pointing to Daddy's nose:



















Of course, we applauded and cheered wildly. "Good job, William, good job!" And since William's automatic response to the phrase "good job" is to clap, he delightedly applauded himself:



















After William did this several times in a row, David proudly announced, "That's a fifteen month skill, you know."

(These are the moments when you know what David does for a living.)

I said, "You don't think it might just be coincidence?"

David replied, "The point is that he points to my nose after I say 'nose.' That's what I've taught him."

Of course, now we're trying to do too much. "Can you say 'duck,' William?" David just asked his son, who's joyfully smacking his hands in the water in his little plastic bathtub. "Duck! Duck!" William just splashed, splashed, splashed some more, sending small shock waves of water over the side of the tub onto his daddy and the floor.

I just walked into the bathroom a few seconds ago. David was singing the clean-up song and trying to put away the bath toys. William kept reaching for his rubbery ducky, so David asked him again if he could say 'duck.' William promptly said, "DA!" Which is pretty much how he responds to most questions these days, but hey, he could have meant 'duck,' right? It didn't sound like his version of 'cat,' which is pretty recognizable by now, so hey, we can pretend that he meant 'duck.'

I think it's going to be fun to watch William continue to learn. I still get a kick out of it when he waves or claps, and he's been doing that for ages. And I am always asking him where the kitty cat is, just so I can hear him cheerfully say, "CAT!" or "TAT!"--because it sort of sounds like a combination of the two, even though he clearly uses the word to signify Corky or Smokey, so we know that it means 'cat.' I can't wait for him to learn more words and motions.

Now. If we can just teach him to say "Mama."