Talking up a storm

Andrew is talking up a storm these days. A veritable storm. He's repeating things that we say, and we can actually understand him. And he's making up his own little short sentences and phrases, and most of the time, I can actually figure out what he's saying or trying to say.

Relief!

David says that Andrew's right in the middle of the normal range when it comes to speech and language development for his age. It's just that William was so freakishly verbal from such an early age (in a good way, sweetie, she says, in case William is one day reading this) that it seemed odd that Andrew wasn't talking as much as William was at the same age.

Well, Andrew seems to be making up for lost time.

My current favorite thing is what Andrew always says when William leaves him. Every morning, William hops out of the minivan and scampers down the sidewalk into the school. And every morning, Andrew looks longingly after his beloved big brother and says, "Bye, Wuhhhm. Ha' a good day!" He says a similar version of this if William happens to leave the house too. I wish you could have seem him standing at the front door the other day, waving after his brother and calling "Bye, Wuhhhhm! Bye, Wuhhhmmm!"

"Wuhhhm" is also starting to sound a lot more like "William," too. I think I might really miss it when Andrew no longer calls him "Wuhhhhm." I still miss a lot of William's old toddler expressions, like "tomos" instead of "tomatoes" and the way he used to say "Super Rocketship!" when he got all excited. Very few of William's Williamisms hung on for a very long time, much to my dismay. David and I still call the remote control the "mote-can retrol" because we think it's funny, but honestly, William only called it that for a month or so. It wasn't even like we tried to correct him, either. He just figured it out on his own and started using the correct words. Bummer.

My other favorite Andrewism right now is the way that he says "beep beep car" for "car." William, David and I have all fallen into the habit of referring to a car or any vehicle as "a beep beep car." And Andrew's zippered pajamas are now the, you guessed it, "zip zip jammies." I have a jacket that is the "zip zip coat." I love this. Something about the way he gleefully says "zip zip!"

Ah, my sweet baby boy. He's going to be two in two weeks, and I can't quite believe it.