A Two-Year-Old's Language Skills

Well, Jenn inspired me to start blogging, especially when I learned from her blog that I can slurp my blog into a book. I'm hoping to use this to keep in touch with my family and friends, but most of all to remember what was going on in our lives when my kids are older. I chose this template because Sam's favorite color is green.

So I thought that I'd start with Sam. He's changed so much over the past four months. He has really picked up on his language skills and he chatters constantly now. He's also beginning to be very imaginative, and loves to pretend that he is Boots and I am Dora. For example:

Sam: "Boots wants more milk."
I give him some milk.
Sam: "Thanks Dora."

I've even succeeded a few times in getting him to go to bed when he doesn't want to by telling him that Boots wants to be in bed.

It's been interesting to watch him develop his speech. For example, he used to say, "past" instead of "fast". For example:
Sam: "Airplane?"
Me: "Yes, it's an airplane."
Sam: "Past?"
Me: "Yes. It goes really fast."

We would have this conversation over and over. Until one day, he said, "Pppfast?" And for a couple of days, he said, "Pfast?" And from then on, it was "fast."

He also called monkeys "momocks." And since monkeys were his favorite, he was always talking about them. And then one day, he just started saying Monkey.

He also thinks his name is "You". So he refers to himself as "You." For example, he'll hold out a cookie and say, "You want the cookie." When I take it, he'll say, "No! You cookie." Or he'll say, "Mama hold you." It got complicated once with one of his friends when he pointed to his backpack and said "You backpack." And then he pointed to Luke's backpack and said, "My backpack." And Luke said, "No, my backpack." And Sam said, "Yeah, my backpack." Poor Luke thought Sam was trying to take his backpack, but Sam just has his pronouns messed up. Does anyone know how to explain the concept of pronouns to a two-year-old?

Sam loves to dance and to sing. He's just started singing his lullabys with me. I'll sing a line and then he sings a line. It's very sweet.

He also likes (as most two-year-olds) to copy everything we do. While my mom was here, she was often doing stretches for her back. One day while we were at the hospital, he had been sitting at the table in a hard chair too long watching Dora the Explorer (his favorite pasttime). Mom said that all of a sudden, he said, "My butt hurts. I have to exercise." And he jumped down from his chair, found the yoga strap my mom had been using, and started to stretch. He did the same thing today, and I tried to capture it on film (especially his sway-back swagger with his hands on his lower back), but thanks to my sleep-deprived brain, I thought I had it on the movie mode, and I really had it on the "M" manual mode. Ah well.