DUTTON!

Jamie is suddenly bursting with language.

He's been using nonsensical syllables for what seems like forever.  He said his first word months and months ago.  He can say Mama and Dada but almost everything sounded like that, too, so it was sometimes hard to tell what he was saying.  I'm sure that, to him, he's been speaking clearly for a long time but we've just been unable to understand what he's saying.  He usually finds a way to get his point across but it isn't always easy.

In the last week, though, he's started picking up new words at an astonishing rate.  It all started with his beloved vacuum cleaner.  People, he is having a torrid love affair with the stupid thing.  I don't understand what exactly his attraction is but he l-o-v-e-s the vacuum.  So, one day he pointed imperiously at the vacuum and said "mac-oom!  mac-oom!"  He kept saying it until he had made it clear what he meant and I said "yes, Jamie, that's the vacuum."

It's only continued from there.  So far we've gotten pigeon (because he loves to read the Mo Willems Pigeon books), vacuum, bye bye, water, all done, this, doggie/maggie (not sure which), mama, dada, ta da, and Liam.

Tonight he spit out a new one.  We read Sandra Boynton's "The Belly Button Book" about a ga-jillion times a week so he's well versed in the concept of the belly button.  I asked him to find his belly button.  He lifted up my shirt instead, stuck a finger in my navel and proclaimed:

"DUTTON!"

I love it.  Sometimes it's hard to understand what he's saying but I love it all the same.  Liam has all but lost those hilarious mispronunciations that all little kids have.  (I will forever miss "Star Whores.")  Jamie is just starting and we have the fun of discovering these things all over again.