Month 18: Five Words

Daniel astounds me. As a parent, I imagine it's fairly standard to think that your child is smart, advanced, and pretty much perfect. Recently, I have been attributing my "genius child" thoughts to my genetic bias as Daniel's mom. You can imagine how gratifying it was, therefore, to hear our doctor reiterate the same sentiments. We had a wonderful 18-month visit, where we discovered that Daniel is (once again) "off the charts" on height and weight. She literally turned her laptop around and showed me where Daniel plotted...off the charts. (At least he's proportional!)

The best part of the visit was when she asked us, "So, can Daniel say approximately 5 - 10 words?" And we laughed outloud. I told her that his vocabulary now included roughly 30 -40 words, and when she looked doubtful, I said, "Daniel, what color are your shoes?" "Yellow." Her jaw dropped (literally).

Later at dinner, worried that I had overestimated his word count, we started naming off the words he knows. It was way past incredible. So, just for the record, here's the list (in no particular order). These are the words he knows, can pronounce reasonably well, understand, and use in context:

ball. kick. go. run. walk. rock (rockeeey). tree. sky. car. yellow. blue. purple. dino. puppy. max (cat). uva (grape). cheese. aqua. juice. milk. please. more. eat. cookie (cooo-key). cake. cracker. oats. hot dog (hah cog). bath. splash. watch. one. two. three. key. book. moon. mouse. bear. mush. bunny (moneeey). star. seat. hot. cold. baby. block. face. play. down. up. dirty. poo poo. pee pee. diaper. elmo. blankie (main-key). nose. eye. circle. ear. hair. teeth. belly. wash. hug. boat. movie. bob. TV. turtle. bird. fish. snack. shoe. yes. no. yeah. bite. papa. feet. peach. um. ba ba. iced tea. apple. banana. mine. thank you (da-doo). god. amen. ni-night. ava (abu). hi. hello (hallo). bye bye. bible. duck (duckey). that. daniel. dada. mama. mommy. soap. open. close. outside. ouch.

If I'm counting right, that's 108! More evolve daily, and I'm sure that list is far from complete, but it's a pretty good measure of Daniel's vocabulary at this point. He really is my little genius child!