Jibber Jabber

Mitch is a pretty physical kid.  He learned to roll over and sit up fairly early.  He was crawling well by 7 months and he took his first steps at 9.5 months.  These days he’s a running, rolling, climbing and jumping machine.  His language, by comparison, has been a little slower to develop.  For a long time he just said Mama and Dada and sometimes ‘Bye.  He was mostly just gesturing and making random sounds. He’s still doing this, but recently Mitch seems to have had a little language burst and has been saying few new words and repeating things after us. 

He can say Mine, Apple, Uh-Oh, Up, Mama, Dada, Bubba (Bubble), Cup, Choo-Choo, Shoe, Love you (Pat swears he said this, but I haven’t heard it yet), Dis (This), Dat (That), Bye, Hi, Stop, Yes, No, Uh-Uh (while shaking his head no) and pop (for lollipop).  He can say our sitter’s name (Titi) and he will make a dog sound (a sort of woof-woof / howl combination) and say ‘moo’ when he sees a cow.  We’ve been trying to get him to say ‘Evie’.  He managed something that sounded a little bit like it, but he doesn’t really call her anything yet.  He just follows her around and drives her crazy.

He may not be talking a ton, but we know that his comprehension skills are spot on.  He understands everything we say to him.  The other night I said to Pat “I think I’m going take the kids upstairs and give them a bath”.  I got distracted for a half a second and turned around to find Mitchell was no longer in the room.  I found him on his way upstairs to the bathroom to get in the bath!  I can ask him to go get his shoes or to put one of his toys away and him will.  I read to him before bed every night and I’ve starting adding books that are a little bit longer.  I don’t necessarily read all the words, but I do talk about the pictures and try to get him to identify things.  He LOVES trains right now so we’ve been reading The Little Red Caboose and The Little Engine that Could.  We love it when we can hear the real train while we are reading.  Mitch always stops to listen and say “choo choo”.  There is a show called Choo Choo Soul and he is obsessed with the theme song.  Whenever I play music for the kids, he starts jumping around and waving his arms yelling ‘Choo Choo!  Choo Choo!’.

I love that he’s starting to talk more.  He gets so frustrated when he wants something and we don’t understand.  Hopefully this frustration will lessen when he can tell us what he needs.  It’s hard to tell right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a lot shyer that his sister ever was.  He’s not a performer.  When we FaceTime with family, he won’t say too much other than “Bye”.  If we try to get him to talk, he usually hides his face.  Regardless, I’m sure that we will be hearing more and more out of our Mitch!