a rose by any other name

Be forewarned. I know some of my friends are very sensitive to others' talk of their children's milestones. There will be a fair amount of bragging in this post, and I don't want to offend anyone, so if you choose to skip this post, I completely understand.

Through no effort of our own, our son's vocabulary has been growing exponentially... This, I am told, is perfectlyy normal for children of this age. That normalcy, however, does NOT prevent his parents from beaming with pride over every single syllable. He also likes to pretend he's counting, or saying his alphabet. The letters are jumbled, but he gets that there's a pattern. It's fun to watch/listen to him and imagine the day when he can read a book by himself, or solve a math equation with a pencil and a scrap of paper.

I'll be taking this opportunity to list the words in his ever-expanding vocabulary, but please don't think I'm gloating. I really just want to remember this, in months and years to come. And I'm hoping to keep a little snippet of his sweet innocence in reminding myself where he stands at this flicker of a moment. Maybe I can remember his tone if I try very hard. Maybe the inflection will remain the same. Maybe someday, my son will be telling me tales of his own children and maybe having this memory can take me back in time to a sunny day when my boy was just 16 months old and learning words like "delicious". Maybe I should figure out how to save audio on this durned computer. Maybe.

At any rate, Zee now has verbal access to the following words, as he's used all of them at least once, without mimicking someone else:

Mommy/Mama
Daddy/Dad
Gobby (don't ask)
Zane
Jaime (sounds more like mimi)
Amara
Siibel
Max
hat
Eat (vocal word and sign)
Drink (word and sign)
nah-nah (word) /milk (sign)
"other-side"
ouch!
help (word and sign)
gentle (sign)
up (word and sign)
down (word and sign)
all done (word and sign)
brush-teeth
eyes
ears
nose
mouth
hair
shoes
socks
diaper
ball
balloon
bubble
book
car/vroom
tickle
kiss (word) /muah (gesture)
yes (word and gesture)
no (gesture)
(go go go go) GO!
out
on (word and sign)
off (word and sign)
this
thanks
light
bird
ducky/quack
cat/meow
cow/moo
snake/sssss
bee/zzzzz
dog/woof
donkey/heehaw
"it's good"
more (word and sign)
mmmm, delicious
apples
chicken
egg
peas
cookie
poop (though this word sounds exactly the same as cookie, the meanings are obviously very different.)
Blue's Clues
Elmo
Dora

- I don't mind telling you, those last three are a bit embarrassing, as I hate to think what that says about television usage in our house

I may have forgotten a few, and at this rate, I'm sure he'll know more by tomorrow, but that's the bulk of them. He doesn't use them all, every day. Often, he looks at me like a nut, if I try to coax him into using a specific word, but I imagine that will improve with time. He recently started to string 2 words together a bit more consistently. Typically, one of those words is eat or more, but hey, it's a great start.