21 Months: Sentences
I've started telling people, when they ask Peter's age, that he is almost 2! It seems astonishing that I no longer have a baby, and now have a child, albeit a little one. In many ways he is still a little baby. I look at him sometimes and remember that he is still so tiny compared to most of the kids toddling around the playground. But he is a little kid!
He's into a lot of pretend play now, which is pretty neat. He is very fond of his bear, who frequently gets taken to daycare, and enjoys lots of other adventures. He just told me "Bear loves bubbles!" Does he now?
The other fun part is sentences. More and more he is communicating like a "big kid". His toddler inflection means I don't always catch what he is saying. Rs sound like Ws, Th is D, Gs sound like D(j) and so on. Some longer words get their own translation: "Track-a-tor" for tractor, and "Peek-a-doo" for Peekaboo. His own name becomes "Petie!" Yesterday he was very insistent that he wanted "bucktea" to eat, but I still haven't figured out what that is. And he still uses some funny words like a rumbly "hmmmm" for car, which is the sound effect he used to make when signing car. He's dropped the sign, but not the sound effect, and no matter how many times we call it a car, he refers to it as a "hmmmm". But since it's supercute, I'm sure I'll feel a bit of a pang when he starts using the "real" word. When he's wondering if he left teddy in the car he says "Bear hmmm?"
Despite this, a lot of times he is crystal clear: "I want cookie!" "Daddy go outside" and yesterday, in a six word extravaganza (his longest sentence ever) "Mummy, I want other side mukmuk." (Mukmuk is his word, which we've adopted for milk)
It's also just interesting to hear these little conversations he has with himself where he's mimicking conversations he just had with me - I just told him not draw on his knees, so he's sitting with a pen and paper muttering "No knees!"
The other interesting thing is that, even though he is immersed in Spanish, he seems to keep the words almost entirely separate. There are just a few exceptions ("Gracias, por favore and agua (one of his first words)" - clearly his daycare provider has been more successful at teaching him manners than we have!) I do wonder sometimes when he's frustratedly telling me something he wants, if it's just because he's using a Spanish word I don't understand. But for the most part he knows that he says "Bye-bye" to us and "Adios" at daycare, which is quite fascinating to me.