Of Toddler Love and Communication

We are still in the midst of a very exciting language explosion in our household! It started with signing more, then continued to expressing no or "no, no, no, no, no" (in a sing-songy voice), and then finally progressed to mimicking. Dylan has always said new words whenever he wants too, usually after a lot of repetition by me, but almost never mimicking me.

Now that he mimics, I can prompt his language so much more easily! Say "up." "More water?" And my favorite is practicing "love you." I've tried "I love you mama" too, but two syllabus is his max.

But last night, during my favorite time of the day, the first 20 minutes of bedtime (the last 5-10 minutes suck and often consist of him sticking his fingers in my nose, mouth, ear, eye, trying to get out of the chair, asking for more books, crying for more books, begging for more milk because he knows it delays bedtime and then finally some strong but usually brief protest crying), he started singing with me!

It start with Pat-a-cake. On some of the longer words like "man," he would say them with me and he would even do the motions. Then we sang "Wheels on the bus" and he did all of the motions without any prompting!!!

It is beyond cool when you see proof that your child has learned something in the past and is now doing it independently for the first time. Then I get excited, then he gets excited and my heart explodes.

And kisses. I cannot get enough of Dylan's kisses. Dylan's current method of kissing is a long closed-mouth kiss while grabbing the back of my head with both hands and pulling me towards him. Aaaaah! My dad watched him yesterday and he would come up and kiss me, then run over to Gramps and kiss him, then come back to me. Magical.

Can he please be a big sappy mama's boy for the rest of his life?

(It's nearly impossible to take a picture of him hugging or kissing me and I also don't have my camera out when we're singing songs, so here's our latest selfie.)

(And the Instagram version. I love how he's sitting like a big kid in this huge chair.)