Chatty Matty

I've been meaning to write this post for months. Mattoddler (as Jeff once called him) knows a bunch of words. He can't say many things, but he has known the meanings to what we consider an alarming number of words for a month or two now.

Airplane! Matt started making his airplane sign in April, mainly when he was starting to walk better and Donna took him for walks around the block. He also learned "kitty" a long time ago and would go find a stuffed kitty in our house if we said it.

Then came the food words. Of course he would learn these! If I say, "Do you want a snack?" or "Are you hungry?" or "Time for lunch!" Matt runs to the fridge and tries to open the door. One of my favorites is to tell him to get a banana; he can grab them off our low counter and bring them to the table.

Another one of his earlier words to understand was "carrier." He loves to grab the baby carrier from under the end table and drag it over to Jeff to signal he wants to go for a walk. That led into Matthew also taking Jeff's shoes to him since every time he had the carrier, he also put his shoes on.

We were amazed at all the things Matt could understand a while ago, then it seems like one day he learned about fifty words at once. He knows balloon, truck, teddy bear, boot, crutches, ball, spatula, fork, laundry basket... it seems like most things now he can learn the word once we say it a couple times.

But Chatty Matty isn't chatting with words very much yet. He says "boo" for boot (the one on my ankle, sadly), "bir" for bird, "nana" for banana (though not very often), "beep beep" for truck, "uhn-uh" for airplane, and "tuh" for out or outside. He said "cat" one time when we saw one outside, but I haven't heard that since.

I'm not in a rush for Matthew to start really talking since he'll probably never shut up, but it IS pretty exciting to see him learning so much so fast!