Monkey Hear, Monkey Say

Over the last couple of days, Joshua has taken great strides in his journey toward being verbal. We have noticed that he definitely has words that he uses a lot, but they are either made up words, or ones that he has switched all the consonants to ones he knows so that they don't sound like what he's trying to say. But we have noticed that he makes the same groups of sounds in similar situations, like when a light is out, or he finds something missing from somewhere. He still doesn't have that many real words that he actually says and uses regularly, but he is turning into our little parrot. He has started to mimic a lot of the sounds that we are making, his favorite being the "P" sound, which he always whispers. He also has learned how to say "silly", which is really cute. There are two copycat things that just really crack us up. He has been entertained by rapid eye blinking for a while (watching mommy or daddy do it), but now he is trying to do it himself. He doesn't quite have the rapid part down, and he keeps his eyes about halfway closed when he's doing it, but it is the cutest thing! The other is copying us when we put our fingers to our lips and say "Shhhh". Apparently it looks like we're pointing to our noses, because Josh will point to his nose and say "ssssss". He never ceases to amaze us in the new things he learns everyday. We think in the next few months he will decide that there is really something to this talking thing and will really start to turn it on. That seems to be his personality... kind of an all or nothing kind of guy. That's how he was when it came to walking, so it shouldn't be any surprise that he's doing it again in the verbal department. We'll keep you posted on our hopefully soon to be little chatterbox.