He Speaks!

Avi's been saying "Hi" since he was just a few months old, seemingly on purpose, and he said "kitty" (his first "official" word) at 10 months. Now, at 12 months, Avi adds new words to his vocabulary every day. When we went for our 12 month appointment (fyi, Avi weighed 22 lb, 15 oz--50th percentile, and was 31.5 inches tall--90th percentile!), the doctor asked how many words he had, and I realized I didn't know, so I began to keep a list.

Avi's list of words: Hi, Kitty, Woof Woof, car, ball, go, teeth, nose, ear, eye, cracker, juice, bottle, spoon, bowl, no!, don't!, Bye Bye, mine, monkey (he also makes the "ooo ooo ooo" sound that goes with monkey!), Mooo (for cows), baaa (for sheep), nice, choo choo (train), book, light, bean, pea, night night, shoe, sock, belt (he loves Abba's belts), balloon, silly, challah and giggle giggle (by which we think he means "tickle tickle"). He's not as into names. He says "da-ah" for Daya, but only this week has he started to say "Abba" clearly enough that we know he means it, and he's started to say "Ma" in such a way that I HOPE it means Ema....One day I'm sure he'll say it, right?

He's also started saying "Oh Boy!" when he's really excited about something, and now that he is finally into reading, he has memorized cues for different pages of his favorite books, including animal sounds. When he wants to read Dear Zoo, he says "too tall!" because of the page where the zoo sends a giraffe, and the line reads "He was too tall. I sent him back." When we get to the end of a page of Five Silly Monkeys, he wags his finger and says "no mo mon", which means "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" Speaking of books, Avi loves to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar in Hebrew and says "toot" (strawberry) and "parpar" (butterfly), which is pretty impressive. He loves Tootim so much, in fact, that all fruit is now called "toot."

And there you have it. It's absolutely amazing to see him develop language skills. We keep trying to catch it on video, but no such luck yet. Soon enough, we'll post a video here for you of Avi reading a book to us!