Talking Revolution

I haven't posted a monthly update in a long time. There's just so much happening that it's sometimes hard to keep up with regular posts. All the time Reed says or does something new, funny or frustrating, and I think to myself, "oh, I should put that on the blog!" But then, you know, life gets in the way and I forget. (Hint: "Life" = sleep, watching TV, cleaning the house, reading a book, etc.)

So you may start to see just random rambling notes on Reed's progress. I don't want to miss stuff, but inevitably I will.

The bugger is talking like crazy, repeating EVERYTHING. His daycare teachers often comment on it. He puts together full sentences, and it's much easier to communicate with him now. I took him shoe shopping with me the other day, and we were able to have a whole conversation about what we were doing (do the shoes fit? do you like them? can you walk for mommy? we're going to check out now. don't tell daddy we bought two pairs.)

He will still sometimes start babbling incoherently, cocking his head to the side, looking at you and gesturing up and down with his hand. He looks like he's giving you a lecture or publicly orating.

• At nighttime, we put him into bed with his lovey, his stuffed rabbit and his paci. He'll tell us "miss you!" "bye bye" "are you serious?" several times before we leave the room.
• If you ask him what he wants to eat, he'll usually say "hot dog," "mana (banana)," or "sammich" (sandwich).
• His most frequent short sentences are: "I found it!" "I got you" "I got it"
• He knows all the Sesame Street characters - Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Bert, Ernie, Snuffleupagus (though he usually just calls him the elephant), Elmo, Zoe
• He is getting better at colors, still sometimes mixing them up. And, he's pretty good at shapes. He can consistently call out circle, diamond, oval, star and heart, but hasn't quite grasped square and rectangle.
• He knows all of his family and gets quite excited about seeing Yaya and Papa Veihman (vemman), Gigi and Papa Long (DeLong), Aunt Jenna, Uncle Alex, Grandma Mah-gie (Margie), Justin & Nichole (Cole), Manda (Amanda) and Evan.
• He knows "toot" means passing gas. Daddy let loose the other day, and Reed looked around and said "toot!" I said, "Reed, who tooted?" He turned, looked straight into my eye and if admonishing me, said "Mommy tooted." Beau died laughing.
• We can ask him "Reed, who's cute?" or "Reed, who's the best?" We always intend for him to answer "Reed!" But inevitably, he'll pick someone else in the room, and he seems to have a knack for picking what the funniest answer will be. Sometimes it's "Mommy cute" if it's just Beau and I. If my dad's around, sometimes he'll say "Papa's the best."
• His pronunciation is really good, but he has a few words that come out...a little funny. Two examples are "truck" and "chalk." Both sound kind of the same. If he sees a truck, he'll usually say "Papa's truck" since my dad has a red truck. But truck comes out as "cock." It was all Beau and I could do to not lose it when on our way to church yesterday, he kept shouting that he saw a "Big Truck!" over and over again. We were hoping he would calm down before we got inside lest our nursery teacher wonder what we were teaching him.
• Another word he doesn't quite have a handle on is "fork." This also translates as a four-letter word. Janet and Tom caught him on video the other day, and had him say it over and over again for their friends. We can't help but think it's funny