I have waited so long for this!

For most of Monkey’s life I could tell you at any given time how many signs or word approximations that he knew.  Once in a while he would surprise us by showing off a bunch of new signs all at once but, in general, the words and signs came on so slowly that we were very aware of what he was capable of.  Then, last fall, the words began to come on faster and faster.  We are still delighted every time we hear a new word from him, we still celebrate every bit of progress but I can no longer tell you how many he knows.  I tried to sit and list them all a while back, for some reason I can no longer remember, and I stopped after 200 words…and that was off the top of my head.  I also used to write down all of our exchanges that lasted long enough to be a “conversation” or whenever he’s throw enough related words together to make a coherent sentence.

You know what?  I CAN’T DO THAT ANYMORE.  I can’t do any of it.  He knows so many words that I have lost count and he uses new ones every day.  He and I have conversations, multiple conversations, every single day.  Some are cuter than others so they stick out more but many of them are so mundane that it just doesn’t occur to me to share them.  I have MUNDANE conversations with my son.  He tosses out sentences now regularly.  Again, some stand out more than others either because he uses new words or he expresses some new desire that takes us off guard but they happen every single day.

There was a long period of time where I thought he might not ever talk and now…I’m starting to take it for granted a bit.   I have to keep reminding myself that once upon a time I lived with the fear that he wouldn’t and now he does.  I have to keep reminding myself of this whenever I think of something else I’m afraid he won’t do because I know he’s certainly not done showing us what he is capable of.

Oh, hey, had I happened to mentioned that, inspired by this post by fragilemom, I discovered that my Monkey can read too?  This kid just keeps blowing my mind.