words, words, words ...

"i'm so sick of words!" i hear eliza doolittle in my head singing from my fair lady ... UNLIKE eliza, however, i am NOT sick of words, especially when they are coming from my baby boy's mouth! ezra's vocabulary is growing considerably these days ... he seems to be picking up a new word every other if not everyday! it is very exciting and a sweet, precious time.

because i'm ocd, and i haven't really blogged about this, i'm going to try to remember all his words that he has learned so far ... and in somewhat correct "order." really, this is because i have no time to keep a proper baby book for the poor boy since i am a working mother in graduate school. so here's a stab at them:

first words starting around 7-8 mos?
mama
uh oh
bun bun (his favorite word for a very long time!)
these were his only three words really for quite a while, except when dada's name started creeping in!

noises (mostly animal) starting maybe around 1 year (?) thanks to nana's encouragement and progressing over time ...
tick-tock! (goes the clock - at nana's house or inside his Spot book)
sssssssss! (snake - inside the clock in his Spot book also)
ooh ooh! (monkey)
roar! (whispered - lion)
baa! (sheep)
neigh! (horsie)
mooo! (cow)
woof woof! (dog)
hoo hoo! (owl)
peep peep! (birdie - which he can't help but say over and over when we are outside and see ANY bird or even HEAR any bird - yes, he did NOT get this from his nana who has a severe phobia of these creatures)
bee bee bee! (for when we sing "the horn on the bus goes, beep! beep! beep!")

other words that started creeping up - gosh i wish i knew the exact day/age but i'm not really sure so here's the general appearance of words starting from 1 year on i believe:
dada (which he shouts with much joy and glee now)
nana (he even says this now when he can hear my mom when i'm talking to her on the phone; it's pretty impressive!)
nana (also for banana :) and not his grandma)
WHOAH! (which i'm not sure if it's technically a word but considering the frequency he uses this whenever he is excited about something new or different, i had to include it in the list b/c he really does use it appropriately! :)
bubble (said VERY Southern kind of like buuuh-buuullll - it's really cute)
baby (also said very Southern and almost always in reference to any small person but particularly to amelia - even when ezra just sees her parents car pull up in front of our house)
bye bye
ball (we hear him yelling this from his crib along with mama and dada when he wakes up in the am - what can we say, he's a one track cookie?)
"nigh nigh" (for night night - which we say at nap and bedtime)
"eeehs!" (for keys which he says very stoccato like and kind of like a mouse - keys which also just so happens to be obsessed with. his latest trick: sticking them DOWN his ear drum! clearly dangerous! also dangerous? letting your kid suck on them! yes, we used to let ezra suck on our keys on a regular basis, until we figured out that that was why he smelled like ACID around his mouth! sure enough, eric looked it up on the internet, and letting your kids suck on keys can be toxic! awesome. glad we figured that out sooner than later!)
maw maw
paw paw (it's really sweet how he gets excited about these from the pics we have in his room)
up (which he says for BOTH up AND down - and especially said in frustration when he is done eating and like, "HELLO, mom and dad! don't you get IT?!?! i'm done already!")
no (which can also mean yes)
"beah" (for bear)
"mil" (for milk - what he drinks all the time like it's going out of style)
"uppy" (for up please)
"bup" (for book - his favorite thing to do next to playing guitar is having us read to him)
"yea" (for yes)
"towahs" (for toes)
"hiiiiiiiii" (for both hello and "high" as in when we're reading his Dr. Suess book - low foot, high foot!)
"tawah" (star)
"nowah" (for nose)
eye
"mouhhh" (for mouth)
"mooo" - (for moon)
bead - (said just this weekend when we were on a mini vacation and walked in an earthy jewelry shop with lots of colorful beads hanging all over the walls. ezra said "WHOAH!" as soon as he saw all the "fun things" to touch - and i said, "ooh! ezra, do you see all the beads? can you say
bead?" and he started saying it like 10 times in a row!!! so cute! even the shop owner ate it up and let us take a picture in the shop to document his new word! )
hot - (new word as of yesterday; very appropriate for the nasty weather this time of year where we live)
"weee" - (new word as of this morning, for the wheels on his fun little red car)

yes, if you look @ this list, B is definitely his favorite letter - bun bun, baby, bubble, bup i mean book, bear, bead ... eric and i think that this is due to bun bun and the fact that ezra has heard us use bun bun's name a gazillion times a day since ezra was born because he has always been so fascinated with our fuzzy little friend. isn't it funny the things kids learn and the reasons they learn them?

also side note related to language that i would want him to know someday (still using this as a substitute baby book entry), at ezra's 15-month check up, his pediatrician dr. k remarked how great ezra was doing developmentally and that in particular how verbal he was for a little boy since most boys are more language delayed than girls. i must confess, ezra WAS in rare form that day - and i truly attribute it to the fact that he knows and recognizes our pediatrician whom he LOVES (as do eric and i!!!). he pretty much pulled out all the stops and used all the words he knew at that time DURING his check up! (yeah, he made me look good! LOL) for those of you who know him well, you know how rare this is since ezra is NOT a performer and VERY much an introvert - in new and different places kind of hangs back and just checks everything out and observes. anyway, as parents, of course you are proud and think your child hung the moon, but isn't everyone like that??? so having our pediatrician affirm his development was particularly meaningful since she clearly can not be as biased as we are! so that being said, she only gave us reason to be more proud of our boy!

we also started practicing "reverse language skills" a while ago, which i think is pathetic that i just occurred to me to start doing this (again, due to reading too many books for grad school and el zilcho on child development!) ... needless to say, we've been asking ezra to point and show us where things are in his books like, "show mommy the grapes ... apples ... flower ... goat ... shoes ... television ... strawberry ... telephone ... table ... chair ... computer, etc." let me just say, it is SCARY the words and objects ezra already knows and recognizes! eric and i had no IDEA! all this to say, it was a good wake-up call to us to be more careful about our language - even those words that are low on the offensive list but that you don't want your child using like "stupid" or "butt." yep, it's time to clean up our act. we've got a little man watching and listening all the time now!