My son is a little man of few words.  He is fourteen months old and his vocabulary consists of a couple main words, "daddy", "goggy"  (aka doggy) and "mama".  Mama means "I want", "get this", "no, you fool", "hurry up", "my sisters are annoying me", "water", "food", "no car seat", "I love you", "no I do not want my diaper changed" and so on.   Daddy means daddy and sometimes doggy when we are not sure which word he is actually using.

He does like to elaborate.  For this he has some baby signs.  He knows "I want", "dog", "duck", "cat", "food", "sing, "twinkle twinkle" and "that" ("that" is just pointing).  It is with these signs I have learned that he thinks all in animals (if it is not ducks or cats it is dogs).  He makes his baby sign for dog daily, sometimes hourly.  In fact, it is through this communication I have learned just how important our dog is to him.

He follows our dog around, tackles her, kisses her, bites her (yes he does do this), he likes to smash her face, poke her eyes, grab her feet and at least twice a day he gives her massive bear hugs.  he loves to lean on her, lie on her and he tries to sit on her. He does not like to share her.  When his older sister was relaxing on the couch and placed her feet on the dog he got very defensive.  He screamed at her over and over "mama!"  "mama!"  (in this situation "mama" meant "mine").  While screaming "mama" he kept attempting to  knock her feet off the dog.  She was mischievously grinning during all of this.  If he succeeded  in knocking her feet off, she would just place her feet back and ignore him.  He tried hugging our dog, and pulling our dog away from her (but he is smaller - and our dog is pretty damn good at this point at ignoring him).  Finally, in a fit of desperation he attached his sisters legs.  Biting and pushing them to get his precious dog back... sigh.

Sometimes during the day he sits in my lap, points to my computer says, "ma, ma" waggles his finger at the screen and says either "googy", does his sign for dog, or says "meow" for cat.  Which means it is time for one of our favorite new games, look images of dogs and cats up on google.  It is amazing how long that game can last.

He loves our dog so much that he feeds all the food I give him immediately to her.  If it looks like I am going to stop him from this he throws the food fast, instead of sharing it in pieces.  A new rule has been made in our house, the dog has to be in the other room while we eat - in hopes some of the solid food makes it my sons mouth.

Thus, it is not surprising that the new word my son has added to his vocabulary is "bed".  "Bed" does not mean "nap time", "I am sleepy", "I just woke up" or anything having to do with people sleep habits.  "Bed" is the command that everyone in the house uses when our dog has to go to her mat.  So, now he signs dog, says dog, calls all living animals that are not cats or ducks dog, feeds the dog all his food, often most his water, and he now commands her when to go to bed. 

Still waiting on him figuring out his sisters names.

Happy Late Friday Early Saturday!