Sam's verbal abilities have taken off in the past few weeks! It began with the visit of his Aunt Jill, who stayed with us for about 5 days in December. By the end of her visit, Sam was walking around asking for "Jill" by name - the first Rothblatt to receive this honor! During his visit to the Rothblatts over New Years, he mastered nearly everyone's name - calling Grandma "Mima" and Grandpa "Pipa". He remembered "Jill" and was able to eek out a "Richard", though preferred to refer to Rich as "Ball", since Richard was his most active ball-playing playmate. The jury is still out as to whether he was able to say "Rachel" or not - he was definitely able to point her out, though, when asked! And of course he is often practicing his favorite combination - "Mama, Daddy, Mama, Daddy."

Sam has been working on other verbal skills as well. He's moved on to two-word utterances, though they most often begin with "no" as in "No Mama" when he wants to be held by Dad, or "No Daddy" when he wants the reverse. He likes this new verbal game. "Do you want water?" "No wawa." "Do you want milk?" "No milk." Etc. Etc. We'd complain that we've hit the terrible two's early on, but he says this with a huge grin on his face and with a such a sweet little high-pitched voice, that we know we're safe (for now!).

Of course that only covers the language abilities that we can comprehend. He is also speaking in full sentences (as far as he is concerned). They go something along the lines of "aboo bah mee Elmo mee wawa dee dah mama bee bah boo daddy." Like foreigners listening in on an unknown language, we recognize some words in there but as for the rest... it's all Greek to us. It's fun to hear him talk, though!