All about Forster

A few weeks ago Forster's speech therapist was asking me how many words he has in his vocabulary, and I could remember about 5, but during the course of the session I kept adding to the list.  She said that's fairly common - and a list will help us understand where he is now and give us some hope for all the work we're doing, so I'ma gonna make one.

If you are just tuning in, our dear boy is talking just below the state benchmark so we get therapists in here like we are some cool club.  They keep saying he's such a physical kid that he doesn't care about the verbal yet, so we have to try harder to get him to introduce new words into his diet.  It's very cool to have these nice therapy ladies come in and get charmed to pieces by Forster.  WE think he's pretty fabulous, but it's lovely to see him sharing the wealth :)  He really doesn't care very much about verbage, he spends his entire day trying to get people to jump, run, play and wrestle with him.  Solei, by the way, is much closer to the ground than Jared and I, so the poor thing usually has a hysterically giggling Forster jumping on top of her.  It's so dang funny that even she laughs about it.  Sometimes :)

I took this of him just as he jumped on me - notice how his face is saying "AAAAAAANNNNDDDDDD...  ATTACK!!!"  This is pretty much the look I see all day long.

So here's the word list I can think of.  I listed it phonetically because it's way cuter that way - and brownie points to anyone who can understand what these all mean!

Reh-ee... seeehhh.... GO!
nana
peaaaa-sh
Jesuh
bah-uhl or bah bah
up
dow
no
yeah or yeh-shshsh
oh-tay
bawl
awl duh
uh, tee-oo, fee, fohhr, fie, sih, seh-en, ey... (he loses count at this point and after he fumbles around for a few words trying to remember nine, he yells:) TEH!!!!
aynk oo
mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama
dada
oh no
why
oh mahh
no....s
mahw
eeee-r
jooos
coooo..l
hi
buh bye
chow chow (okay, that one is actually Portuguese, but he still uses it when he is with our Brasilian friends!)

(and these 2 are sound effects)
chooo choooo!
chirp chirp (Solei loves this one.  She tries to convince everyone he's actually a cricket)

There are plenty of things he'll say if you tell him to.  And when he parrots back "I love you" - you know he means it.  His hugs are the most honest, awesome hugs that were ever hugged.

Oh, and he has proven my theory that if you read Dr. Seuss' ABC book to a child ad nauseum, they'll learn the alphabet ahead of schedule.  Since he's not talking as soon as Solei was, I'd just assumed everything else would be at a slower pace (I know, I'm still a novice at this parenting thing).   I didn't realize anything had sunk in until we were at the library a while back and he started picking up the wood letter blocks and telling me the name of each one.  I started screaming and bawling.  The librarians know me, so it wasn't  huge surprise.

he will NOT stay still lately - the only way I could get a picture of him smiling was if I let him chew on one of Solei's barrettes!

He'll be 2 in just over a month!  We've got Solei who is full of sunshine, and Forster who is full of mirth.  You couldn't ask for a better pair!  We are seriously lucky... and so are you, if you come visit :)