"I not dizzy; me Jared!"

Time for a little update on Jared's language development . . . pardon the vocabulary, by the way; Mom's working on a linguistics MA and may feel the need to throw in some technical terms here and there.

Although he may not have a firm grasp of case yet (not surprising, since he's 2 and English has so little of it), this little guy is putting together complex sentences now! He LOVES to play the "I'm not (whatever), I'm (something else)" game. He's also beginning to understand how to talk about things other people do in relation to him, although they sound a little funny because of his case and word order issues. For instance, "Jared! Take it!" usually means that someone took something from him. Occasionally, he'll get a little more detailed and say something like "Manda take it ball Jared!"

It's also fun watching him learn our little phrases, especially since for now he hasn't yet deconstructed them. For example, when it's getting close to bed time and he's tired, he'll say, "Peas seep bed all night?" (Please sleep bed all night?) He's also learning to make conversation for its own sake. If he sees someone with wet hair, he'll ask, "Good baftub?" (Good bathtub?), meaning, Did you have a nice bath?

Jared is also learning to sing, even to the point of carrying a tune occasionally. Our church's nursery program , Amanda, and Dad get most of the credit for this. He sings the nursery's clean up song whenever he helps pick up. He has his own versions of whatever songs Amanda sings (which are frequently whatever songs Dad sings). He also has his own opinions about music, particularly what he wants or doesn't want just then, and he can now ask for a variety of songs, emphatically say "Don't sing it!" to whatever he doesn't want, and say "Okay, sing song again" to things he likes.

It's fun being able to communicate with Jared. :) Now, if we could just get him to make his choices positively instead of negatively . . . it is unwise to offer him more than two options, since he usually tells you what he wants by saying no to everything he doesn't first.