Koa: Talking

During a phone conversation with my mom the other day, she pointed out that although I was seriously concerned about Ikaika's speech development when he was the same age, I hadn't mentioned anything about Kekoa's lack of vocabulary.

I'm sure she was just making about a point about how I was a typical neurotic first-time parent...and she's right.  But that got me thinking about how Koa really doesn't talk yet.  He says "mama" (too often, in my opinion), "dada" and "daida" (Kaika), but other than that, I haven't noticed any sounds that I would ascribe to specific objects or actions.  I know he's communicating because I know what he wants most of the time.  I can usually tell whether he wants to eat or he's sad because his brother took a toy from him, etc.  I'm not sure how I know this - it's probably a combo of events; tone, movements, sounds, facial expressions, mind reading, etc. 

It is funny that I became so uptight about Ikaika's speech development when he was so young simply because a coworker had a son the same age who said "up".  This same child, the source of so much concern, said to my mother on the phone the other day - verbatim - "Thank you, Oma, for the cool Transformers shirt that came in the mail."  No lack of vocabulary in there.

Kekoa will get there eventually.  And part of me wants him to remain my eternal baby, so I'm not in any rush for him to start chatting me up.  Although, I wouldn't be sad if he decided to move forward with potty training sometime soon.