Monday, October 09, 2006

Language acquisition runs hot and cold

From Carolyn:

Pete has been saying "hot," and making attempts at blowing on his food when we put it in front of him. We thought he was clearly a genius. Until this morning when he took a bite of his cereal and (cold) milk and insisted it was "hot."

He has been coming to grips with the concept "two." Often he says "two" when he sees two of any one thing: two cats, two birds, two cups. And although he occasionally says "two" when staring into a bowl full of dozens of pieces of Kashi, he has seemed to reserve the term for things that are actually in pairs.

Last night he blew us away by saying "two towels!" when I showed up with, in fact, two towels to wrap him up after his bath. This was the first time he had linked "two" with a plural noun. However, he then proceeded to say "two towels" when he saw the two cats together, two bugs on the wall, and two feet in one of his books. It's so hard to understand what he thinks some of his words or phrases mean.

He also said "two" and pressed the number "2" on a toy keyboard last night. I was ready to call the local news to proclaim the discovery of prodigy RIGHT IN OUR MIDST, and then he said "two" and pressed lots of other keys. Woah, Mama. Take it easy over there.

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