Is there an echo in here?

One thing we have noticed recently of Oliver and of his peers of the same age is that they like to repeat almost everything we say. Often this is true even if he appears not to be paying great attention or is playing with toys. You can almost hear them storing the vocabulary away.

It's especially true when reading with him. He will point at things and tell me what they are. Often he will pick out something in the background I hadn't even noticed such as the giraffe in "Goodnight Moon".

He has lots of favourite phrases at the moment. "Hand" as I mentioned yesterday. "Don't like it" is also favoured for when he has had enough of something, except he sometimes drops the "don't", which is liable to confuse the uninitiated. Dropping the start of a word or phrase in general is a common trait at the moment.

In general he can communicate pretty well and when he can't it is often because his vocabulary is outstripping his ability to pronounce the words. Last night I came in and saw him in the bath. He told me "new shower" and sure enough, there it was, a new shower, fitted that day! It won't be long before he can say "B&Q loyalty card".

Of course there are times when his ability to communicate clearly has its down side, such as Last Sunday when during a quiet lull early in the church service he took my hand, gave it a tug and loudly proclaimed "home now!"