Whoa

Liam is going to be 16 months old next week. He's already smarter than us. We're in big trouble. A few stories...

Liam has a favorite book with pictures of animals. He can identify most of them when asked (even a chinchilla!?!) and point many out unprompted. He knows almost all the animal sounds, at least the ones Mommy knows. I have no idea what sound a guinea pig makes. He's now to the point where he matches pictures. If he finds the picture of the elephant on the Zoo Animal page, he then closes the book and can locate the same picture on the cover of the book.

Yesterday I was carrying Liam as I was trying to get us out the door for school/work. He kept pointing to our catch-all table and saying 'wa-wa.' I had no idea what he was asking for. After repeated grumpy refusals of the items I offered, he finally leaned over to the table, reached in my purse and took out my WALLET! What!?!

I already told the story of how Liam identifies the steel-deck bridge we drive over every day. As soon as he sees the bridge he yells out "bri! bri!" and then starts to hum - the sound the tires make over the steel deck. The other day we crossed a different, non-humming bridge, and Liam went through his same routine. I was surprised he could identify it as a bridge and categorize it as such. A few weeks ago, we drove past an area owned by the electric company where the transformers (I guess) and such are kept in a structure of steel. Liam spotted it and yelled "bri! bri!" I hadn't even noticed how similar those structures were to the bridge!

We're pretty much at the point where Liam hears a word once or twice and can understand its meaning and will try to repeat it. He could name almost everything he had for dinner tonight as well as ask for something he wanted that we didn't offer.