"HI!"

Yesterday, Taylor said his first word with comprehension. And by "comprehension" I mean Jon's and mine, not Taylors. :) Our son has the entertaining toddler skill of saying many, many things in his own "language" that Jon and I can't understand yet. He will string together whole sentences of toddler-ese complete with intense facial expressions and hand gestures. Being 19 months old, he's in the common phase where he can understand very much of what we say to him but doesn't quite know how to communicate back with us. He sure does try, though, and gets so frustrated when we don't understand what he's saying.

And I guess I should say that he did learn "dada" and "ma" a long time ago, but prefers not to call us by name at this time. He'd rather get our attention in other ways.

Anyways. Yesterday, after unsuccessfully asking him to wave "hi" and "bye" to a friend that had come to visit, he waited until 5 minutes after my friend had left and came to sit with me on the sofa, then raised his hand and waved at me and said "HI!" He seemed very proud of himself and has done it many times since. I'm still trying to get a video of it for the family to see, but he doesn't do it on command. Toddlers have maddening ways of asserting independence. :)

Taylor has what is called an "observant" personality. He's the type that won't just jump in and do something new right away, but will watch you do it over and over and act indifferent. Then all of a sudden he'll do it just right on his first try. Kids with more observant personalities tend to work on their motor skills before their verbal skills, which has also been very true for him. He and Jon have been playing soccer together for quite some time, and he's surprisingly good at it! His fingers are nimble and mostly precise. He's quite good at building legos and putting together puzzles. But ask him to say "lego" and he would get frustrated, whine, and walk away. On Tuesday his dr. told me that, given his observant personality, Taylor is right on time developmentally and it might be quite a while before he starts to talk -- slightly frustrating when most of Taylor's peers already say many words clearly. Not that I would wish him to be different than he is, but I was hoping that the miscommunication tantrums would end soon. :)

That said, watching him communicate effectively with me yesterday was exciting but also slightly sad. I wonder how much longer I will get to enjoy hearing him chatter sweetly to himself in his crib after he wakes up before he starts to say "MAMA, can I get up NOW??" How much longer will we get to enjoy him taking us by the hand to lead us to the fridge when he is thirsty before he just starts to whine "I wanna driiiiiink!" The time is coming. In some ways it will be a huge relief when he can tell us exactly what he wants and needs and much frustration will be alleviated. But on the flip side, I've just realized that I haven't been journaling his milestones like I should have been and I can already feel the memories slipping. We humans always think we'll have more time than we do. So, I am determined to do better at writing down the things that we'll want to remember, and will probably use this blog to do it. He's losing his baby-ness and morphing into a full-blown boy, and I'm forgetting how cute some of his baby habits were. Since online journaling is so convenient, and since our families will want to read these things, too, let the memory blogging begin. Every once in a while I can just print off my musings and gather it all into a book.

So friends, learn a lesson from my mistake and "make the best use of the time" (Eph. 5:16) in all aspects of life. Stop procrastinating and do the things that will really count. If Christ could complete His entire life purpose in just 33 years, then by His grace I can certainly shift my priorities and concentrate harder on raising my kids in the "discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4)... and journaling the adventure!