They weren't kidding.
In just the past week, Scotty's mumbles have turned into full-fledged words. They are coming at a rapid clip and with a slight Southern accent, which is absolutely bizarre to me. When he says "ball!" it sounds more like "Bowel!" My Chicago accent barely lingers, and Brian certainly has no accent at this point, so I'm not sure where this Southern drawl is coming from. Maybe it's a result of all the BBQ I ate while pregnant? Does sweet tea cross the blood barrier and pass into the placenta?
Anyways, new words this week include: boobs (of course), belly, bee-bo (belly-button), booty, burp, and baby. All 'B's' as you may notice. I'm not sure if he's working his way through the alphabet or what, but B seems to be a stand-out favorite for the Bear. And there is a major emphasis on body parts. He loves to shout "Booty!" and smack himself in the, well, booty. When I ask him "Who's Mama's baby?" he replies with, "Bay-BEE!" and pounds on his chest. He's quite the little performer. We're up to a million body parts, too. I mean, seriously. The kid knows everything on his head, from hair to cheeks to eyes to nose, mouth, teeth, ears and chin. And as we travel further down, he's got the rest, too - arms, hands, fingers, chest, belly, legs, knees, feet, toes, etc. At this rate, I'm going to have to pull out my old Anatomy & Physiology textbooks to give him additional body parts to learn ("Scotty, show me your tibialas anterior...")
Also fascinating are bodily functions. Tooting is giggle-worthy, as is a good burp. He wrinkles his nose at me when he's making "stinkies." And for the past three nights, when I've taken his diaper off right before bathtime, he has promptly peed on the floor while watching the stream of urine with absolute stillness and awe. I'm not going to read into this -- potty training will not begin until August, at the very least -- but at least he's thinking about this stuff.
Ironically, I cannot get the little Bear to say, "Bear!" He will point to himself (we should probably start calling him Scotty more frequently), but he won't say it. And he also won't say "Bye-bye"...it's still just a very energetic wave. I hope he doesn't move on to the letter C without mastering these two critical words...
Hope everyone has a great weekend! Buh-bye!