'I love you' - an update

Benjy got so good at saying 'I love you' - having been instructed that it's what you say after kisses and cuddles - that we didn't need to prompt him any more, so could simply respond with an 'I love you too'. The result? We do kisses and cuddles and Benjy says, 'I love two three'.

'Happy Libby'

Something so cute that Benjy did today. He went with the childminder to another childminder for a birthday tea for a girl called Libby. When Benjy sings 'Happy Birthday' (he has recently started singing along to songs) he sings 'Haaaappppy yoooouuu, Haaaappppy yoooouuu' and occasionally intersperses this with the child's name. When he got back from the childminder and I read what he had done today and mentioned Libby's birthday, he ran around, quite literally, in circles, shouting at the top of his voice, 'Happy Libby! Happy Libby!'.

'Mummy toes dark' and other 2/3 word sentences

I came downstairs with black tights on a couple of days ago. Benjy looked at my feet, said ‘mummy, toes, dark’, then went to turn the light on. Came back, and looked at my toes with a confused expression on his face – looked back at the light, then back at my toes – couldn’t work out why my toes were still dark when he’d turned the light on! I took off my tights to show him my toes. The next time I can downstairs with black tights on, he simply said ‘tights off’ and started trying to take them off me!

In the last couple of weeks, as he has started putting two (and occasionally three) words together, he’s been amazing to watch. That little step forward in communication makes an enormous difference in what he can say. And he is coming out with more and more words all the time, things that I simply had no idea he knew. ‘Concepts’ are featuring now – ‘big spoon’, ‘feet cold’, ‘no shoes’ (pointing outside – because he can’t go outside with no shoes on), ‘no’ – (with one finger held up as if rebuking himself/me) – ‘knife sharp’.