March 20, 2001 - Tuesday
On Sunday, Harry's mother walked him up the street to the construction site for a new house where there is a backhoe parked in the yard. Harry, of course, already knows about backhoes from his book, "Men At Work," and from our brief stops at the school construction site near his daycare, so it was exciting for him to see one up close again. But, this time when his mother said "backhoe," Harry repeated it. As with wah-wah over the weekend, Harry seems to be at a point where he's definitely gotten the idea of words and is learning them one the spot. I'd say by now he knows something totaling about three dozen words, maybe more, including many animal names (cat, doggie, bird, bear, lion, fish, pig, duck, etc.), book, shoe, sock, truck, car, night-night, mama, dad'n, down, my, mine, water, milk, grape, broccoli, pea, pee, peepee, uh-oh, no, snow, nose, and more that I can't remember off the top of my head. Admittedly, Harry pronounces the majority of those words in such a way as that only his mother or I would recognize them, but that is a detail, it seems to me.

Backhoe is actually one of the most articulate words Harry says and I heard it yesterday morning as we were walking along a city street. About two blocks ahead, hidden behind all the morning traffic, a backhoe pulled out of a side street and drove away from us down the street we were on. Nevertheless, Harry spotted it and labeled it cleanly with a very clearly spoken and deliberate "back" "hoe." It was very cute. And then this morning, when I went in to get Harry up, the first thing he said was "backhoe, wow, backhoe." I'm betting he had a very exciting dream.


Comments, opinions?