I say to-MAY-to, he says YAY!

As Hollie said on Facebook yesterday, part of the reason for this weeklong series of posts on G2 is to make sure the documentation of his development isn't neglected. Though I scrupulously detailed all sorts of minutia related to LG's first year, I've been somewhat lax with her brother. And you can understand why. Two kids means more work, split focus and less time to think of creative ways to tell you about his latest escapades. But sometimes you just need to grit your teeth and bear down and get the job done.

SO, with that said, let's run down G2's vocal abilities. Make no mistake, he is more vocal than his sister was, and he's always been that way. As an infant, he was easier to smile, easier to laugh, and easier to babble than LG. (Though they were both as likely as not to talk to themselves in their crib when they should be sleeping.)

Babbling aside, the kid is a mimic. Sure, that's how all kids learn, but he was mimicking sounds well before we were trying to teach him Mama and Dada. The first time we noticed it was during a typical play session, and he performed some action we were trying to encourage. I think it was throwing a ball or passing a toy back and forth from person to person. Each time he'd do it successfully, we'd shout, "YAY!" Not too long after that, he would immediately shout "YAY!" right back at us. And then he just started celebrating everything. Throw a ball? "YAY!" Dump out a bin of toys? "YAY!" Smack his sister in the face? "YAY! YAY!"

This got out of hand quickly.

The first distinct, animal noise he ever made was in response to a cheap-o plastic lion. Somewhere along the line, one of us (Me, Hollie, or LG) made that lion roar. Then one day Hollie pulls out the lion, and G2 grabs it, opens his mouth as wide as he can, and says quietly, "rawr." I don't have video, so you have to take my word for it, but the wind up suggests he's going to scream, but instead what comes out is a strained, breathy, strange approximation of a lion's call. It is never not hilarious. It's also the same sound made by any large animal, be it a big cat or a dinosaur. The funniest thing to me: he seeks out specific animals just so he can do it. On a recent evening, close to bedtime, Hollie read LG a story about dinosaurs. G2 was on the opposite end of the couch with me, and the second Hollie finished the book and put it down, G2 kamikazes off my lap, lands facedown on the book, lifts his head, points to the cover and whispers, "rawr."

LG's first animal sound was "quack," (more specifically: "kack") and there must be something about that noise that grabs small kids' attention, because it wasn't too long after "rawr" that G2 starting "kack, kack, kack"ing all over the place. He's scaled it back a bit now, and he never reached LG's heights of assuming that all animals whose vocalizations she didn't know must quack, but it's still fun.

As we've noted, we have a dog, and despite the fact that she barks maybe three times per year, G2, like LG before him, has discovered his dog bark, though it's a bit abbreviated. Still, when he points at Lola and exclaims, "FF, uFF, uFF!" there can be little doubt what he's trying to say.

But the funniest sounds aren't animals or words, but mimicked exclamations. We all say things we don't realize we're saying, but when your son starts dropping food off his tray and dropping a plaintive, "uh-oh!" you realize he had to have picked it up from you. "Uh-oh" is just a funny, purposeful sound, and he usually uses it in the right context. Until LG hears him do it, and eggs him on to repeat it ad nauseam, just so she can reply, "Spaghetti-Os!" (To the best of my knowledge, she's never had Spaghetti-Os, so I have no idea where she learned that one.) And when she really gets him going, she starts laughing hysterically, which in turn makes him laugh hysterically. The laugh cycle is a lot of fun, but more interesting is the fact that he starts repeating the rhythm of her giggle. I have no idea if it's intentional or a natural phenomenon, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it's just the tiniest bit creepy.

For Christmas, LG got a miniature oven/stove. The four burners each have a button, which causes them to light up and make a noise either like a boiling pot of water or a sizzling pan. When they burner shuts off automatically, it makes a loud "DING DING DING!" And when G2 pushes these buttons (which he does, for what seems like hours on end), he waits for this noise and shouts "Dee Dee DEE!" I don't know when this child is going to start talking, but until that time, I'll content myself with the thought that he's perfectly happy to converse with a toy stovetop.

I prefer this to him playing with the actual stove, which he still attempts regularly.

G2 also delights in repeating your physical actions, as you'd expect, since I assume that's how he learned to turn the stove on. But it's more fun when you loudly tell him "NO" and shake your head in response to doing something he shouldn't (like trying to overturn Lola's water dish or turn on the stove), and he responds by shaking his head right back at you. And by fun, I mean equal parts fun and frustrating. Good job copying my head motions; now stop rubbing peanut butter in your sister's hair!