growing up.

Yesterday I realized that my baby boy is growing up. Literally. I mean, there have been clues lately--like when we dressed him for church last weekend and found that only 2 pairs of jeans didn't resemble capri pants, and when I put my favorite pair of footie pjs on him (the super cute ones that have little doggie faces on the feet--awwww) and realized that his toes were being forced to curl upward. Yep, those should have been signs, but I was in denial. Until I found myself at Target last night buying our boy some new pants : ).

He is also growing in other ways, too. Being that he was adopted from Ethiopia at 1 year old, there have been some delays in speech. There is no doubt that our boy is bright--he clearly understands everything we say and has been creative in communicating when he doesn't have the words, including making up his own sign language--but up until recently we have had to beg him to try new words: "can you say (fill in the blank here)???" Luckily I work next door to a wonderful speech teacher who has given me some great ideas and techniques that have really worked.

Just this week we were playing with his train set (thank you Aunt Tiffanie and Uncle Beau!) and he pointed to the end of the train and said "dat?". Forgetting that we'd learned the word "caboose" from his current favorite book, I Love Trains, I said, "back." He looked at me for a second and said, "Boofff." And moose is "moofff"...I'm sure you see the pattern here : ). He is talking more and more each day, trying out new words on his own, at his own pace. It is so fun to watch his vocabulary develop and see him make associations with each word. Today while playing with that same toy train (it's a favorite) he pointed at the part of the train where the steam comes out and said, "hat." I guess if trains wore hats, it would look something like that : ).

Is it obvious why I want 10 more just like him? Okay, at least one more : )...