Conversations with Nathan

Yesterday I offered Nathan the option, to go grocery shopping with me or stay home with daddy.
Nathan: "Stay home."
Me: "You want to stay home?"
Nathan: "Please!" And he signed please, too.
Me: "Okay, I'm going shopping, bye".
Nathan: "Bye."

Not a real exciting conversation, except... he made a choice, appropriately, was able to be really clear about it, and we are still working on saying "hi" and "bye" to people, so it's always good when he actually does say it.

He's been saying more and more things that we don't quite understand, too, and we're thinking this means that he's coming up with more original things to say, not just quoting songs and stories and things he's heard before. The more organic and Nathan-created the speech, the harder it is to figure out what the heck he's saying, unfortunately, but he is telling us things, and stating lots of preferences. He is very much the dictator of the stereo, telling us which songs he wants. He's also very clear on which books, which toys, which Youtube videos. Even if his speech isn't always clear, he hears well. Recently, he was asking for "It Samba", which turned out to be the Bob Marley song "Lick Samba". I had always thought Bob was saying "Late Summer", but accented so the summer came out "summa". I was kinda blown away that Nathan knew it was "samba" and I did not. Perhaps this is because my brain did not know how to process "lick samba" (what the heck does that mean?) whereas Nathan has little difficulty processing the idea of licking anything, even if the thing happens to be a dance.


We've got the crib set up now and Nathan's old swing is re-assembled. We've told him we're getting ready for the baby. This morning, I had pulled out his old bouncer chair and told him it was for the baby, because the baby is coming and he doesn't use the chair anymore because he's big now.
Me: "Are you big?"
Nathan: "No!"
Me: "I think you are big!"
Nathan: "Shut up!"
Excuse me? I don't think so! Even if I did ask a stupid question. Advised Nathan we don't use those words and moved on. A few minutes later he had knocked the bouncy chair over and it was sitting upside down. "Baby," says Nathan. Hmmmm. That doesn't bode well.