And his vocabulary grows and grows

I don’t remember teaching Joseph the word for it exactly. I do however remember saying on occasion something like, “Oh, thank you, Joseph. Can I have that? That’s Mommy’s bra. Boys don’t need to wear bras; they are only for girls. That’s why Daddy doesn’t have one…” and on and on. This happens when Joseph is digging through the pile of clothes on the bedroom floor (sometimes dirty, sometimes clean, sometimes somewhere in the middle), and he triumphantly pulls out one of my bras like it is an exciting rare find.

But today was different. He was sifting through the pile, and I could hear him saying, “baaaahhhh.” Now, I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I recognized it as some kind of word. I thought for a second, “Does he have my bra?” But I knew that he couldn’t know the word “bra”. “Baaaahhhh, ” I heard again. I assumed that I would look over and see that he had found one of his balls that had gotten away from the rest of his toys. “Ball” kind of sounds like “baaaahhhh” sometimes, since he is currently leaving off the emphasized “L” sound at the end that I loved so much (it was so emphasized for a while that he would leave his tongue hanging out of his mouth long after finishing the word).

But as I looked over, sure enough, he had my bra. Even though this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened, I am always amazed when he learns something or understands something that I would never have given him credit for. There he was, dangling my bra out in front of him, trying to hand it to me. Then the strangest thing happened. I took it from him, took my pajamas off, and started to put on my bra. He looked up at me with a half smile, like maybe he was about to make a joke and started to do the sign for “milk.” This is the sign he used when he wanted to nurse, which is unusual because he has been completely weaned for over a month now. I didn’t think he’d remember. I guess seeing what he saw brought back memories.