Our son, who just turned 19 months old a couple days ago, doesn't have the most vast of vocabularies. However, he's starting to talk a lot more lately. Sarah and I wrote down all the words that he says. The list doesn't include things that he repeats back, but rather words he associates things with and knows what they mean. For example, "mama" references my wife. He can say the word and knows that it refers to her.

Oliver is up to about 30 such words. Some are foods ("strawberries," "Goldfish," "hot dog," etc.); some are pet names (our dog "Molly" and my in-law's dog "Sage"); and some reference pictures from his favorite books ("gorilla," "ghost" and "baby," for instance). A few words crack me up when I hear them, including "shoo fly" (which is accompanied by the pounding of one of Sarah's flippie-floppies on a window as he attempts to control the insect population) and "poop" (which he yells out in a long, drawn-out fashion when our dog needs to be let outside).

My favorite word, though, is "dada." He screams it out amid giggles while I tickle him, and he calls it out to me until I join him inside one of the many "forts" we build for him on the couch. He also repeats the word over and over and over when I get home from work. There's nothing sweeter than hearing "Dada! Dada! Dada!" after a long day of work, that's for sure.