Ta!

It is quite amazing to see how our little Bean has grown into a fully fledged member of our family. He has an amazing ability to communicate exactly what he wants using only one word. While his vocabulary consist of an ever growing number of words, he has a definite favourite:

"Ta"

Ta is the word used when Bean wants something, like if he...

• wants an object, toy, book...
• wants to give you something
• wants to to be picked up
• takes your hand, guides your and then points to something to show you what he wants
• takes your hand and takes you to the kitchen door, indicating that he wants to head out for a stroll
• sees food he wants
• wants a container opened
• wants the baby gate opened (places your hand on said gate) so that he is free to roam the house
• wants his socks put back on after he has pulled them off
• wants his shoes put on so that he can make Daddy take him for a walk
• wants Daddy to balance a shoe on his head (I don't know... they just do...)
• ... and finally a satisfied Ta as thank you for giving him what he wanted. 

Almost an entire conversation can take place, only using one word. When Bean asks for something, he repeats Ta, using a higher and higher pitch, getting louder all the time, until eventually you either capitulate or distract him with something else. And when choosing the latter, you have to know that he never forgets, and before you know it, he's focused back on his initial target. 

And those of us around him all respond to his earnest quest to communicate his needs. This, I find quite interesting as we are all very verbal in our communication and have rather extensive vocabularies, and yet we are quite happy to have a conversation consisting largely of one word so that our littlest member can participate and feel acknowledged. 

The academic in me kicks in here and reminds me that he is he is at the holophrastic stage of language development, where an entire sentence consists of a single word. And there is a joy in realising how effective this stage of communication is in expressing Bean's needs and wants, but also how frustrating it is that he still cannot express more abstract concepts. But I am also reminded that this stage is fleeting and I want to try to capture as much of it as I can before we move onward and upward to more elaborate speech.