I Don't Want It!

Last night we went over to the Stewarts' house. After dinner, the older kids got ice cream sandwiches. Moses, upon realizing that he hadn't been offered one, came to the kitchen and the following conversation ensued:

Moses: Some? Want some?
Us: Oh, would you like some ice cream?
Moses: Yeah!
(We give him an ice cream sandwich)
Us: What do you say?
Moses: Thank you!
(He disappears into the next room with the ice cream. A few minutes later he marches back into the kitchen with the melting, merely nibbled-on ice cream sandwich.)
Moses: I don't want it! I don't want it!

So there you go, 18-month-old Moses is now officially speaking 4-word sentences. When we took the twins to be evaluated for speech/language therapy about 6 months ago, the test results claimed that they could barely even speak 4-word sentences (we of course knew that they could very well speak 4-word sentences and more, but what did we know? We're only their parents, after all... sigh...) Anyway, I only mention that to give perspective on how amazed we are with Moses' verbal skills. We're just not used to having such a little person who has so much to say!

Miss Lana

A recently overheard conversation:

Caleb: I love Miss Lana. She's my girl.
Joshua: Yeah, she's pretty cute, isn't she?

For those of you who aren't familiar, Miss Lana is the main female character on The Gospel Bill Show. She is a sensible, matronly woman in her mid-40's.

From the Mouth of an 18-Month-Old

Since Moses' 18-month update didn't actually include much information about Moses, I decided to compile a list of some things that Moses has said today, just to give you an idea of what we've been hearing lately.

Cay-eb! After saying Joshua's name for several months now, Moses finally started saying Caleb's name last week. The very first time I heard him say it was last Monday when we went to pick up the twins from VBS and he became very excited when he spotted Caleb across the classroom.

Scary! In response to a "suspenseful" segment of an episode of The Gospel Bill Show.

Back? Back? When he wants me to give him a piggy-back ride.

Mama all gone. When he was nursing and milk was all gone.

M-O-B-S. He dictated these letters to me while the twins were practicing writing and drawing this afternoon. I'm sure he had no idea what he was spelling, but I was amused that he spelled an actual word. He does seem to understand that his name begins with an "m", though, and asked me to write "m" over and over again.

Here are some more Moses-isms that don't require an explanation:

All done poop.
Mommy, where are you?
All right.
Apple num num num.
Okay.
Here, Mommy.
Yeah.
Eeew, bug.
See it?
Shoes on. Help me.
Shoes off.
I do it.

Playing Mother-Baby & Moses is 1.5

At 18 months old, Moses continues to amaze us with his verbal communication skills and dexterity. For example, the other day he was playing with some interlocking plastic blocks and was having difficulty getting two blocks to interlock, so he turned to me and said, "Help me? Help me?" but before I had the chance to help him, he had figured it out on his own and proudly told me, "Did it! Did it!" Even the twins sometimes have difficulty building with these particular blocks, so I was pretty impressed. Moses is quick to figure things out on his own, and if he can't figure something out right away, he doesn't give up easily. As far as he is concerned, he can do everything his brothers can do.

For this and other reasons, I'm so glad that Joshua and Caleb are interested in things that seem to be younger than age-appropriate. While many of their friends are swooning over Spiderman and Star Wars, the twins are still wild about Thomas, Cars, Sesame Street, Toy Story, and Winnie the Pooh. And lately they've been going through a mother-baby phase where they'll find a large and small version of a stuffed animal and one boy will play the "mommy" and the other boy will play the "baby". It all started with a Curious George "mommy" and a Beanie Baby monkey "baby". The boys create dialogues between the mommy and baby in which the baby rides on his mother's back (they learned in a book that this is how mother monkeys carry their young), the baby gets thirsty and drinks "mama" (nurses), takes naps, waits for daddy to come home from work, etc. Sometimes when they're engaging in their imaginary mother-baby dialogue, I will mistakenly respond when I hear someone say, "Mama" and the boys will become exasperated with me and say, "No, Mommy, the baby monkey is talking!" Oh, of course, silly me. While I know this type of imaginary play isn't typical behavior for almost-5-year-old boys, I think it's very sweet and is a lovely respite from the rough-housing that usually goes on around here.