We've arrived!

Ethan has thoroughly learned a new word, and we are all very proud (?) of him. The word? "NO!!!"
Frequently, loudly, emphatically. Pretty much any time he doesn't agree, doesn't understand, or is simply feeling cantankerous. Which is nearly all day most days! He even accompanies this most times with an impressive stab of his pointer finger at you! But the saving grace is the WAY he shouts it. His tiny voice is forceful, but the infantile curl he places on the vowel makes it all worth while. Anyone who can remember what a nine-month old shouting "no" sounds like has got it on the money. Phonetically, its kinda "nyouh!" I will see if I can get a clip of it today, and add it to this post, so stay tuned.

He's talking a lot more now. He's been launching into these tirades lately where a real word he knows well is couched in an emphatic raft of gibberish. These "sentences" or sometimes even "paragraphs" are extremely expressive in tone and pitch. If you didn't know better, you might mistake him for speaking rapidly in a language you didn't know. But he really is trying to SAY something. His inflection is identical to the other members of the family (you know how the rhythms and tones of a sentence combine to make up patterns that are usually so similar between immediate relatives?). He makes eye contact, and uses his facial expressions to emphasize his point... Its interesting. But as he's looking at you, if he can tell you're not following him, his voice gets quieter and he gets embarrassed and stops.

Some other new words, used correctly and often: Hot, Nose, Duh-Tush ("don't touch," which he repeats after me while doing that same pointer finger jab whenever I say it to him!), Water (said perfectly now, "wah-tur," well enunciated), Eye (Which he is recognizing everywhere now. His stuffed animals have eyes, models in magazines have eyes, the cover of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" has several stylized eyes, a deck of cards has eyes sprinkled through it- he finds them and shows us exitedly!)

In other news, Ti'anna knocked on my office door as I was filing my quarterlies, and as I had told her several times not to disturb me while in the middle of this particular project, I was annoyed. I said, "I said not to bother me, Ti'anna." She said,
"It's not Ti'anna. I have something for you." I opened the door to give her the old "I'm not kidding; scram!" look, and she proffered a small folded piece of paper on which she had scribbled some letters.
"I'm a mail server," she said in all seriousness. (Any other computer geeks out there will see this as proof of what a sheltered and tech-soaked environment this poor kid has grown up in! For those not so inclined, please understand two things: 1. In a rural area like ours, we do not have a proper "postman" or woman or what have you in their special car and special blue shorts with an ubiquitous smile. We have a box out on the street which our mail contractor pulls up to in a stationwagon and swiftly deposits our mail without getting out. Ti'anna knows someone brings the mail, because it appears every day and needs retrieval, but does not associate this with the "mailman" of yore. This brings us to point #2. A mail server, in hugely oversimplified terms, is the part of a network that deals with incoming and outgoing email. This is the machine at your local Internet Service Provider that your computer contacts when it is sending or receiving email. We could get a lot more technical here, but you get the point.)
I had to take a five minute break to recover from the laughter. The funniest thing about it was how it was not at all wrong from a linguistic point of view. One who delivers mail is performing a service, is serving you the mail. I thought it was awesome inductive logic!