Harry the chatterbox

HARRY is turning into a right little chatterbox. This is a big change because he was a pretty slow starter when it came to talking.

He did have a couple of essential words – apart from mummy and daddy – such as juice, dinner and no, but generally he preferred to grunt and point to get his message across.

However, a couple of months before Christmas, his vocabulary suddenly started to expand at a quite remarkable rate.

Having done a bit of research (well, using Google to look up ‘babies talking’), it seems that toddlers can learn up to 10 words a day by the time they’re two, and I can quite believe it.

Every day he’s using new words and new sounds, while his pronunciation is improving rapidly as well. He’s also starting to string one or two words together, which I find very exciting. It also makes car journeys much more interesting – when I pick him up from my mum and dad’s, he talks all the way home about what he’s been doing.

Although he still gets frustrated when I don’t understand him, having a conversation with Harry is definitely one of those ‘wow’ moments that you experience as a first time parent.

Of course, there are one or two downsides to Harry’s ever expanding vocabulary. While we were at the checkout in the supermarket last weekend, Harry kept saying ‘beer’ to the cashier, which was a little bit embarrassing.

The following day we took him to a restaurant which had a large mirror behind our table. When Harry spotted the mirror, he stood up, turned to face it, shouted ‘mirror’ at the top of his voice, and then kissed his reflection. He did make up for it though, saying ‘please’ when the waiter asked if he wanted ice cream. I was a very proud dad.