Craaaaaah

Elijah is standing behind me. Blowing air past his lips, Elijah makes a "craaahhh" noise.

"You're copying me aren't you, Elijah?" I ask.

Elijah smirks at me and laughs a little. He is copying me.

You see, I've had a bit of a cold lately. One of those annoying ones that causes you to be congested for a very long time and subsequently causes you to cough and blow your nose several times a day, even though you feel otherwise healthy (I'm already feeling much better, thank you).

I'll head to the bathroom to blow my nose and soon I hear the pitter-patter of Elijah-feet in my direction. He follows me to mimic the sound I make when blowing my nose.

This is pretty cool for our kiddo who's never mimicked much of anything we do (pretty cool indeed!). Elijah will sometimes imitate gross motor activities, but I really can't think of much that he has mimicked verbally. Even cooler is that he's been doing it all week. It's not just a one day thing or a one person thing (he's mimicked Andy too). Often when we've heard verbalization from Elijah we won't hear it again for six months, a year, or longer. It's a long time to wait.

So, when Elijah comes up to me and copies a noise I'm making? I'm beyond thrilled. He's really copying a sound with his mouth. I hope you all realize how profound it really is. Is it a word? Nope, but in my book it might as well be. That's how cool it is. Just tonight, I pretended to make the sound and Elijah did it too. "Craaaaah," he said, a smirk on his face. This back and forth verbalization is the beginning of speech, so yeah, it's pretty exciting.

Oh, and who cares if it's something gross? It's like a kid repeating that one thing you didn't want them to in an embarrassing setting. A parental rite of passage, don't you think?

{Also, how in the world am I supposed to spell this sound? Craaaah will have to do, I guess.}

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