good words/bad words

It seems like every day or two Kale attempts a new word. Most of them are still pretty unintelligible for people that don't spend a lot of time with him, but there have been two very clear words that he's recently added to his vocabulary. One makes my heart melt and the other makes my heart drop. Shall we start with the good?


"mo?" aka "more?"

Depending on how much he wants "mo" of something, "mo" sometimes does come out as "mor" (starts the r sound, but doesn't really finish it). It always comes out as a question and it's almost always related to food. Example: he finishes his plate at dinner, picks it up, puts his head to one side and asks "mo?" *heart melts*

This is by far my favourite word that he's learned. Even more than "mama" (probably because I hear "mama? mama? MAMA?? MAMAMAMAMA????!!!! at least four thousand times a day). But the best? THE BEST? When he's nursing and I unlatch him (he would stay there all day otherwise) and I say "all done, Kale" and he looks up at me with those giant blue eyes and says "mo?"

And how are you supposed to say no to this face?

no.

Kris and I are so, so careful with this word because it's not one we wanted to him pick up early on. We explain things. We say "I can't let you do that because...." We say "Kale, that's probably a bad idea because...." And when we glance over and see he's about to yank the cats tail and have 0.5 seconds, we shout "Kale!" instead of "no!"

Then he started school. Then he turned 17 months and started to get a mind of his own.
And that's when he started saying "no."

The first time he said it, I just about fell over. When I ask him if he wants to do something (i.e. brush his teeth), he looks at me, puts his hands behind his back, leans over at the waist toward me and says "noooo" and then stomps away.

Sometimes we really have to struggle not to giggle at him. Because sometimes, when everyone is in a good mood and patience is abound, "noooo" and his little attitude are actually really cute. But sometimes? Sometimes it makes me clench my jaw and draw my breath. I have to stop myself from saying "what did you just say to me?" (because, really, he'll just repeat "noooo").

But honestly, 17 months and just learning "no?" I think that we did pretty good at getting this far.