He grows every single night. We swear.

New words: “Arctic tern”, “Pacific salmon,” “eels”, and he attempts “garden warblers”.

The “k” sound in “milk” and “Mark” has finally caught up and is now on board with the rest of whatever word he’s saying.

His comprehension of language has taken a leap recently. It’s like his vocabulary folded over on itself and made hundreds of new connections overnight, and now he uses short sentences all the time. “Juice now.” “All done, down please.” “Tractor outside?” “Birds eating.” “Liam hug Maggie.” “Mama drawing now.” “Read more?” And I can see him struggling to make sentences out of abstract concepts, too, not just concrete things. “Liam happy; hug Dada.” Verbs are now active pretty much all the time — running, talking, reading, flying, and so forth — unless it’s a command, and I find it really interesting that he can discriminate between the present participle and imperative forms. “Liam dancing — Mama dance,” he says when he wants me to join him as he dances.

When he wants to talk about the alphabet he calls it “E F.” Trust our kid to buck the popular catch-all term and come up with his own.

He has figured out that when we make certain lines on a piece of paper, his name is involved. “Liam,” he’ll say, pushing a crayon and his drawing book at us. So we print out his name while he watches closely, and when we are done he runs his fingertips over the letters and says, “Liam.” He’s asked us to write out other words and names, too.

There is more, but there are so many new things every day that quite honestly, we’ve forgotten them by the time night rolls around.