Neither snow nor rain nor heat...

Today when Isaac saw our letter carrier he said, "Mailman."

It sounds more like mai-ma, with the L and N missing, but there's no doubt he's saying it. I remember teaching him to say it two weeks ago, if "teaching" is even the right word for it. We had walked out to the street to watch the mail be delivered, and I told him a couple of times that the guy in the truck was the mailman. Isaac sounded like he was trying to say it too, and I thought at the time that he was doing a remarkably good job of parroting the syllables back at me, but I certainly didn't expect it to stick -- or to reappear without prompting two weeks later.

Although it isn't like he learned the concept and the word in that single day -- we had previously gotten a book at the library that has a photograph of a letter carrier standing by his truck, and whenever we see a mail truck around town we say, "Look, there's the mailman." I suppose learning is a gradual process even though it can seem like alchemy when I'm watching it happen from the outside.

Overall Isaac is best with words that begin with M or B, although a few of these words can be hard to distinguish out of context. See what I mean:

• baby -- beh-bee
• ball -- bah
• bed -- beh
• bird -- buh
• bread -- bah (or bah-bah)
• bowl -- buh
• bubble -- bub-buh
• bus -- buh
• bye-bye -- bye-bye
• mama -- mah-mah
• man -- maa
• meow -- mee-ah (this means "cat")
• moon -- mmnn

Strangely, he's stopped saying "banana," although I would have thought it would fit right into this list. And the meaning of "da-da" has expanded past Dad and dog to include anything Isaac is really interested in. Trucks, for example, are very often "da-da." Craig should feel flattered!