Emmett

I was reading on the couch on Sunday, and Emmett was down in front of the TV playing. We'd both been up for a while, and I wasn't paying the closest attention to him when he says "Hello" as plain as day. His "words" right now are (were) all of the "gibberish that parents can understand" variety, things that he repeats in certain contexts enough and that bear enough of a relationship to their English counterparts that people who spend a lot of time with him (Lacey and I and the people at day care) can decipher.

But this was 100% intelligible to anyone with ears as "Hello." I sat up and there he was with Lacey's mom's cell phone held to face. So not only did he surprise me with his ability to say the word correctly, it was the first sign of him making a leap of abstraction (although I've never really played with this phone before, I know what kind of thing it is) and also kind of playing pretend (I've seen Mom and Dad say "hello" with these things. Let me try it out.) I don't think he knows that phones are for holding conversations, and so he wasn't constructing a narrative fantasy scenario on the phone I don't think. But who knows? There's clearly more going on in his little noggin than I previously suspected.