When Grandma Judi was visiting for Sam’s birthday, she came in one day from taking a walk with Sam to tell me that he had just identified some birds. She said that as some birds flew overhead, Sam waved his hand at them and said, “bah! bah!”

I was pretty surprised since until this point he had never identified anything. He just kind of babbled, sometimes happening on real words like mama or dada. But sure enough, the next time we were outside, a bird flew overhead, Sam looked right at it, and said “bah!” Ben and I were so excited.

We also noticed that Sam had generalized bird to include planes and helicopters. Yeah, Sam, that’s an airplane-bird!

In Atlanta, we went to the zoo and Sam almost short-circuited saying “bah” so many times. There were a lot of birds. Here he is with Dad showing us a bird (off screen).

Lately, Sam has started saying “bah” for almost everything he wants to draw our attention to, not just birds and other flying things. We try to encourage him by saying things like, “that’s right, there’s a a dog” or “yeah, you see a fan.” Occasionally he changes from “bah” to ” dah” or “fah” with these prompts, but not usually.

It is so fun to see Sam start to develop his language!