Alden is starting to say some more words. We’re the only ones that can understand him. Elisa does a better job that I do. He says “glayk-glek” for blanket. He says “booh” for boot/shoe. He still says “nak” for snack and “peez” for please. For a long time he has loved saying “bohk” for broken. He says “Hah” before he takes me by the hand and leads me somewhere. He can make dog and cat noises. I guess his best enunciation is with “water,” because he can even pronounce the ending “r.” My favorite is when he says “Wa! Des!” It means “watch this” and he does it right before doing some jumping somersaulting trick.

Eden occasionally likes to make up nonsense words. She tells us, “Did you know that gleedis means toy?” (I don’t remember if that was actually what she said gleedis meant). Yesterday she made up a word that meant that you were so cold that your nose falls off. At dinner when Elisa quizzed her on some Spanish and sign language vocabulary, Eden answered with a nonsense guess most of the time.