22 Months Old!

Silas is sitting on what remains of our eucalyptus tree, which fell a few weeks ago right next to our house and narrowly missed hitting the sheep cote.

Silas is awesome at turning just about anything into guitars, including sticks:
And, chillin' inside:
Giving pointers to Buddha:
Silas combines words all of the time now and occasionally makes something resembling a complete sentence. If I had hours to write, I could go on and on describing in great detail the strides Silas is making with language lately. Since I only have a few minutes...I'll just describe a few instances that stand out in memory.

Instance #1: About a week ago, Silas woke up, climbed over us and got out of bed. It's pretty standard for him to say things like "up, up. light. on. power. on. coffee. up, up, up" until we finally oblige him and get up and turn the light on. That particular morning, he said "turn on light!" I laughed and told him how funny it was that his first complete sentence was a command. He replied by saying "Please!"

Instance #2: Tonight before bedtime, we were playing together on the bed. I was kneeling and he was running around doing bellyflops onto the bed. He misscalculated and flopped down too close to me, slamming his cheek into my knee. After many tears and kisses to make it better, he had calmed down and was ready for "mom milk," as he calls it. He climbed into bed, looked at me, and said in a sad little voice, "Mommy's knee hurt Silas." "Oh, poor baby!" I said, "but excellent language usage!" I comforted him some more, but not before running out to the kitchen to tell Drew what he'd said.

We are SO close to having him speak full sentences as a matter of course!