Grant's vocabulary

Grant is falling into the typical pattern for second child, in that he's mostly letting Cooper do the work of talking for him. He's remarkably adept at expressing his needs to Cooper, somehow. Big brother babble translator Cooper nails it on the head as much as I do, I think. Cooper often will be talking with Grant and then turn to me and say, "Grant says he wants a banana." And sure enough, the darn kid wants a banana. Of course, that's kinda cheating, because Grant will eat up to six full size bananas a day if we let him (rest assured we only let him do that once). But still.

One of the things I love the most about this is that Cooper is totally undaunted by Grant's five word vocabulary. You'd think it would be frustrating to live with someone that communicates exclusively by clapping, nodding, screeching, Doggie, Dada, Chicken, Blankey and You're Welcome, but somehow it works. Cooper holds complete conversations with Grant, including all sorts of input from Grant that may or may not actually be occurring in reality. I guess if you can engage a stuffed animal for two hours, an animate and babbling baby brother is a comparably delightful companion.

Our favorite part of the day, some days, is the early morning. On mornings when Cooper and Grant both wake up in a good mood, they'll chat with each other for easily 30 minutes, with Cooper handing various toys to Grant in his crib, laughing together, and being extremely cute. We often hear Cooper chiding Grant calmly about something in his big brother voice, "No Grant, we don't hit people," or "No Grant, we don't grab," which is always impressive. And recently, one morning, Grant got very agitated really quickly for some odd reason, and Cooper said, "Don't worry Grant! I'll get mama and she'll make you feel better!" and then he came up the stairs, told me that Grant needed my help, took my hand and forcibly dragged me out of bed to go get his brother. When we got there, Cooper announced, "See Grant? I got Mama and now you gonna feel so much better."