Mr. Talkie-pants

Elias turned 15 (months) today! And he really amazed me on the drive over to have dinner with Grandma. At one point he was sort of talking to himself in his car seat, trying different vowels, so I thought I'd bring a little structure to his mental excercise: I counted "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" showing him that many fingers. Then I started over, giving him a chance to respond to each number separately -- and he did, in fact, say each number right back to me. I had no idea he'd be able to do that.

If that weren't enough, as we waited for dinner, he read a book with these pictures in it: ball, hat, baby, dog, cat, bird, duck, fish, phone. He was able to look at each picture and say each word with NO prompting at all. I'm amazed. So I guess he's got first-level concepts then.

I estimate Elias can understand AND say about 40 words now, including a few attributes ("red" and "green"), and at least one verb, "read" -- which he says in the imperative, of course.

[Update: Actually I don't think Elias understands colors yet. I think he mostly associates "geen" with traffic signals, but he hasn't really abstracted green yet.]