Yeah

It was Julia's favorite word for a while. "Yeah," she'd answer when asked if she wanted to read a book. "Yeah," she'd like a banana, a nap, a trip to the grocery store. She said "yeah" months before she said "no" and we were so captivated by her lovely agreeable stage that we asked her opinion constantly, just to get an affirmative response. We had a babysitter around that time who tried repeatedly to teach her to say "yes" properly, and finally last summer, Julia made the switch. But we kind of liked that breathy little "yeah" and we were sad when it was gone.

This week, as part of his language explosion, Evan's started saying "yeah" constantly. I was delighted to hear it come out of his mouth and have been enjoying his early attempts to voice his opinion about things, particularly since Julia's finally mastered the "no" game a little too well. "Isn't it nice that someone's so agreeable?" I keep saying to Julia as Evan offers up a "yeah" in response to every suggestion I make. Now she's in on the game, too, constantly asking him questions and waiting for his enthusiastic response. "Yeah!"

If the "sits happily in one spot and plays with toys" stage is my favorite of the first year, the "yeah" stage easily takes the honors for year 2. Evan learned to sit incredibly early and crawled incredibly late, blessing me with a full 5 1/2 months when he happily sat where I left him. The addition of "yeah" to his vocabulary seems equally early -- a good 2 or 3 months before Julia, if memory serves me correctly. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to get as long a run out of this one. Yesterday, when I asked him if he wanted to get out of the tub, he shook his head violently back and forth. "Come on, Evan, say yeah," I urged him. "Mommy, he's shaking his head no," Julia scolded me. "He wants to stay in." I refused to believe it. "I see nothing," I replied cheerfully, trying again for a yeah. Eventually, Evan humored me and out he came. But it's pretty clear that my days are numbered here. Before I know it, I'm going to have two naysayers running around my house. Am I in for it then? Oh, yeah...