Button’s hit an entertaining part of acquiring language: possessives and connections.

It started when he was at his sister’s soccer game and showed he didn’t want his hat, but his grandfather’s:

“No! Jim hat.”

Yes, he’s on a first-name basis with Grandpa.

From there he’s started to get a giddy joy out of pointing out when he knows that certain things relate to other people or belong to them. Identifying which cup at the table belongs to which person. Pointing to one of his plaid shirts and saying “Papa!” because it looks like the kind of shirts he sees his Papa wearing.

Today I needed to run an errand and he heard me say I was heading to the car. He picked up a windbreaker and followed me. “Dada vroom!” I started to leave without him and he got cranky, until I asked him “Do you want to go with Dad in the car?” He nodded. Dada vroom.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the way to write or say things. Looking for the best ways to put words together to communicate something unambiguously. And here’s Button doing the same thing, but with a smaller palette.

He can’t rely on his words or syntax being persuasive, so he needs to rely on our desire to interpret him.We know that some of it may sound like noise, but that there’s signal trying to break through. He doesn’t need vocabulary or craft to persuade us to listen.