Roar!

Connor's vocabulary continues to develop rapidly. He is working on animal noises in earnest right now. He started with a core group of "woooof" (dog) "mow" (cat) and "roar!" (big cat). Lately he has expanded to "moooo" and some kind of primal oinkish grunting for pig. Bird is the only one he doesn't replicate: he now says "bur-taaahhh!" with real relish.

He can then deploy these noises as a means of classifying the animals that he sees in the books he is enjoying more and more. So we turn the pages from one animal to the other and he makes a noise. What's funny is seeing an animal he's not sure of. He'll pause, considering, and then apply the label with confidence. It never seems to occur that he might need a new category. His default sound seems to be the roar. Some of the things he's roared at lately: a seal, a moose, the big caterpillar in The Very Hungry Caterpillar and a giraffe.